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Press
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
By JAY LEVIN
STAFF WRITER
"A corporation is like a person," says writer Marian Calabro. "It has a personality, it grows, it matures, it stumbles, it learns."
A perfect subject for a biography.
Calabro, of Hasbrouck Heights, is founder and president of the year-old CorporateHistory.net, a network of professional writers, video producers and other specialists who research and produce company histories. CorporateHistory.net has three books coming out this year: on H. Muehlstein & Co., a distributor of plastic and rubber polymers; A.W. Hastings & Co., a window and door distributor, and the auto parts chain Pep Boys. Calabro is the author of the A.W. Hastings and Pep Boys books.
Calabro, 51, formed CorporateHis|tory.net after writing histories of the financial firm The Phoenix Companies and of New Jersey's largest gas and electric utility, Public Service Enterprise Group.
"Making Things Work: PSEG's First Century" was published in 2003 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the creation of Public Service Corporation of New Jersey.
Beginning in 2001, Calabro plunged into the company archives, interviewed scores of longtime employees, visited a customer call center and nuclear plant and even rode along with a repair crew to tell the story of a "blue collar" Newark company that used to run the trolleys.
PSEG published 35,000 copies of the handsome, photo-filled, 127-page book. Every employee and retiree, many public officials and every public library in the utility's service area were given one, and hundreds of customers ordered copies through utility bill inserts, said PSEG spokesman Paul Rosengren.
Why did PSEG want the book written, 25 years after the last company history was published?
"We wanted to remind policy makers that we were still committed to New Jersey, at a time when we were investing internationally," Rosengren says.
"But our biggest success with the book was with our employees. It created a groundswell of pride."
The books are a labor of love for the Kearny-born and Rutgers-educated Calabro, who says "my brain becomes the company's hard drive" during a project.
"Corporate history really turns me on," she says. "Often, the American dream is told through the stories of these businesses."
Q. Why should a corporation consider having its history told?
To show the world it is built to last, and to cost-effectively convey marketing messages to key audiences.
Q. Who is the audience?
Employees, recruits, people new to the company who need exposure to its culture and legacy. And on the outside, the financial community, vendors, shareholders, business partners, potential business partners.
Q. What type of messages should a corporate history impart?
One might be, "We are stable and scandal-free." This was a message of the PSEG book. When the company's 100th anniversary occurred, the Enron meltdown had just begun, the rolling blackouts in California had taken place and the energy industry was getting a black eye. And here was PSEG legitimately able to say, "We are stable and scandal-free and, by the way, we've paid dividends annually since 1907."
Q. When's an appropriate time for a corporation to roll out its history?
Milestones such as a major anniversary are a good time. So is a leadership succession. Or the company can tie a major product launch to the telling of its history.
Q. Are these vanity projects for companies?
In today's business environment, very few companies can afford to do a book just to stroke the ego.
Q. Must a company be old to have its history told?
Not at all. Some of the under-30s in this country, like Microsoft and Home Depot, have fascinating stories to tell.
Q. How should unflattering chapters in a company's history be dealt with?
Every company has crises, and naturally no company wants to trumpet its mistakes, but a good corporate history owns up to the crises and represents them as turning points and lessons learned. Trials by fire make for interesting reading and add to the credibility of the work.
In the PSEG book, for instance, the company openly admitted that one reason it rededicated itself to safety was that in one year, 1997, it lost two workers.
Q. As a rule, do CEOs appreciate the history of the companies they lead?
CEOs often have a brilliant grasp of the big picture, and history is part of the big picture. The driver of the Pep Boys book was the current CEO, the first one who didn't come up through the ranks. He arrived in 2003 and said, "This company has an incredible heritage, and no one is writing it down."
Q. Speaking of Pep Boys, was there really a Manny, Moe and Jack?
Yes, there really were. They were Emanuel Rosenfeld, Maurice Strauss and Jack Jackson, three Navy buddies, all from Philadelphia, young men who lived the American dream. They came home from the Navy - they were stationed in Michigan during World War I - and were working at retail jobs. "Let's try our own business," they said. "Cars look good. This looks like something that might stick." And they had chutzpah. They started small and they built, and today, from one store the size of a closet on a street corner in Philadelphia, Pep Boys is now 595 stores nationally. ... Those guys are American icons.
Reproduced with permission of The Record of Hackensack, NJ.
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