A leader and a gentleman...

A tribute to Anvil International’s John E. Martin

BY MARY JO MARTIN

Editorial director

No story about Martin would be complete without mentioning his wife Kathy and daughter Kayla. They were married in 1982 and Kayla was born in December 1983. Martin turned 40 in February of 1984.

One of this industry’s most beloved figures, John E. Martin of Anvil International, will mark 40 years of service with that organization (and its predecessors) in 2008.

Martin, who now works as a consultant to Anvil president Tom Fish as vice president-national accounts, was originally hired by the former Grinnell Co. in 1968 and has held positions of increasing responsibility with the organization throughout the years as it transitioned through various ownership and corporate names.

But his story goes far beyond simply his career. Martin was born the eighth of nine children to parents P.C. and Katie Mae Martin. He grew up on a sharecropper farm in Venus, Texas, where money was tight but love, laughter and music were plentiful.

 

“Everybody worked together and pulled their weight,” he said. “We farmed what they called ‘thirds’ and ‘fourths.’ That meant we got a third of the grain profit and a fourth of the cotton profit every year -- if indeed there was a profit! We worked all the time; the older boys’ work schedule was staggered with school so that some would do plowing during the day and then the smaller school-age kids would work in the evening.

“In the summer, we’d all sleep on the back porch to escape some of the heat from inside the house. We called it the ‘Baptist Pallet.’ Kids would come over and spend the night with us and they loved it because we’d sleep outside. We had a well out back for fresh water; we didn’t have water in the house until around 1958.”

The Martin farm became an even more popular gathering spot for friends and neighbors when, in 1957, the family bought a small black & white TV. “At night we would all sit out on the porch and watch that TV through a window, eating popcorn and having a great time watching all the early comedy shows,” Martin remembered. “We didn’t have much, but everyone was always welcome at our home.”

Music played a big role in Martin’s life as a child -- and continues to today. The family belonged to an old Baptist church where there was a lot of singing and he and at times some of his siblings were part of the choir. They also played instruments and sang at home. The late country music star Boxcar Willie was a cousin of Martin’s, and used to attend the annual family reunion, of which music was a large part of the fun. There were three sisters in the family: Mozelle, Lula Mae and Dottie. Martin was closer in age to Dottie, an aspiring singer who has since passed away.

“She was an unbelievably good person -- an angel on Earth really,” Martin said. “She could sing like a bird and even made a few tapes and CDs later in her life. Because we grew up together, she was my first prom date since my parents wouldn’t let us date at that age. We used to dance around the house to American Bandstand on the TV.”

For a little spending money, Martin took extra jobs as a teenager. One of his favorites was working the night shift in a cotton gin. Sometimes he would drive a tractor pulling cotton trailers; other nights he would vacuum cotton out of the trailers. He laughed when providing a description of himself at the time as resembling John Travolta’s character in the movie Grease, with ducktails, white t-shirt, a pack of cigarettes rolled in the sleeve and driving a 1954 Chevy.

He also would hunt rabbits with his high school buddies to sell to a family down the road. “We had to hunt them at night,” he recalled. “They’d pay 50 cents for every cottontail rabbit because they were more tender, and 25 cents for a jackrabbit. After each successful hunt, we’d drop them off -- sometimes 25 or 30 at a time -- on his porch during the night. He’d stop by to drop off rolls of quarters for us the next day.”

Martin also worked at the local grocery on Saturdays making deliveries. “I remember as a senior in high school that we were getting ready to order our class rings,” he said. “They cost $25 and there was no way I would ask my parents for the money, because I knew that much extra money would most likely not be available. I wanted one so bad, so I asked Mr. Howard Moore -- a long-time family friend and the man I worked for at the grocery store -- if I could get a loan from him and pay back $5 every Saturday. He didn’t hesitate to say yes, so that is how I was able to buy the ring.”

Around 1959, Martin’s father gave up farming as a full-time job, and took a job at the Army Depot in Fort Worth. The family had moved into town when Martin was in high school. While college wasn’t discussed and education sometimes took a backseat to the work that needed to be done, Martin’s parents did instill in their children the value of hard work and loyalty. “They didn’t really preach about success; they just wanted us all to get good jobs with reputable companies that had retirement benefits so that we would have a sense of security for our futures,” Martin said.

