Jim Ethier Shares Family's Recipe for Success During Premier Partners Event
Bush Brothers & Company Chairman and CEO Jim Ethier was the featured speaker at a recent Premier Partners Event held at the Knoxville Chamber. Ethier told a packed Market House Room the secrets that have enabled his family’s business to remain successful for more than 100 years.
“I like to think that the reason that we’re here 100 years later is because we have been willing to change what we do but not who we are,” Ethier said whose grandfather and uncles started the company in 1908.
“My grandfather’s answer to those wanting to sell his products illegally has resonated within our family ever since then,” said Ethier. “Simply put, he stated: ‘That’s no way to raise my boys.’ Our company was built on integrity and it remains a focus today.”
In 1990, Bush Brothers & Company changed its entire business model. It began concentrating on two business practices: making great tasting bean products and marketing great tasting bean products. It discontinued its trucking and farming operations. This rearrangement of company initiatives and goals has further helped it increase profitability.
“We have to make adjustments as markets and consumers dictate,” Ethier said. “By the time some companies realize change is necessary, it’s too late. We’ve been very, very fortunate.”
This new focus spawned the now widely popular Jay and Duke television commercials. (Jay is Jim’s cousin.) The company also started a research and development department because it was very serious about creating new products from beans – products that would make people excited about eating them. The company converted from a 500-item product line to a product line with less than 150 items. It became very focused on one particular niche: the edible bean business.
Bush Brothers & Company had its beginnings in the village of Chestnut Hill, 40 miles east of downtown Knoxville. Today, bean products under the Bush's Best brand are distributed throughout the United States and in 13 countries. The company began as a canner of tomato products, evolved to a broad line vegetable canner, and today is the nation's leading processor of edible bean products.
To find out more about the Premier Partner program or Premier Partner events, contact Michelle Kiely at 865.637.4550.
