In 1937, the Keller family established Keller Industrial Products in Rochester, New York, as a distributor of hydraulic and pneumatic components, primarily serving the machine tool and industrial marketplaces. In 1986, the Keller family’ s second-generation owner, Tay Keller, sold the business to a long-time employee, Chuck Prey. Eleven years later, in 1997, the business was purchased by its third owner( Matthews), a professional sales veteran who had been with the company for a decade. Today, the agency is based in Clarence, New York( near Buffalo) and has seven outside sales representatives and a business manager, with satellite offices in Rochester and Syracuse, New York; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh and Baltimore.
Over the years, Keller has migrated from its roots as a distributor to its current and primary role as an outsourced professional sales organization of engineered components. According to Matthews,“ We have a database of sales to more than 4,000 customers in the industrial machinery marketplace— 350 of which we are actively cultivating, the majority of whom are OEMs.” Additionally, Matthews explains,“ Keller remains focused on the machine tool and automated machinery OEM marketplace through mechanical power transmission, motion control, and automation components. While we continue to look at new representation opportunities, we will only work with those manufacturers who have a solid history of high-quality, engineered components that are synergistic with our current product lines and customers.”
Tracing Rep Roots
Matthews traces his own roots with Keller to 1986 when his father-in-law, Chuck Prey, approached him with the news he was planning on buying out Tay Keller, and wanted to know if he had interest in joining his team.“ I was just 22 years old and felt I was in a low-risk position career-wise to make the move, so why not do it? However, while I was already involved in sales, I have to admit I knew absolutely nothing about the market or the products that Keller sold. The most important consideration was that I knew I could sell— all I had to do was get trained on the products, and that’ s what we did.”
Since then, Matthews has led the agency through tremendous growth. Matthews believes that part of that growth is due to Keller’ s long-standing relationships with its principals, but also the caliber of the agency’ s team. Says Matthews,“ If there’ s one thing I can say right now it’ s that we have the absolute best team we’ ve ever had. They’ re young, well-trained, and they’ re motivated to sell an enviable line card. With our anticipated growth, we’ ll likely be hiring an additional sales team member in the next several years.”
Staying on that latter point, Matthews notes that may be easier said than done.“ When I attend any of our industry or national meetings and see the reps and factory people who are there, it seems we are all on the older, more mature side of our career paths, and those tend to be the types of resumes we receive when we are looking to hire. Perhaps that is because the physics of some of our mechanical product lines simply don’ t change. However, more and more of our lines— and today’ s customer base— require us to have a working knowledge of CAD, automation, and mechatronics, which tends to come more intuitively to the younger generations. In looking to hire young professionals, we also have a challenge in that they have limited exposure throughout high school and college to our advanced manufacturing economy in the United States, which is about