The beginning of a storied career

After graduating from Venus High School in 1961 -- Martin jokes that it has been a much talked-about fact that while he graduated in the top eight of his senior class, he remembers that there were seldom more than eight in his class -- he took a job in inventory control at A.Y. McDonald Supply in Dallas, where his brother-in-law was employed. The two -- along with four other young men from the Venus area -- car-pooled into Dallas each day, rotating whose car was used every week and with everyone chipping in for gas money.

Two years later, Martin took a job with Essex Wire Corp in Dallas, which was interrupted by 18 months of active duty service with the Army National Guard. After returning from Guard duty, Martin went back to Essex Wire for a short time, before being offered a job with Grinnell Co. (which is now Anvil International) in 1968. LITTle could he have imagined at the time the adventure that lay before him -- and that 40 years later he would have traveled the globe on behalf of the company now known as Anvil International.

It is best, in this author’s opinion, to let the next section of this story be told in Martin’s own words.

“When I started to work in Dallas with the company, I had no thought of going into sales. I was hired to work in inventory control making about $400 a month. I worked in the warehouse for about six months and then got into what is known today as ‘operations’ so I could watch account activity and how it worked. I was very happy with that.

“In late 1968/early 1969, the three outside salesmen who worked at the Dallas branch resigned to go with a new venture. The branch manager, Mr. Lyle Charbonneau, called me in and literally handed me a set of keys for the car that one of the sales guys had turned in, along with a call book, and told me to go to the Texas Panhandle and make some calls -- ‘and do good for the company.’ I had never done anything like that before, but I drove out to Wichita Falls and some other small towns in the area and spent time calling on the wholesalers out there.

“I came back after about a week and Lyle told me he had talked to corporate while I was gone and that they wanted to put me in sales full time. I said that was okay, but how much money were we talking about? I was 24 and in those days most of the sales jobs paid primarily just commission. I was married with two small stepchildren, and I had to worry about providing for my family. After some negotiations, we came to an agreement and I became the youngest outside sales rep that the company had ever had. I eventually managed a sales volume and customer base up to $7.5 million as a territory salesman.

“In 1972, a branch manager job opened in Cincinnati at what was by then called ITT-Grinnell. Lyle Charbonneau recommended me for the position, and I got the job. Other than the Army, it was my first move away from Dallas, and I was now the youngest branch manager they ever had. It was a great opportunity and a good change for me. I stayed there until 1975, when the Denver branch manager position came open and they moved me to Denver. It was a bigger branch with more opportunity to prove myself and perform well. The Denver branch also had a broader market focus with steel pipe and more industrial product. Those might have been some of the best years of my life. Business was great, I made good money, and I really enjoyed Denver. I was there until late 1979, managing branch operations and total P&L-- including total sales volume, operations, strategic planning and budget process -- for territories up to $25 million.

“ITT-Grinnell decided to make some management changes that year and they implemented regional sales managers to work under their regional managers. I got a call from Ray Miller, who was then president of ITT-Grinnell Supply Sales. He asked me how I’d like to go to Charlotte and work under Ed Wannamaker, who was a very well-respected regional manager. So I went to Charlotte with my wife to look around and buy a house, and they started doing some work at the office building to reconfigure the set up and put in an office for me. I flew back home to Denver and the next morning Ray called. He asked how I had liked Charlotte and I told him it was just fine. Then he asked if I would be as excited to move to California! The regional vice president out there was stepping down and he officed in the Bay Area near Oakland, Calif. I thought ‘What in the world is going on!’ Here I had two promotions in one week, and I did not have a clue at that point of where to live or what I was going to make, but I did know that I was now going to be in charge of the West Coast region for ITT-Grinnell U.S. Supply Sales! 

“In 1986, when Tyco acquired Grinnell manufacturing and distribution from ITT, not only had I become a regional vice president of the company in charge of the West Coast region, but changes had also started to happen at the top management structure. By 1987, they decided to expand our Denver operation to include a new regional office, and asked if I wanted to move my office and family back to Colorado. My total company experience and customer knowledge was well documented by then, so it did not take but a moment for me to answer in the positive! From the new Denver office, I directed the West Coast region and also started to support the sales efforts of the Steel Pipe Division of our company (Allied Tube) that was headquartered in Chicago. During this time, I had total regional P&I responsibility for 15+ branch operations with 200+ employees for an annual sales volume that approached $150 to $200 million and as much as $35 million in inventory assets at times.

