STEEPED
IN FAMILY
STRENGTHS
Bigelow Tea, in its third generation of family
leadership, holds its own against giant competitors
by focusing on innovation and quality.
BY DAVE DONELSON
A
Ruth Campbell Bigelow
30
Family Business • July/August 2014
n old wood-and-iron Chinese tea
blender greets visitors to the Bigelow Tea headquarters in Fairfield,
Conn. The sturdy machine, the size
of a VW Beetle, was the first piece of industrial equipment the company acquired. It aptly
symbolizes not the dusty past, but the rugged
fortitude required to carve out a future for the
70-year-old family concern.
There’s nothing genteel about the tea business, according to third-generation CEO Cindi
Bigelow, 54. To survive in the land of giants
where Bigelow Tea competes, the company
must be innovative, nimble and focused. She
says the company is the No. 1 specialty tea
company in the U.S., but its $150 million in
annual sales is dwarfed by the billions in revenue generated by the wider product lines of
competitors like Unilever’s Lipton, Twinings
and Hain Celestial. Even ubiquitous Starbucks
fights Bigelow for market share with its Tazo brand.
“We’re the only single-product, family company among
them,” Cindi points out. “If they want to gun for a [marketing] program that I launch, they can easily do it with
a lot more money.”
Fighting giants has more or less always been Bigelow Tea’s mission. Cindi’s grandmother, Ruth Campbell
Big­elow, started the company in her kitchen when her
husband lost his publishing job and the interior design
business she ran was decimated by the Depression and
then by the austerity of the World War II era. She brewed
up a blend of black tea, orange peel and spices based on
an old Colonial recipe and served it to friends. Family
lore has it that the blend generated “Constant Comment,”
which is how the company’s first (and still important)
product earned its name when the company was launched
in 1945. Ruth’s husband, David Bigelow Sr., hand-painted
tea tins and sold the product door-to-door.
Their son, David Jr., joined the company in 1949, left
after five years to pursue a career in the film business,
then returned at his parents’ request in 1959. In the meantime, he had married Eunice, who would serve a vital role
in the company’s growth in succeeding years. The couple
expanded into other flavored black, herb and decaffeinated teas. David Bigelow Jr. became president in 1963. Ruth
Campbell Bigelow passed away in 1966.
Major developments
The big breakthrough, according to David, occurred when
Bigelow elbowed its way into mass markets in the 1960s.
“At that time in the supermarkets, there was no such thing
as a specialty tea,” he explains. “It was all basically black
tea in 100-teabag boxes. It was huge when we had 12 inches on a supermarket shelf.” Today, Bigelow’s 120 products
are sold in a wide variety of venues, including Walmart,
Whole Foods and Amazon.
The other big innovation came in 1978, when Bigelow
invested in equipment to individually wrap teabags in
foil to ensure their freshness for up to three years. “Introducing the foil package was a big deal. Eunice was
instrumental in that,” David says. At Eunice’s urging, “We
went out on a limb to buy the equipment.”
Also making the company competitive with bigger players is a single-minded focus on product quality, a tradition
handed down from generation to generation. “Bigelow was
founded on product ingredient quality,” says Bob Kelly,
the company’s non-family senior vice president of sales
and marketing. “There is a consistent family culture as it
relates to business. Cindi will speak today about product
quality just exactly like her mother and father did. She
will not cut corners.”
Cindi and her older sister, Lori, came into the business at young ages but followed different paths. Lori, 59,
started tasting teas at a young age and served as co-president with Cindi. She now works on the Charleston Tea
Plantation, America’s largest working tea garden, which
she persuaded her parents to buy in 2003. Cindi worked
for Seagram’s after graduating from Boston College, then
Cindi Bigelow: ‘Running a family business is very emotional.’
Ruth Bigelow and David Bigelow Sr.
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31
went on to Evanston, Ill., to earn an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management before
returning to the family company as a cost accountant. She
worked through every facet of the operation—planning,
purchasing, customer service and operations—before she
became president in 2005.
Above: David Bigelow Jr. (center) with parents Ruth and
David Sr. Below: David Jr. and Eunice sample the product.
32
Family Business • July/August 2014
Emotional ties
If Cindi Bigelow weren’t CEO, she could easily have a career in television. She is articulate, vivacious and totally
relaxed in front of the camera in the videos she makes
extolling the company’s products. She has a forthright,
capable style like Martha Stewart’s—only with much
more warmth. Cindi is exactly the same in person, especially when she talks about her passion for her family’s
company.
“Running a family business is very emotional,” she
says. “When it comes to the health and well-being of
the company, I become a mother lion watching over
her cubs.”
That deep emotional tie to the company may be genetic, since her father evidenced it, too. “My father was
very passionate about the business. Sometimes too much,”
Cindi says fondly. “A family business is like your child.
When he was worried, he could be very aggressive in his
concerns, but it’s all for the right reasons.”
The change in leadership wasn’t complicated, according to Cindi. “We’re very fortunate. My grandmother had
one child and the company passed to him. My mother
and father had two children. Lori, my sister, has been in
the business for 35 years and did a great job, although
she is in a limited role now.
There was great simplicity
in the passing of the baton.”
As might be expected,
though, with such passionate individuals involved,
the transition from David
and Eunice’s leadership
to Cindi’s wasn’t entirely
smooth. “There were five
years when it was a little
rocky,” Cindi says. “Emotionally, you have to respect
that the generation passing
the baton is going through
a lot. Whether it’s logical or
illogical, you have to give
them their space to process
the transition.
