Updated: October 12, 2020
manufacturing excellence awards
Manufacturing Awards: After 200 years, Dexter-Russell is looking forward
Photos | Courtesy of DEXTER-RUSSELL, INC.
The Southbridge cutlery manufacturer now known as Dexter-Russell has been in business for more than 200 years, and the company certainly learned a lot along the way.
That includes harnessing a deep respect for its customers not as just consumers but as professionals. Whether they’re cooks, tire cutters or fishermen, Dexter-Russell aims to provide its customers with the tools they need to do their jobs, and do them well.
“It’s a professional tool for them,” said President and CEO Alan Peppel. “So the quality, the design and the function of it is made with that in mind, and to respect the job they’re trying to do and help them do it better.”
The product of multiple mergers since the company was first established in 1818, that kind of longevity provides Dexter-Russell with a level of confidence other companies might aspire to.
“It gives us confidence that we’ve been through this before, financial recessions and COVID and all these things that come up,” Peppel said. “We have a confidence that we can weather those storms.”
But that kind of confidence doesn’t necessarily mean company leadership considers itself bullet proof. Referencing his message in the company’s bicentennial book, which includes a lengthy history of Dexter-Russell, Peppel said: “The more you succeed in the past, the more likely you’re destined to fail, going forward, because you rest on your laurels.”
Although the company has been in business for two centuries, Peppel said Dexter-Russell remains concerned about the future. The company takes care to focus not only on how it’s historically taken care of its customers, but how it will stay relevant and meet customer needs in the future.
That includes, as is often the case with companies who have been around for quite some time, diversifying its operations.
“We’re involved in everything from oyster knives [to] bread cutting knives,” Peppel said. “And so we have one month [where] one market may be suffering and other markets tend to be strong. So that diversification has helped us through all this.”
At the same time, Peppel said, Dexter-Russell makes sure to put money back into the company, taking care to reinvest in the business, as well as its employees. From machinery upkeep to profit sharing, the company leaders have kept their eye on improving the quality of what they already have.
“Being privately held has helped us in terms of having a longer term perspective versus worrying about the next quarter or next earnings statement,” Peppel said. “Respect for all the employees and their contribution is an important part.”
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