“In 1988, I gave up the regional vice president job (due to further restructuring of the company) to work full-time in our pipe efforts. While there, I was responsible for the purchase and re-sale of as much as $60 million annually of domestic and offshore steel pipe product, which involved continued travel in Asia throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

“In the early to mid-1990s, due to P&Lpressure from imports and mini mills, the company decided to abandon the A-53 steel pipe market as a producer. This did, however, leave us in the fire protection market.

“I went back to the Supply Sales unit full-time as vice president-national account sales, working on the corporate staff under Ray Carey, vice president-Supply Sales, while continuing to live in Denver. This assignment kept me on the road throughout the U.S. and from time to time in Canada, helping and supporting our growth with the wholesale plumbing and PVF distribution channel at all our North American locations.

“Even though ‘Old Grinnell’ -- as everyone refers to it -- was spun away from Tyco in October 1999 and renamed Anvil International, my job/assignment has stayed pretty much the same. There has been even more dedication by our total management staff to allow me to continue to shore up relationships within the industry and continue to help make Anvil a North American leader in most all of our manufactured products.

“Now, in the last few years, I’ve moved from a full-time employment position to a consulting role, yet still feeling like a big part of the management team. I really love what I do, getting to continually develop close relationships with our customers and travel around to their operations for meetings and special events. I also truly enjoy all the work I do with industry associations, and find their efforts very worthwhile.

“I’ve been blessed with the ability to adapt and change. I’m not a ‘yes-man,’ but I sure try to understand new ways of doing things. The original company, to the very end, had gone through many changes, and I believe that part of the success I had was due to the fact that I was able to work with whomever was in charge, adapt to their style or new direction, and find ways to succeed in my responsibilities. I don’t know of any bridges I’ve ever burned along the way in this great industry.”

Building relationships for a lifetime

Despite all the current industry talk about new business trends, “facing the forces of change,” world market competition, e-commerce and tough market pricing, Martin still believes that relationships are the key.

“You’ve got to be able to get in the door to see the people who make the decisions,” he noted, “and that only happens when you have a relationship with them. The difference when comparing today to ‘yesterday’ is that customers wouldn’t necessarily even ask the price, they’d just give you the order. Today, you have to be competitive and earn their orders, but you still need the relationship to get in the door. A good portion of my work time today for Anvil is spent introducing as many industry people that I can to our young and aggressive sales staff and management.

“In my mind, the reason for this is very obvious. As most people know -- but just in case some don’t, I want to be perfectly clear -- Anvil International’s product mix gives us and our distributors multiple market coverage in the industry today. Yes, we have a full complement of commodity foundry products such as malleable iron and cast iron fITTings, our own branded grooved piping system for steel and copper that is offered under the trade name Gruvlok, steel pipe nipples and couplings, forged steel fITTings and unions, commodity pipe hangers and supports, engineered hangers and supports, swage nipples and bull plugs, Catawissa hammer unions, etc. The list goes on and on to cover the plumbing, mechanical, hvac, mining, oil and gas, and fire protection markets. Did I mention that we have an International product offering also that is growing every day as well? Yes, we offer and sell a lot of commodity product, but we are very strong in the engineered and specified piping systems and supports as well. With this line-up of quality products and offerings, it’s no wonder that Anvil enjoys volume into all the industry markets that are available today in the channel.

“We like to think that we sell something to all the wholesale distributors in the plumbing, pvf/fire protection and industrial channel. We do the best we can to support the entire channel -- from the national marketing/buying groups, to the large national chains, to the small and/or regional independents, and their contractor and end user customers. We know we can always be competitive no matter the size of our customers. That might not always equate to the actual invoice price, but it does wrap around added services, technologies, timing and the entire package.”

Among Martin’s other key assignments for Anvil is serving as a volunteer leader with industry trade associations such as the American Supply Association and Mechanical Contractors Association of America. When Martin attends association meetings, he’s quite easy to spot -- his badge often has so many ribbons attached to it that it falls all the way to his belt.

