🔒As the metal and wire company’s new 4th-generation leader, CEO Jon Ulbrich looks to the future

When Southington-based Rex Forge announced in February that it would close after 160 years in business because it had lost its only customer, Jonathan Ulbrich took note.

Ulbrich — who in January succeeded his father, Chris, as CEO of North Haven-based Ulbrich Stainless Steels & Special Metals — says his company is too diversified for that to happen.

“If they stop building cars tomorrow, yeah, we’re going to feel it, but we’re still in business,” he said. “Same thing with planes, same thing with different types of surgery — we’re always going to be here, doing what we do best, which is making precision metals for next-gen products.”

The company’s largest customer represents about 3% of sales.

“We’re not really beholden to anybody,” Ulbrich said.

That’s the way it’s been since his great-grandfather founded a Wallingford scrapyard called the Fred Ulbrich Co. in 1924.

In the century since, Ulbrich has evolved into a metal and wire supplier for the aerospace, automotive and medical industries, providing specialty metals or wires for everything from surgical devices to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

While Jon Ulbrich declined to disclose the privately held company’s financials, he did say it employs 700 people at 10 facilities in four countries, serving as a re-roller and distributor of stainless steel and special metals, including sheet, strip and foil, as well as for shaped, fine and flat wire and more.

The diversity of its products and the various markets served are a testament to the company’s adaptability, he says. Most recently, that’s included two major acquisitions, both of which expanded its presence in Europe.

“If you go back through our history since 1924, every 10 to 15 years we pivot as an organization,” he said during a recent interview with Hartford Business Journal at Ulbrich’s headquarters on Route 5 in North Haven.

Pointing to a cabinet displaying numerous products for which Ulbrich produced the metal, he noted that many of them are no longer made.

“So, once our customers go obsolete, how do we survive?” he asked. “For us, it’s that constant evolution of ‘what’s next’ for the steel industry.”

‘Succession with purpose’

Pivoting is something Ulbrich Stainless Steels has done quite well over its 101 years, in part because it also has been successful in grooming its next generation of leaders.

Jon Ulbrich is the fourth generation to lead the company, something he says the family has never taken for granted.

“I think we’ve always been cognizant that, to survive as a family business, you have to do the succession with purpose, not just by accident,” he said.

For the most recent transition, that meant sitting down in 2019 to discuss both the future leadership change and the direction of the company, particularly since its 100th anniversary was looming in 2024.

The result was committing to a specific way of doing business.

“Last year we launched our next cultural iteration called the Ulbrich Way,” he said. “It was a redefinition of our purpose as a business, our core tenets, which are really core values, and then a new business strategy.”

Banners hanging throughout the company’s Wallingford manufacturing facility remind employees of the Ulbrich Way, which includes driving profitable growth through exceptional customer focus, precision and quality, unique products and “best-in-class operational practices.”

“The future for the next couple years is going to be continuing investment in the Ulbrich Way, which has a lot to do with leadership and management,” Ulbrich said. “Teaching the right leadership techniques, leadership mentalities, and then managing our teams in a cohesive manner to hit the goals and the business strategy in general that we have.”

Each Ulbrich division now holds strategy meetings with all employees, he said. “We want people to come to work and understand the ‘why,’ so they’re actively engaged in solutions.”

Over the past few years, the company has also hosted workshops for managers, even bringing a group to the Thayer Leadership School at West Point, New York.

“We’ve got an ex-West Point guy coming in April to do a 30-person leadership course for our team here, primarily middle managers that impact a lot of lives,” Ulbrich said. “So, we’re kind of on this new journey of how do you take our purpose, our values, and instill that through the ranks?”

Corporate ladder

While officially a company employee for 18 years, Jon Ulbrich actually started when he spent four summers working as a teenager.

His first job, he said, was to package rolls of metal coming off the production line. Being the CEO’s son did not guarantee him a warm welcome.

He recalled one employee during his first summer who chided him that, “You only have this job because your dad is the boss.”

“I told him, ‘That may be, but I’m still going to pack more metal than you,’” Ulbrich told him. “I crushed him.”

He attended Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where he double majored in management and marketing. After earning his degree, he returned to Connecticut and started in a sales position that he held for a couple of years.

His next step up the corporate ladder was being named materials manager for the Northeast. He did that for a couple of years before being asked to run the sales team.

“I inherited a sales team that had a lot of turnover, a lot of people aging out, and we still hadn’t quite gotten to that transition between snail mail and email,” Ulbrich said.

All of that meant he had to “revitalize the culture of our selling process,” he said. He set a goal of eliminating major customer complaints “that prevented us from getting future business.”

‘They trust me’

He accomplished that goal, which led to a promotion to general management, then to overseeing operations in the Northeast, to vice president and then to president of Ulbrich’s Service Center Group.

Then came 2019.

“My dad and I, we sat down as a family business with my two uncles and we said, ‘Okay, third generation is going to fourth. What’s our plan?’”

Ulbrich said he believes succession planning is something his family has done really well.

“I didn’t come from college at 23 years old into a VP position,” he said. “I’ve earned my stripes. So, I’ve got great relationships with all my coworkers here. I trust them. They trust me.”

When his father became chairman of the board on Jan. 1, he had completed 47 years with Ulbrich, including 22 as CEO.

Chris Ulbrich rounded out his CEO career with two acquisitions.

On Nov. 6, Ulbrich acquired ATI Inc.’s precision rolled strip operations in New Bedford, Mass., and Remscheid, Germany. The New Bedford facility was renamed Ulbrich Precision Alloys, while the German facility became Ulbrich Europe Metals.

Two weeks later, Ulbrich acquired a specialty wire facility in Hardt, Germany, from Bruker-Spaleck GmbH.

Jon Ulbrich said the acquisitions were the first in about 25 years.

“We don’t buy a lot of companies that often, mainly because we’re not trying to buy ‘me too’ places,” he said. “If a competitor came up (for sale) that does exactly what we do, we probably wouldn’t be interested. It has to be a little different than what we already bring to the marketplace to expand our offering.”

The future

Ulbrich is optimistic about the company’s future, even with the Trump administration imposing tariffs, including recently threatening to double tariffs on Canadian steel imports to 50%.

“It’s a mixed bag,” Ulbrich said of tariffs. While they increase prices, they also provide some protection from dumping, which is when a company or country exports products to another country at a price that is lower than its domestic market price or cost of production.

China and India “are horrible offenders” of dumping in the precision split wire market, Ulbrich said.

“Europe adopts strategies to combat China, which typically means lowering the price,” he said. “So, we need protection. When you have a whole industry that’s subsidized by a government like the steel industry is, you need some kind of regulation in the U.S. to at least create a balanced playing field.”

Regardless, his vision for future growth includes continuing to invest in Ulbrich’s capabilities.

“I think it’s a combination of organic and inorganic strategies,” he said. That includes buying new equipment and continuing to “grow our portfolio within our business strategy.”

Ulbrich adds that while he is one of 12 members of his family’s fourth generation, he is the only one that works in the company. He has two brothers and a sister, but they all “do their own thing,” he said. The same is true of his cousins.

Ulbrich has a wife and two children, a 14-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy, so he’s a long way from thinking about his successor, he adds.

“We’ve got a bright future,” Ulbrich said. “In my position now, I’m not rewriting history. I could benchmark off of what my father did, or what my grandfather built, and off of all the people that came in between. So, I don’t have to start from scratch.”