Guest blog written by Joe Keiderling, President at Rifton Equipment.
There was a time when the titans of business believed that to be successful you needed to focus exclusively on the owners of the company, on how to maximize returns to the shareholders. This was the approach epitomized by Jack Welch of General Electric, the guy who was nicknamed Neutron Jack for his penchant for firing employees and leaving the buildings intact. This approach led – at least in the United States – to an unhealthy fixation on financial metrics and quick returns, on quarterly growth rather than long-term sustainability and great products. It’s often referred to as shareholder capitalism.
But we’re witnessing a slow awakening in the business community. For the last ten years leaders are talking about a new approach, something they’re calling stakeholder capitalism. Here, you focus equally on shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and the community around you. You recognize that you cannot be truly successful unless you think of everyone who touches your business in some way. In other words, you have to care.
But for some of us there’s nothing new here. In the rarefied space that Rifton shares with Jenx and Jiraffe, the world of rehabilitation and therapy for kids with disabilities, we’ve always known this. We labor in a world where only those who truly care are able to survive. This is the fabulous bond we share with the family we call Jenx. To better understand this bond, a little history is needed.
Rifton’s birth is tied to a watershed moment in American history. In 1975, the U.S. Congress passed a law establishing a right to education for every child in the country, regardless of ability. Overnight, the appalling system of hiding kids – warehousing them – in huge, filthy state-run institutions was declared unacceptable. This change was a long time coming, and it was thanks to the efforts of hundreds of lonely protesters and advocates spread out over decades. It forced public schools to find accommodations for kids with very special needs. The law was called the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. (In subsequent revisions it was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act – IDEA.) That was when another company, Rifton’s older sister, called Community Playthings, started getting requests for customized seating to accommodate these newcomers.
Community Playthings makes furniture and play equipment for day care centers and nurseries. CP has been in business since the late 1940s, and by 1975 had established a loyal customer base among public school systems across the United States. So it was natural for these customers to turn to the designers at CP to ask for customized seating. A handful of requests became a flood, and it did not take long for CP to recognize an unmet need. Within two years, CP had included a separate insert in their trade catalog showcasing a new line of adaptive products called Rifton Equipment. That was in 1977, the year we mark as Rifton’s birth.
From our first days we knew that to produce equipment that would really make a difference for these special kids, we would have to truly understand their lives and their challenges. We’d need to see their homes and their classrooms, talk to their parents and their caregivers, understand the medical complications that seemed to define their lives. We had to care. Over the years we’ve seen companies come and go in this space. Some seemed opportunistic, some even predatory. In our experience, only those that entered this market because they cared were able to survive and grow.
For many years, Community Playthings and Rifton operated as a single business entity in the United States, sharing factory space, customer service, design and engineering resources, management. In 1982 we split the Community Playthings catalog and published a separate, stand-alone catalog just for Rifton products. That, incidentally, was the same year Jenx was founded.
Around 1980 we started marketing and shipping Rifton products from our community location in the south of England, in East Sussex. For the next 25 years we considered Jenx a competitor in England, a friendly industry colleague, but a competitor nonetheless.
But by the early aughts it became clear to us that in the United Kingdom we were not able to do justice to both distinct product lines and needed to focus exclusively on Community Playthings. We needed to find someone else who could promote and distribute Rifton products in the United Kingdom. The search was on.
In the end, the choice of a partner came down to two, Jenx and another large rehab distributor which shall remain unnamed. To make our pick we went out and asked our customers, “From whom would you rather buy Rifton products?” The answer was virtually unanimous and unequivocal: Jenx. Already back in 2005 Jenx was widely respected for their care, for their attention to the very specific and particular needs of the people they served. And so we entered discussions with Clive and Catherine Jenkins, and discovered that we shared all the most important values as a business and as people. The die was cast and a partnership was formed. (Today, in a happy turn of events, that second rehab distributor, the one we didn’t select, has become Jiraffe’s biggest customer.)
In the years since we have never had reason to regret our choice of partner. Jenx and Jiraffe have admirably represented the Rifton brand throughout the U.K., and we’re proud to consider ourselves partners in this important work we share. Vive la compagnie.
This blog is part of our 40 stories for 40 years’ series, celebrating our partnerships over the years. Click here to read more blogs in this series.
