For JB Industries, It's Game On

Since 1967, JB Industries has been a market leader in producing HVACR tools and accessories — from fittings to vacuum pumps — at their Aurora, IL, factory. But it wasn't until 2005 that JB was relaunched as a 40-year-old start-up.

For their first 38 years in business, JB Industries had developed a solid reputation among HVACR distributors and contractors. They were the company that was known for producing high-quality products that were made in the U.S.A. Just putting out a solid product, however, was no longer enough. In order to grow, JB had to start branding the company through marketing campaigns, packaging and logos that had become just as important as the products that the company produced. In addition, JB's team rebuilt customer relationships around the country.

Enter two men who understood the HVACR and marketing sides of the business. In 2005, Ron Hill Jr. and Jeff Cherif purchased JB. College roommates, Hill had extensive experience with the HVACR industry as a longtime employee and son of one of the owners, while Cherif was a Motorola executive who had recently run one of its business units overseas and brought marketing and sales expertise to the equation. Both men understood JB's reputation and one-dimensional brand within the industry, and they set out to reinvigorate the image, telling and selling the company's story to distributors and contractors. Today, JB has re-established itself as a market leader in all facets — from product to customer service — and their brand has once again become a well-known entity within the industry.

One of the first moves was to build on the motto to allow customers and employees to better identify with the company. While the “JB” in JB Industries was a merger of the initials of the company's founders — a partnership between Jarrow Industries and Greg Brinda — Cherif and Hill saw the initials as symbolic of something else: Just Better.

“We wanted something that identified our confidence in the company,” Cherif says. “Not just in products, but in everything that we do: manufacturing, customer service, sales and distribution. The goal was to reinvent the company and establish a mindset where all employees would strive on a day-to-day basis to be ‘Just Better.’”

It was a stake in the ground that said to those in the HVACR industry that this was a new era for JB. “We came in with that in-your-face branding and said this is how we're going to behave as a company,” Cherif says. “We had a great manufacturing base that has existed for many, many years. Our people make our company Just Better.”