Article

SHOWERED WITH SUCCESS PEOPLE ENCOURAGED HIM, BREWER SAYS

SANDY WELLS

THE CHARLESTON GAZETTE

Published: 10/12/1993

He dropped out of school after 10th grade. "I was not a student type,” he said. "I was an action type.” His first job was running a tractor on a sand bank for 40 cents an hour. He went to work for a sprinkler company, installing pipes. "I was just a flunky,” he said. "I was making probably 50 cents an hour.”

During the Depression, between dwindling sprinkler jobs, he dug ditches and hauled coal. "There were times when I had to carry coal way up the steps and pour it in somebody's basement window. I got a quarter for that, and I was glad to get it.”

During World War II, when Roy Brewer was a sprinkler system foreman making $1.75 an hour on a job at Union Carbide, a couple of Carbiders suggested he start his own company. The idea was preposterous, he said. "To me, that was a joke. I had no money, no nothing. I told them they were crazy, that there was no possible chance of me going into the sprinkler business.”

Last week, during a luncheon at Cagney's, Roy Brewer's sprinkler company received a plaque from the Reliable Automatic Sprinkler Corp., for installing more than a million sprinkler heads. Operated now by his son, R.M. Brewer II, the company Roy Brewer started in 1945 sprawls along Seventh Avenue and does a $6 million business in five states.

These days the 83-year-old founder divides his time between North Carolina and Florida. Lured back to Charleston for the plaque presentation, he roamed the cavernous Brewer & Co. shop, ambling comfortably past the ominous iron machines and piles of pipe, explaining the sprinkler-making process, nodding and shaking hands with employees. "It makes me proud,' he said, surveying the vast plant.”I'm proud of my son, proud of all these people.”

People made the difference

How did Roy Brewer do it? "I can give it to you in one word,' he said.”People.”

Brewer says you don't need money to start a business. "I hear people say they're going into business as soon as they save enough money. I did it when I didn't have anything.

"The bank has money stacked up down there. All you have to do is borrow it and pay it back. Money isn't the first requisite. You can do anything you want if you have people to help you get started. Not with money. With encouragement.”

From the pottery company owner who trusted him to install a new heating system during the Depression to the wholesaler who helped him get his first $10,000 loan, Roy Brewer attributes his bootstrap success solely to the people who encouraged him.

A big dose of encouragement came from one of the Carbiders. "One day, this liaison man came back to me and said he wanted me to go somewhere with him. He took me to the head of the purchasing department and he said, "Mr. Brewer here has something he wants to talk to you about. Mr. Brewer wants to know, if he would go into the sprinkler business, would you allow him to bid on Carbide work?' The man said, "If he can do the job, I sure would.” That was encouragement.”

Brewer said he had no idea how to bid when he struck out on his own. "I bid on my first job just with common sense, and I got the contract.' It was with Union Carbide.

Strong endorsement

Pottery maker D.E. McNichol of Clarksburg was another source of encouragement, Brewer said. "He became fond of me. I took care of his sprinkler systems. He had a row of offices and he asked me if I could put in a new heating system. Anything that had to do with pipe, I felt I could do it. This was in the Depression when work was scarce. I put that system in for $1.25 an hour.”

When Brewer plunged into business for himself, he wrote to McNichol asking permission to use him as a credit reference. "He wrote back and said to tell anyone I was applying to for credit that if they did not accept this letter, he would personally stand behind anything I wanted to buy. It helped me spiritually to have a man of his standing say that.”

For several years, Brewer survived from one contract to another. "We'd do a job and get paid for it, do another job and get paid for it.” When he finally needed credit to expand, he turned to another mentor, Frank Thomas of the Thomas-Field wholesale company. "He's one of the main ones I feel very grateful to. I did work in their place and got acquainted with him. When he'd see me come in the front door, he'd leave his office and come put his arm around me and invite me in to talk a little bit.

"So when we got to the point where we needed money, I made up a prospect sheet. We were doing maybe $100,000 a year by then. The sheet showed what I thought we could do with financing. I took it to Mr. Thomas. He picked up the phone and called Hayes Picklesimer at the Kanawha Valley Bank and said, "Hayes, I've got a man here in my office and I'm sending him over and I want you to help him.”

Picklesimer, the bank's president, asked Brewer how much he needed. "I said, "Right now I need $10,000.' He wrote me a check for $10,000 with no security. From that day, we have owed the bank a lot of money, because we had jobs we couldn't finance ourselves. That bank has never turned us down for a loan.”

In the 1950s, the small West Virginia company almost went under. Brewer said he couldn't compete with big sprinkler companies who eventually were charged with price fixing by the federal government. "We cut back on employees. I put my check in the safe and didn't spend it. We did everything we could to cut corners. I don't think we could have survived if it hadn't been for the bank and two or three suppliers who carried us. I didn't have any money, but I had good credit and I knew people. You can't do anything without people.”

Less than $500

Brewer said he had less than $500 when he launched Brewer & Co.Equity in two houses in Clarksburg eventually added $5,000 to the shoestring business coffers.

The way Brewer acquired the Clarksburg property hints of the bravura that fed his success, people notwithstanding. The bank was foreclosing on the home they were renting in Clarksburg as well as the house next door. "The bank called my wife and asked if we'd be interested in buying the houses. I didn't have 50 cents in my pocket, but I told my wife to offer them $4,000 and tell them we'd pay $100 down. They took that.”

The company started in a rented garage on Ferry Branch Road. Brewer ultimately bought the building and kept adding to it. He set up shop with used equipment, much of it surplus war goods.

"Sam Medley had a ramshackle building below the train station. During the war, he traded used machines. He had all kinds of pipe and threading machines in there. I'd just buy what I could afford, one machine at a time.' The original machinery is still in use.

Long before a new road took the Ferry Branch building, Brewer began planning for a new location. With the help of a real estate agent, he started buying up a row of homes on Seventh Avenue. "As people moved away, I'd buy one house, then the next one and the next one, until I had five or six. That's how we got this place.”

The company moved into its current building in 1972. Devastated by the death of his wife in 1962, Brewer started handing more of the business responsibility to his son. Roy Brewer's wife died on Christmas Eve. "We had guests, and my wife and I went to the kitchen to mix some drinks. We were standing side by side.

Just like that, she crumpled at my feet. She was dead even before she hit the floor. She was 48. Even now, it's tough to think about "When I was thinking of starting the business,' he said, "my wife was all for it. That was encouragement.'