When Associated Wholesalers, Inc. president Bernie Ellis announced this summer that he would be retiring from full-time industry activity in March 2012, not many believed that he’d be around quite that long. But, when the colorful Ellis departed from the large Robesonia, PA wholesale co-op earlier this month, some industry observers were surprised that he would leave quite so quickly.
If you’re thinking there are bad feelings here, you’d be wrong. “Bernie did a terrific job,” said AWI (and White Rose) CEO Chris Michael. “When he came aboard in 2005, he helped integrate the company into a professional level of category management. When he was named president in 2009, he assumed new responsibilities and handled them skillfully.”
And Ellis said that he targeted March 2012 as a long-range date to potentially help Michael integrate and work with the new management team. “I have the utmost respect for Chris,” Ellis noted. “He allowed me the flexibility I needed to help AWI grow and I learned a lot about the wholesale business and independent retailing from him.”
So, why the seemingly abrupt departure?
“As, I told everybody, I did not want another full-time job in the business. I’ve been at it for more than 40 years and I wanted to devote the bulk of my time to my farm. It’s a passion I’ve had for many years and I wanted to explore that opportunity. I also knew that, from a personal financial perspective, I needed to work part-time,” Ellis stated. “In the past month two things happened: it was clear that Chris was pretty far along in shaping the new management team and I was offered a consulting opportunity that was right up my alley that needed to be acted upon fairly quickly.”
That “opportunity,” with a large drug chain will allow the veteran of Acme and Giant/Landover the flexibility to spend more time at his farm in Leesport, PA while working several days a week on his new industry endeavor. And Michael acknowledged that, except for a few holes, the new management team is pretty much in place Bill Donovan, whom Ellis brought in five years ago (the two had worked together for more than 25 years at Acme and Giant/Landover), will become executive VP-sales and marketing. Sandra Sage, one of the sharpest and hardest working merchandising/procurement executives in the industry, recently joined AWI as director of category management and Michael, who is one of the longest tenured leaders in wholesale industry (he’s been running the day-to-day activities at AWI since 1980), will assume all operations functions for the $1.1 billion co-op.
“There was some thought early on to replace Bernie as president,” Michael asserted, “but we’ve got a lot of talent here and we plan on utilizing the skills of our people. As for me jumping back into more of an operational and administrative role, I don’t see it as a big issue, particularly since I handled those functions for about 30 years and I’ve got a great team on that side of the business led by Bob Rippley (executive VP-logistics).”
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