ANNA — “For this year’s letter, I went back and reviewed our submissions for the last five years. Each year, we stated we were looking forward to a solid year and had good expectations. To follow up on those predictions, each and every year was positive even with the fact that COVID hit, inflation hit, supply chain issues hit, employment tightened, etc. It seemed that each year had the potential to ‘not be a good year’ but ended up being great,” said Andy Haag, Wells Brothers Inc. director of sales.

His report continues:

We are looking forward to a strong 2023 as well. At the beginning of every year, being on the sales side, my typical saying is we are back at zero. From a work standpoint, that is not really true because of backlog being carried over. However, from a new project standpoint, we start tracking our first project being No. 230001 so we truly are starting at zero. At the time of this writing, we were already at No. 230066, 66 new projects in 2023. For quotes, we track them similarly and are also already at 23-066, 66 new quotes. Now, I’d like to say our hit ratio is 100% on projects versus quotes but I am pretty sure that is just a coincidence that they are both at 66 for the year.

So why is our business staying solid and why are we growing? I have consistently stated in this publication that the reason for our continued success and growth stems from our talented and committed employees combined with our strategic-thinking and valued customers. I would like to say a big thank you to both.

From an employee standpoint, we feel very blessed to have the highly skilled, customer-focused employees that we do. We continue to invest in our employees through both informal mentoring, formal on-the-job training and on-site training from our own certified Training Team. Being a family-owned Christian organization, we truly believe that we are able to offer a culture that is unique in many ways. We work with Upper Valley Career Center in Piqua and Apollo Career Center in Lima. Partnering with the Shelby County Workforce Partnership team has also been invaluable. Some of our current openings include industrial electricians, industrial HVAC technicians, millwright/welders and pipefitters. You can find more information on these openings and others on Indeed – just search for Wells Brothers.

Now this leads us into 2023 … what is in store for us as a business? With the fact that we have already set up 66 new projects and sent out 66 new quotes in 2023, we do not see any reason that things will change. Our existing customers are calling us with projects, and we are finding new customers along the way.

As we all know, things can change quick. Inflation is still high and interest rates are still going up. Money should be tightening but it should have tightened last year too. Our customer base is pretty diverse, but we still do a significant amount of our work for the food and plastics segment. There is a connection between these two industries as a good portion of our plastics customers are food-related since their products are used for packaging of not only consumer products, but food and beverages. No matter the economy or inflation, we will all continue to eat, drink, and buy consumer products so these two market segments remain an important part of our success.

By following our mission statement, “Treat the customer and my co-worker as I would like to be treated” and our company culture statement of “Walk in Truth – Trust. Respect. Understand. Teach. Honesty” we look forward a great 2023 and beyond……

God bless to all, and we wish everyone a safe and prosperous 2023.

For more information, check us out at www.wellsbrothers.com.