“It was difficult because
they had it in their mind
that when they passed the
baton, their life was over,”
Cindi reflects. “We tried outside consultants, but in our
particular case it made it too
impersonal. That was not a
good thing, because you couldn’t put a
form around the emotional side of it. It
wasn’t just checking off things to be done.
There was just too much emotion, sometimes about things they didn’t really even
want to admit. Love is the only reason we
made it to the next generation.”
David proudly points out differences between his style and his daughter’s.
“The company is vastly more professional
today,” he says. “Cindi is much more thorough. She is well educated, whereas we
learned as we went. She’s truly brilliant as
a manager. We kind of stand in awe as we
watch her operate.”
CFO Don Janezic, a 27-year company
veteran, candidly sums up the personalities involved. “David was conciliatory and
patient. He was a good listener,” Janezic
says. “He had a great counterbalance in
Eunice. He was always ready to invest and
grow, while [Eunice] was a bit more frugal.
He might make a decision, but the two of
them would consult and come up with a
decision that both were happy with.”
By contrast, Janezic says, “Cindi is more absolute. She
is a quick decision maker. She shares the compassion
for the employees she learned from her parents. She
has the same long-term vision as her father, who was a
great visionary. Her parents were a bit more deliberate,
while she is a bit more decisive.”
Janezic adds that the transition is ongoing. “David and
Eunice are still intensely interested in the business,” he
says. “This is their life. It was hard for them to just say,
‘We’re done’ and go off into the sunset.” He points out
that the senior Bigelows still come into the office and
Cindi, even though she has full management responsibility, keeps them fully informed of the rationales behind
her decisions.
New tactics
David introduced numerous product and distribution
innovations, while Cindi has taken the company’s battle
with the giants to the marketing arena. “As a CEO, innovation is a big chunk of what I do,” she says. “I constantly
talk to store owners and customers. I’m always thinking
about what we need to do next.” Her tactics include forming unlikely partnerships with the Dallas Cowboys and
Miami Dolphins and tapping unexpected spokespersons
like Joe Torre, Phil Simms and Don Imus.
The company has steadily expanded its product line,
too. This year, it plans to introduce organic ready-todrink tea as well as a new line of all-natural, tea-related products known as liquid water enhancers. “We’re
planning to add a new business development manager
to the executive team to look at acquisitions, product
expansion and finding opportunities to leverage off our
name, products and our expertise,” Janezic says.
The company has
steadily expanded
its product line
and used creative
marketing to fend
off its formidable
competitors.
In addition to
innovation, another tenet
of Bigelow family ownership is deep
concern for employees. The company work force totals
330, with about 260 of them in manufacturing facilities
scattered across the U.S. from Idaho to Connecticut.
www.familybusinessmagazine.com
33
treat them the same way I would want to be
treated if I were in the exact same position.”
The Bigelows hope to keep the company
under family ownership for a long time to
come. “Anybody who would buy the company would change Constant Comment in
a minute, and we don’t want that,” Eunice
says. She also points out that Cindi has children and they’d like to keep the company
in the family for them.
Cindi doesn’t know what the future holds
for her two children, Meghan, 22, and David,
20. “They’re both welcome to come into the
company, but it’s entirely their choice,” she
says. “At this point, I feel my daughter is
going to be looking at a different path that
I support 200%. My son is looking at business, and I hope we can be part of his very
bright future.” Meghan recently graduated
from Georgetown and works for Teach for
America, while David has just completed his
From left:
third year at the University of Virginia.
Eunice, Lori,
Cindi appreciates the non-financial value of
Cindi, David.
operating as a family business. “You don’t have
to worry about shareholders and analysts,” she
notes, “so you can do programs like our ‘Tea
for
the
Troops,’
where we have sent 4 million teabags to
This may not be the
The company’s singleour
men
and
women
in Iraq and Afghanistan for free.” The
most efficient way to
minded focus on
program
uses
tea
from
the Charleston plantation to ensure
operate, according to
that
the
product
sent
to
the troops is 100% American-made.
Cindi, but change is
product quality is a
“The
future
is
more
up
to Cindi than it is to us,” David
not an option because
tradition handed down of its potential impact says. “When you run your own company, it’s quite a joy.” n
FB
on the employees.
from generation to
“There’s something Dave Donelson is a business writer in West Harrison,
generation.
about standing in N.Y., and the author of the Dynamic Manager Guides
front of employees and Handbooks.
and knowing how much they need their jobs—how much
they need you—that you carry home every night,” Cindi
says. “Being a family company doesn’t mean as much to
our customers as I would like it to, but I know it means a
lot to our employees.”
Many family companies boast employees who have
stayed with them for years, but Bigelow Tea may have a
greater percentage than most. “The company has been in
business for 70 years and has four major locations,” Janezic
points out. “We still have the first employee hired at each
of those locations. The very first employee in Connecticut
was hired at a very, very young age, and he’s still working
part-time in his 80s!”
Janned Serrano, Cindi’s executive assistant, has been
with the company for 26 years. She started on the production floor and worked her way up at Cindi’s side. “Whatever
they do,” Serrano says, “the Bigelows keep the employees
in mind because they know whatever decision they make
will affect them. If something is happening with the company, Cindi always tells the employees.”
Cindi and
“Sometimes I’m accused of over-communicating,” Cindi
her parents
muses, “but the employees are like family, and I want to
Reprinted from Family Business Magazine® July/August 2014
© Family Business Publishing Company • 1845 Walnut Street, Suite 900 • Philadelphia, PA 19103-4710 • (215) 567-3200 • www.familybusinessmagazine.com