Episode Description
Not many people have stewarded century-old companies. We’re lucky that Mike Jablonski, former owner-operator of Whitney Brothers, is one of them. He takes us through 121 years of American manufacturing—from making wooden toys with hydro-powered equipment to today’s manufacturing methods. Mike shares the remarkable story of how Whitney Brothers survived the Great Depression, world wars, devastating fires, and the declaration of pine as a “strategic wartime material” that forced a permanent pivot to hardwoods. He opens up about the weight of stewarding a century-old legacy and the influence of technical tours to Germany and Italy. Mike reveals how Whitney Brothers reinvented itself from commodity toys to institutional-grade furniture, explains the company’s unique “Whitney-ize it” product development process, and shares an emotional moment with a founder’s descendent. Whether you’re interested in manufacturing, family business succession, or what it really takes to make a company last over a century, Mike’s insights on teamwork, innovation, and pride in workmanship offer timeless lessons.
Edited by Mateusz Złakowski
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Episode Transcript
(Transcript edited for clarity using AI)
Chris Fredericks: Joining me today on Empowered Owners is Mike Jablonski. Mike is the former owner-operator of Whitney Brothers, a 121-year-old manufacturer of furniture for early learning and childcare environments that joined Empowered Ventures earlier this year. Mike, thanks for joining me on Empowered Owners.
Mike Jablonski: Hey, Chris. Good to see you again.
Chris Fredericks: You too, you too. So you and I talked about maybe doing this a long time ago, and the “this” that I mean is—Whitney Brothers is a 121-year-old company. And there’s so much history there and you have so much history there. It’s just a really great company with this fascinating history. So I thought it might be fun to get together and capture some of the knowledge. I mean, there’s no way we’re going to cover everything that happens in 120 years, but it’ll be fun to hear everything you’ve learned from your time at Whitney Brothers and see where it goes. So thank you for doing that.
Mike Jablonski: Happy to share what I know. Again, as you mentioned, over 100 years of history—I’ve got 25 years of exposure to it. So I’m happy to share what I’ve learned along the way.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. Why don’t we start with a little bit more about you, just to kind of set it up. So when did you join Whitney Brothers?
Mike Jablonski: Yeah, I joined Whitney Brothers in 2000, and I had had a career in wood products manufacturing. I had been in the area and knew of Whitney Brothers and sort of had that as a long-term goal—it was sort of like the big leagues. I’d like to work for Whitney Brothers one day. And so I got an opportunity to join as plant manager in 2000. And I was there, as you mentioned, until earlier this year. So I’ve had a 25-year career with Whitney Brothers.
Chris Fredericks: What about it from afar did you notice? Like when you weren’t part of it yet, but you said you were aware of it and knew about it—what stood out from afar?
Mike Jablonski: Yeah. So, you know, always working for other small manufacturers, I was envious of the equipment Whitney Brothers had, the facility they had. They’re located in downtown Keene, and so that seemed desirable. People that I knew that had worked there were reputable, and it just—again, from an equipment standpoint, just the way they did it, their product line, the fact that they offered a catalog and a website—it seemed like an awful lot of the way they ran their business was first class.
Chris Fredericks: Interesting. So you joined and then did you do research after you joined to learn more about the company history, or did you just kind of absorb that over time?
Mike Jablonski: Yeah. So a lot of that came from my boss at the time who became my partner, David. And David’s father was one of the owners whose parents were one of the owners—this is going back to the 1960s. And so David had a lot of stories from when he was a child, when his parents owned it and operated it. And so I got a lot of history and a lot of stories from David, and then obviously picked up a little more along the way.
Chris Fredericks: Interesting. So to the best of your ability, can you give us Whitney Brothers’ history from the beginning? Like when did it start and how did it start? And also maybe the early years, so to speak.
Mike Jablonski: Yeah, sure, sure. So it started in 1904. Started in the next town over from Keene, a small town called Marlborough in New Hampshire, and started out primarily focused on toys and wooden housewares—little walker wagons and little wheelbarrows and little wooden items. And I think it’s just amazing—when you look back at some of the old black and white pictures, these are water-powered. They were on the Minnewawa River in Marlborough. Water-powered equipment. So there was a wheel getting turned by the river with shafts running through the factory, and you’d push a leather belt onto the pulley to get a machine started. And they were making wooden toys with water-powered equipment.
And I just think it’s amazing that they were able to be profitable, support families, and then survive some very, very difficult times during the Great Depression. World War II happened during their early beginnings, and I think it’s amazing that they continued. When you think about what problems we have—and we do have pandemics and tariffs and things that interrupt and trip up our businesses—but these are world wars, the Great Depression. So I think about what they did and kind of have to tip your hat to what they did compared to what maybe we have to go through.
But, you know, they were making wooden toys. And one of the challenges that they ran into early on that I learned about is during the war, they declared pine as a strategic material or wartime material. And so a lot of their products were made from pine and they couldn’t use that after the 1940s, after the war. And so they changed over to hardwoods and they never looked back. Once they discovered sources and methods for working with hardwoods, they never turned back. So I think that might be one of the things that maybe was a benefit from the difficult times—they transitioned into some maybe more higher-quality materials.
