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4/30/2007
The key to business longevity is the ability to go with the flow and change when necessary. Bead Industries has done just that. The company has been around since 1867, but the original manufacturing concern bears very little semblance to the company that exists today. Even in the three years since BNH profiled Bead Industries, much has changed.
As General Manager Ron Andreoli explains, "We started out making bead chain in 1914, but today we concentrate mostly on the electrical connector component market."
The transition was logical. With the invention of the electric pull socket in the early 1900s, the use of bead chain grew. Large quantities were imported through a wholesale jewelry house in New York, but this product was not uniform in size or strong enough, so up to 50 percent of all chain purchased went to waste.
In 1913 in Bridgeport, a new type of press was developed to produce bead chain that was uniform in size and strong enough that it could be made in continuous lengths of several hundred feet.
The Bead Chain Manufacturing Co. was incorporated in 1914 in the Park City and the company was awarded an exclusive license to manufacture the newly developed machines and to produce and sell new and improved bead chain. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, the demand for chain declined and the company's principal business switched to the manufacture of special springs for hand grenades.
In 1923, developmental work began on radio contact pins. By 1925 the contact pin was created and today electric connectors are the focus of Bead Industries.
Andreoli describes the product: "In an electric connector, there are usually at least two metal components that make a connection and carry current or signal. These are the little bits of metal that are inside a whole electrical connector."
One-third of Bead Industries clientele is in the automotive industry, another third of are in telecommunications (devices for the copper-wired side of the telephone system), while the connector industry accounts for the other third of business.
Technological advances in the automotive segment have created the greatest opportunity.
"When you get into a car, your headlights go on and off automatically," Andreoli says. "The sensor on the dashboard has two contacts where that sensor is wired to the headlights. Passengers are weighed when they get into the front seat to determine how fast to deploy an airbag. Those sensors in the seats are electrically connected, as are windshield wipers that go on automatically. There are windshield wipers that count raindrops on the windshield."
The transition to the automotive industry seemed natural, but how about the leap into the plumbing supply business? Equally logical.
Thirty or more years ago, a majority of stoppers for sinks were rubber disks attached to - you guessed it - a beaded chain.
"We manufactured beaded chain for a company that was making products for the sink and we bought that company, McGuire Manufacturing [in Prospect]," Andreoli explains. "It was another natural progression. In Europe, those stainless steel ball chains with a rubber stopper are still popular and standard equipment."
All of Bead Industries' electronics business operates in Connecticut.
"Over the 93 years, innovation has been one of the main principles of the company," says Andreoli. "Not long ago, there was no electronic equipment in an automobile. We see ourselves as helping to incorporate those new features into automobiles to make these various new products work.
"Things change from year to year in terms of what customers want and what automobile manufacturers are offering to customers," Andreoli adds. "That means we have to be flexible and able to facilitate change as opposed to going to China for mass production."
Made In Connecticut: To Bead, Or Not To Bead? Drawing a Bead on a New Product Line...
Business New Haven by Melissa NicefaroThe key to business longevity is the ability to go with the flow and change when necessary. Bead Industries has done just that. The company has been around since 1867, but the original manufacturing concern bears very little semblance to the company that exists today. Even in the three years since BNH profiled Bead Industries, much has changed.
As General Manager Ron Andreoli explains, "We started out making bead chain in 1914, but today we concentrate mostly on the electrical connector component market."
The transition was logical. With the invention of the electric pull socket in the early 1900s, the use of bead chain grew. Large quantities were imported through a wholesale jewelry house in New York, but this product was not uniform in size or strong enough, so up to 50 percent of all chain purchased went to waste.
In 1913 in Bridgeport, a new type of press was developed to produce bead chain that was uniform in size and strong enough that it could be made in continuous lengths of several hundred feet.
The Bead Chain Manufacturing Co. was incorporated in 1914 in the Park City and the company was awarded an exclusive license to manufacture the newly developed machines and to produce and sell new and improved bead chain. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, the demand for chain declined and the company's principal business switched to the manufacture of special springs for hand grenades.
In 1923, developmental work began on radio contact pins. By 1925 the contact pin was created and today electric connectors are the focus of Bead Industries.
Andreoli describes the product: "In an electric connector, there are usually at least two metal components that make a connection and carry current or signal. These are the little bits of metal that are inside a whole electrical connector."
One-third of Bead Industries clientele is in the automotive industry, another third of are in telecommunications (devices for the copper-wired side of the telephone system), while the connector industry accounts for the other third of business.
Technological advances in the automotive segment have created the greatest opportunity.
"When you get into a car, your headlights go on and off automatically," Andreoli says. "The sensor on the dashboard has two contacts where that sensor is wired to the headlights. Passengers are weighed when they get into the front seat to determine how fast to deploy an airbag. Those sensors in the seats are electrically connected, as are windshield wipers that go on automatically. There are windshield wipers that count raindrops on the windshield."
The transition to the automotive industry seemed natural, but how about the leap into the plumbing supply business? Equally logical.
Thirty or more years ago, a majority of stoppers for sinks were rubber disks attached to - you guessed it - a beaded chain.
"We manufactured beaded chain for a company that was making products for the sink and we bought that company, McGuire Manufacturing [in Prospect]," Andreoli explains. "It was another natural progression. In Europe, those stainless steel ball chains with a rubber stopper are still popular and standard equipment."
All of Bead Industries' electronics business operates in Connecticut.
"Over the 93 years, innovation has been one of the main principles of the company," says Andreoli. "Not long ago, there was no electronic equipment in an automobile. We see ourselves as helping to incorporate those new features into automobiles to make these various new products work.
"Things change from year to year in terms of what customers want and what automobile manufacturers are offering to customers," Andreoli adds. "That means we have to be flexible and able to facilitate change as opposed to going to China for mass production."
