Masters of Manufacturing: Calumet Abrasives CEO Jordyn Anderson

HAMMOND IN – Statistics say that family businesses face tough survival odds when the third generation moves into leadership. About 40 percent of U.S. family-owned businesses become second-generation companies, but only 13 out of 100 survive the third generation.

Those numbers weigh heavily on Jordyn Anderson’s mind these days, as she carefully juggles leading Calumet Abrasives with being a wife and mother of five young children.

“The statistics aren’t good for the third generation,” Anderson said. “As companies grow, they often break off into smaller subsidiaries, and the more family members that get involved, the more complicated it is for a business to succeed.”

But Calumet Abrasives is defying the odds. It is a family-owned company that has survived and thrived amidst economic ups and downs.

First established shortly after World War II, Anderson’s Swedish immigrant grandfather created a steel-cutting wheel that was used at Great Lakes mills. Since the company’s inception, Calumet Abrasives – like any other successful long-term company – has adapted its product line to meet the needs and demands of their clients.

Jordyn’s 74 year old dad John Anderson continues to work 60 hours a week at the Hammond Indiana plant, but his company succession plan put Jordyn in charge 2012.

“He still feels a tremendous responsibility to this place,” Jordyn said about her father, who began working at Calumet Abrasives at 19, when his father – the company’s founder – died of a heart attack. Since that time, the family business has been his focus.

“I’m trying very hard to show him he can let go a little, because he can. And we’ll do fine, and we’ll be okay,” Jordyn said.

The company has grown to 100 employees as the demand for a resin-bonded reinforced grinding wheels has grown. Grinding wheels come in various sizes – like those a dentist uses, all the way to the large ones used in highway construction. Calumet Abrasives specializes in small diameter wheels from one to eight inches, sometimes up to 14 inches.

Over the years, dwindling demands for steel mill parts pushed Calumet Abrasives into making parts for nearby oil refineries and commercial tool manufacturers. Now the majority of the company’s work is producing grinding wheels for a private commercial brand.

And while that arrangement has been the mainstay for the company for years, it’s something that needs to be expanded upon in the future, Anderson said.

“Calumet Abrasives, unfortunately, doesn’t have a whole lot of market presence because we manufacture under someone else’s name,” she said. “That’s my biggest challenge as the next generation – to get a more diversified customer base where we have a market presence of our own.”

While there’s always the threat of competition, the experience and intellectual familiarity with their product and its uses sets Calumet Abrasives ahead of others, Jordyn said.

Although at one time there was talk of Calumet Abrasives being bought up by a bigger company, it didn’t work out, which has turned out to be a good thing for their 70 plus fulltime employees and their families.

“They still have jobs in the area, but now the pressure’s on,” Jordyn said, “It’s grow or die.”

So after 78 years, Calumet Abrasives recently hired its first ever salesman.

“We’ve done a lot of market research and I think we need to offer a higher cost product. We can’t compete with the lower cost products coming from overseas,” she said.

Anderson says that one of her biggest concerns is that the public education system has omitted shop classes – and that has made it more difficult to get good, well-trained employees interested in the work Calumet Abrasives does.

Jordyn, an alumni of University of Indiana, says the school system is too focused on getting kids to college.

“It’s difficult to translate the message to the next generation that there are good jobs out there without a college degree,” she said. “If college is not for you, you’re going to waste a lot of time and rack up a lot of debt to find out it’s not for you. Many young people don’t realize there are jobs available in which they can make good money without going to college.”

There’s a lot of talk that manufacturing is coming back to the U.S. and that there’s a need to promote these type of jobs, but promoting this alternative isn’t widespread yet, she said. Calumet Abrasives offers machinist and other skilled labor training for their employees, and they are looking to expand those opportunities.

Is there an advantage to being a business in Indiana versus Illinois?

“Some years the economic breaks are in Indiana, sometimes in other states,” Jordyn said. Tax advantages come and go, and companies have to adapt.

“You can’t just pack up and leave when things change that you don’t like,” she said.

But balancing family and business is the biggest challenge facing Jordyn these days, along with developing the right relationships and knowing the right people in the industry.

“The boom that we were in was fun until 2008,” then things drastically changed, she said. “Now you have to prove yourself all the more to banks for credit and expansion. You have to constantly prove yourself now.”

As for a woman in her position, she’s excited about taking on the challenge and using her experiences to support other women in the industry.

“It’s better to be flexible and take care of the people you’ve invested in,” she said. “Things are better today for women and will be more so in the future.”

Calumet Abrasives is located in Hammond, Indiana.

TMA News Bulletin 2014 – Written by Fran Eaton