Price is celebrating its 75th anniversary throughout 2024, and our commemoration of this milestone will dedicate special attention to the 13 tenets of the Price Way. Each post in this blog series explores one of these guiding principles, giving our blog readers a closer look at its meaning.
In this post, we’ll be looking at what foundation and legacy mean at Price.
| Construction of the Price plant on Raleigh Street in Winnipeg, 1961 | ||
“More than anything else, I’m a builder. I love to work with people to create something that will last. At Price, we relentlessly build foundation and always think long term.” So said Gerry Price in a recent interview.
With this “build it” mindset deeply entrenched in our culture, Price is a company built to last.
Each year, we listen carefully to our customers and our people and decide which new products – or entire businesses – to launch to better serve our customers. Our decision to proceed is based not on economics and payback periods or the health of the industry but on how the investment will build foundation for the future.
Foundation is broadly defined at Price as our investment in people, technology, laboratories, factories, software, marketing and training that will strengthen our commitment to service. We don’t invest for our own self-interest of amassing earnings or improving our return on investment; we invest to serve our customers better.
Our foundation building continues year after year and extends to all facets of our operations. It took a solid decade to build the foundation for Price Industries in the US and just as many years for our Noise Control business to become the fast-growing leader in the market that it is today. For a privately held family business that thinks long term, and especially about future generations and their opportunity and success, this makes perfect sense to us even if most businesses don’t think this way.
Inwardly, we keep our earnings in the company to invest for tomorrow, to grow and to serve. And outwardly, we build up the communities in which we work, live and play in a very material way because it’s the right thing to do.
| Watch the video to learn more about the foundation and legacy tenet! |
In the end, it’s all about legacy: what have we contributed and left behind? Our legacy is that we operate in a principled way and serve our customers far better than any of our competitors do, giving them a superior experience. By focusing on our customers’ success – and the growth and success of our people – our customers become market leaders, and so do we.
As Gerry has said countless times, “You can go through life taking or giving. I prefer the giving approach. I think it’s the only legacy that’s worthy of a life lived.”