For his selfless dedication to industry associations and the promotion of their education programs, Martin has garnered several prestigious awards in recent years. They include:

• The Foster McCarl Philanthropic Award from mcaa, given in recognition of Martin’s time spent in helping to grow the MCAA Education Foundation. “It was a wonderful honor and Mr. McCarl was a very good friend of mine, which made it even more special,” Martin recalled.
• The MCAA Distinguished Service Award. Martin was only the second manufacturer in the award’s 18-year history to receive the award, which is the highest honor mcaa bestows. “Receiving that honor was really something, because I got to share the stage with keynote speaker Gen. Colin Powell,” Martin said. Martin was on the board of trustees for the Mechanical Contracting Education & Research Foundation, and is now an active voting member this year on the mcaa Board of Directors. He is also the 2007 chairman for the Manufacturers Suppliers Council (m/sc) of the MCAA.
• The Fred V. Keenan Lifetime Achievement Award from ASA. This award is not an annual award, but is given at the discretion of asa’s Executive Committee. It is given to honor an individual’s contribution to, and achievements in, the phcp industry. In addition to a variety of volunteer roles he has played within asa, Martin has been president of the asa Education Foundation. “I’ll never forget the feeling of receiving that award and seeing not only my wife and daughter in the audience, but my old boss, Ray Carey, also.”  Martin described. “It was a total surprise; it was very shocking to hear my name announced.” Martin is also an active member this year of the Board of Directors of ASA.

While these honors went to Martin, he quickly credits Anvil International’s leadership for giving him the opportunity to spend some of his time doing these good works within the industry. “I’m sometimes teased within Anvil for being what they call ‘their biggest cost center,’ but I believe they realize the real value in what I try to accomplish,” he said. “I couldn’t ask for a better job. I’m glad to be available and I’ve made more friends than I ever dreamed possible. I’m proud to represent Anvil to their customer base with these industry organizations, and to help foster education with both associations’ foundations that will keep our industry strong.

“I’d like to acknowledge the current and new parent company of Anvil International, which is Mueller Water Products.  While Anvil International has been a part of the greatly successful Mueller Co. (a market leader in underground valves, fire hydrants, etc.) ever since our collective spin off from Tyco in 1999, we are now part of the new Mueller Water Products group that includes Mueller, Anvil and us Pipe & Foundry. It has been very good for Anvil’s success and growth to be part of the new family of water and flow control products.”

As many of Martin’s industry friends and colleagues may recall, in 1998 it was discovered that he had a rare brain pituitary tumor that required major surgery. Martin said he was especially touched how prior to his surgery, F.A. “Steady” Cash of Parnell Martin Co. called to comfort him. Cash, too, had had the same surgery some years earlier, and wanted to reassure Martin and share some prayer together.

“I felt very fortunate to have such good friends like Steady who were so concerned about me,” Martin said. “The good Lord was right there with me. It was a very frightening experience because of the complexity of the surgery. It took eight hours or so but the doctors were able to remove about 90% of the tumor. I have completely recovered and have no effects from it.”

Of course, no story about Martin would be complete without mentioning his wife Kathy and daughter Kayla. They were married in 1982 and Kayla was born in December 1983. Martin turned 40 in February of 1984.

“We are so blessed to have her,” he said. “She really gave me a new lease on life and gave me many reasons to improve my lifestyle. She’s now going to school to become a veterinarian. It was difficult sometimes to be on the road so much --especially when she was small. But my wife used to stick lITTle pictures of her in my luggage so that I would find them when I got to my hotel. And of course there were a lot of phone calls back to Denver!”

Martin still looks forward to the challenges -- and fun -- that he finds every day with Anvil and the industry he loves. He plans to stay active for several more years before retiring to his beloved family, mountains, golfing and to do “a lot of work” on their wine collection! 

“I still love going to work every day,” he said. “There is always the challenge of making something new happen most every day. My motivation to get up every morning is to try to make a difference. I’m just not done yet, know what I mean? We plan to stay in Colorado -- it’s been home now for a long time -- but we’d love to do more touring and traveling together.”

On a personal note, Martin is one of the early connections that this author made when joining the PHCP industry 13 years ago. His graciousness and genuine care for others make him one of the most approachable people I’ve ever had the fortune to know. He has a unique way of making everyone around him feel important -- which is why he is often encircled with friends and colleagues at any industry event. It has been an honor to know him, and a true privilege to share his remarkable story with readers of The Wholesaler.