September, 2000 - Connect Business Magazine

September 1, 2000April 29, 2008 Daniel Vance

David Castle

A few decades back if a corporate executive even brought up the notion at a board meeting that their $127 million company ought to buy out a $254 million foreign rival, he or she would have been laughed out of the board room. But this is the ’00s. When Fairmont’s Weigh-Tronix did it by buying out British rival Avery Berkel in late 1999 with the leverage of Berkshire, a U.S. investment group, it became the second largest scale manufacturer in the world behind Mettler Toledo. And for the record, nobody laughed at them.

Feature Story

September 1, 2000May 5, 2008 Daniel Vance

Johnson Components

Ernie Glass, 62, president of Johnson Components and survivor of five buyouts over the past thirteen years, leans across his desk to explain why his Waseca office has few furnishings. “My tradition of a bare office dates to my General Electric days,” says Glass, a hint of a smile breaking across his lips. “I moved every two years then so I never really bothered to fill my office up with things that would need to be packed and eventually unpacked. Then I came to this company where I’ve had six different office suites at three different plant sites since 1987. I carried on the tradition.”

Feature Story

September 1, 2000May 5, 2008 Roger Matz

Agri-Comm Alarms

Journalists believe everyone has a story worth publishing, maybe more than one.

But Mankato’s Charlie True, face-to-face with a journalist, seemed to mentally recoil from that notion, wondering aloud if he “was worth a story in Connect Business Magazine.”