First Posted: 3/25/2015
VAN WERT — At Advanced Biological Marketing, employees take what nature already offers and concentrate it.
The manufacturer and seller of natural seed treatments takes organisms from the soil, concentrates them and puts them where they need to be, said Pete Hayes, vice president of marketing at ABM.
The company’s corporate office is in Van Wert, where it’s been since its inception in 2000. ABM grew from one employee — now Chief Executive Office Dan Custis — at its beginning to the 42 full-time employees it now has nationwide, including 26 in Van Wert.
Now, the company is “self-sufficient;” growing, packaging and selling its own product, Hayes said. The market for the product has grown, as has the company and its efficiencies, he said.
BIOLOGICAL PRODUCTS
The company has a full line of products. It covers all major row crops grown in the United States, and it’s hoping to be part of a solution to the run-off problem facing farmers.
“(The product) increases the plant’s capacity to take up those two nutrients (nitrogen and phosphate),” Custis said. “So in a small way, I’m hoping we help alleviate some of that problem.”
He’s referring to the run-off problem that many local farmers are facing today, which causes algae in some nearby bodies of water. Since the products are all natural, the company is hoping its natural treatments can be part of a solution to the chemical run-off problem.
“We’re looking to take the plant and give it everything it needs,” Hayes said.“We do know our product makes a healthier plant.”
The company is “continually in the process of developing new products and new formulations,” he said.
“What’s really helped our business grow is there’s a general recognition in the ag community that biologicals are safe, are systemic, and they’re legitimate,” Hayes said. “Some major companies have invested a lot of money into buying, purchasing, partnering with biological companies. It legitimizes what we’ve been doing all along.”
ABM’s 36 products, sold under the names SabrEx and Graph-Ex in stores, grow with plants by living on their roots, he said.
VALUING EMPLOYEES
On the company’s eight and a half acres in Van Wert, employees grow, develop and package the products, Hayes said. Employees include two microbiologists, several manual labor workers and a nationwide network of sales people, said Curtis Gordon, vice president of corporate operations at ABM.
The microbiologists figure out the steps the laborers will take to treat and handle the product.
“Teamwork and work ethic are very important,” Gordon said. “Everybody has to pull together and pull their weight.”
The employees work around the clock. Organisms don’t take holidays and evenings off, and neither do they, Hayes said.
“(We) produce more so we can meet the growing demand,” he said. “The market has grown, and one thing you never want to do as a company is run out.”
The company and market has been growing so much that ABM is working to grow its physical footprint as well. Construction has been going on at the corporate office, at 375 Bonnewitz Ave, for a few months, and the company is planning a new manufacturing location in Van Wert’s Vision Industrial Park.
The company began in 2000 in a two-car garage on Keppler Street in Van Wert. It had been converted into a one bedroom apartment in which Custis and his partner Leon Bird originally started the company to market products for small companies that had good technology but didn’t have a way to the marketplace, Custis said.
In 2002, the company moved to an old self-storage facility on Bonnewitz, where the company is today. It began making its own soybean inoculates.
In 2010, the company started selling nationwide, and today it distributes internationally as well.
All along, Custis envisioned the company would be the size it is today, and growing. He said the largest asset it has is the people.
“We have a great group of employees,” he said. “They’re the ones that helped me build the company.”
The employee base has slowly grown with the company, and Custis has been deliberate with the type of people the company hires. It looks for qualifications and the ability to fit into the company culture, he said.
“We can have great products and great technology, but unless we have the right people in the right places to be successful, it won’t work,” he said. “The employees are what makes the company.”
