Husband-and-wife business duo Jack and Ashley Sandbach are finding it difficult to make ends meet in their family business. Even when you're having fun on a ski trip, you may find yourself talking about business.
Not on top of a ski lift, in other words, in the middle of a run. they have limits.
“The point is, there's never an actual breakup,” says Ashley Sundbach. “I don't think either of us ever put an out-of-office note in our email. …And a lot of people on the (warehouse) floor have our personal phone numbers and email addresses. .”
The work they do inside the 10-by-12-inch office they share tends to spill out into their lives. When you run a company that has grown to over 500,000 square feet with 250 full-time employees and his 800 seasonal team members, it's hard to imagine otherwise. .
The company has been established in the high-demand packaging, distribution and logistics industry for more than 20 years. Their business, Packaging & Distribution Resources (PDR), aims to be the best in its field both regionally and globally.
Although Edison's operations are involved in the supply chain for a variety of consumer packaged products, its starting point is the beauty industry, which remains a stabilizer in times of economic instability.
“We don't want to create a jinx by saying we're recession-proof,” Ashley Sandbach said. Lipsticks, body lotions, and other cosmetics and skin care products are always something people buy. ”
Jack Sundback agrees that the market is highly competitive.
“(But) we have a reputation for getting the job done no matter what,” he said. “Somehow, we understand it. We were on the customer side of the warehouse when we first bought the product, so we also have a good understanding of what customers want from us.” .”
The business started as a company selling cosmetics, but at the time they weren't satisfied with a third-party logistics provider. So they decided to buy the logistics business and do it themselves.
Running a third-party logistics company wasn't Jack Sandbach's life goal. As he says, “It just happened.”
So did Mr. Sandbach's son, Joe Sandbach, 24, who has often said he appreciates his family's business but wants nothing to do with it. But after helping establish clients with expansion to the West Coast, he now helps run his PDR Los Angeles location with Jack's younger brother, Sandy Sundback.
“I was hoping he would stay for a while, just a couple of months, so I could go home…We had a 5-year-old at the time,” Jack Sandbach said. said. “In the end, he told me he had been thinking about it a lot and that he really enjoyed what he was doing. He wanted to stay.”
It may not have been what he, or his parents, expected from him in his professional career.
But they enjoy it…enough to even talk about shopping during the holidays.
“There's always something else going on, there's always something new on the horizon,” Ashley Sandbach said.
Resources for business
New Jersey has no shortage of resources for family-owned businesses.
One of them is the Business Action Center of New Jersey. Donald Newman, the state organization's small business advocacy manager, explained that the state's services range from helping you find financial resources to helping you choose a suitable location in the Garden State.
But he said the most popular option for small family-owned businesses is training programs, which can teach family-owned businesses about things like pricing, leveraging social media, using e-commerce and managing employees. He said there is.
“These questions are important to many small, family-run businesses. They are often doing it through their own efforts, and in some cases may be better able to respond. ” he said. “Through classes, consultants, seminars and webinars (much of which is funded by taxpayers), they can learn a lot.”
There is only one nonprofit organization in the state that focuses entirely on women entering the business world. That's the Women's Business Center, run by the Women's Center for Entrepreneurship. The center offers over 200 business webinars to over 1,000 clients annually.
“Recurring challenges we hear include difficulty accessing startup capital, isolation from business professionals and other entrepreneurs, the challenge of identifying how to effectively market online, and the challenges of scale. These include the difficulty of designing and executing an efficient growth plan to expand (and) struggles in affordable employment,'' said Rana Shanawani, the group's executive director.
Part of the Chatham-based group's stated goal is to help women entrepreneurs overcome the challenges of starting, managing and growing a business while balancing family life.
Coaching sessions hosted by the company are advertised as low-cost or free.
“Most of our customers appreciate that[our]team is able to help them solve these challenges through webinars and one-on-one business counseling with staff and subject matter experts,” she said. .