Chris Fredericks: Interesting. And who founded Whitney Brothers?
Mike Jablonski: So there were three brothers—Mark, Charles, and Fred. Let me look at my notes. Right. There were three brothers. And sadly, one of the brothers in 1908 was killed in an industrial accident in the factory. One of those leather belts that he had to steer onto the pulley to activate a machine actually got caught up—he got caught up in it. Sadly, he died. But there were three brothers who were the Whitney Brothers that started the company. And it was passed down to family members up until the 1960s, where there were some folks who were not with the brothers that were able to buy into the company. And that’s when the Stabler family—David Stabler, Griff Stabler, Laurie Stabler—bought into the company and was able to get it into sort of non-Whitney Brothers hands.
Chris Fredericks: So in a sense, if I’m hearing you correctly, there’s kind of been three families essentially that have owned Whitney Brothers over the whole 120 years?
Mike Jablonski: Yeah. There was one other partner, non-Whitney Brothers—Bernard Barinholtz, Bernie Baron. He was in with the ownership for a brief period of time in those 1960s when things were transitioning out of the Whitney Brothers’ hands.
Chris Fredericks: Four families, including the Jablonskis.
Mike Jablonski: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, so they’ve had again a lot of adversity, Chris, with fires. There were multiple fires in their facilities—rebuilt, removed, moved to different facilities in Marlborough. And then in 1980 they moved to Keene to the current facility. And that was a big deal to make that move. There were some environmental changes that they had to make from paint finishes and things that had to get cleaned up to meet the city of Keene’s code. And again, I think those things helped the company kind of improve along the way.
Chris Fredericks: Super interesting. How would you describe the evolution of the product line over 100, 120 years? I mean, toys at the beginning to institutional, commercial-grade furniture that Whitney Brothers does today—that’s a pretty big evolution.
Mike Jablonski: It is, it is, Chris. And I think that’s a big milestone for Whitney Brothers that might sort of get overlooked. Where it went from toys and doll cradles and things that, you know, we know in today’s age would be clearly imported—unfortunately would be imported at a low cost—they transitioned, and again, I attribute that to Griff Stabler, David’s dad, for transitioning from toys into more school early learning furniture. Again, some of those products could transition into an early learning environment, but other things like easels and bookshelves and storage cabinets became a little bit more prevalent. And that really carried the company. If that never happened, I don’t think there’d be a Whitney Brothers in business today, at least nothing manufacturing in the United States.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. And when do you think that introduction of not just commodity toys, but other products, maybe higher-value products—when do you think that was?
Mike Jablonski: Starting in the late 1960s into the 1970s.
Chris Fredericks: Okay, yeah. And they don’t make any toys today, I don’t think.
Mike Jablonski: I think things with play value. But, you know, a kitchen unit, little sink, little refrigerator would have play value. But not what we think of as a toy that you might see for sale at a Walmart or a local toy store. Again, just because they’re small and have a lot of touch labor, you wouldn’t see that typically US-manufactured.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. I don’t know if this is exactly about Whitney Brothers, but it’s pretty amusing to me to go all the way back and look at the list of what toys were like—wheelbarrows, clothes-drying racks, wooden snow shovels, like things that are just very adult-sounding. But they were considered toys back in the early days.
Mike Jablonski: There were some wooden wares, I think you would call some of those wooden wares, and those were residential products. Like you said, the snow shovel—it must have been pretty strong to be shoveling snow here in New Hampshire with a wooden shovel. But they did. They did. Amazing.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. What other surprising things have you heard or even learned about the Whitney Brothers history? Other moments that really stuck out to you?
Mike Jablonski: You know, it’s just—it’s humbling, Chris, to think again about the adversity, whether it’s fires. Fires in longtime woodworking facilities isn’t uncommon, but these are fires that completely decimated—burned right down to the foundation and had to rebuild. Fires, floods, the adversity that I think they went through—again, wars and depressions and things that we wouldn’t think about today with that long, long history. And so, you know, when I was owner of Whitney Brothers, I thought about those things and thought about, “I can’t screw it up. Not on my watch. It’s been in business over 100 years. I can’t screw this thing up.”
So it was quite a burden. But, you know, half joking, half serious—you don’t want to be the guy that sinks the 100-year-old company on your watch. So besides other reasons to be motivated, that was another one. Just so much history there, but a lot of adversity. And again, a lot of folks, good folks who would come to work at Whitney Brothers—the ones that I was fortunate enough to work with and learned a lot from. A lot of history there.
Chris Fredericks: Something that struck me as I first met you and got to know the company was, I would say, the pride that you and your team had and have in the products—the actual products themselves—just this really high pride in the workmanship and the design. And that just comes through so strong with the branding and everything with the people. Was that there when you joined? When you first joined?
Mike Jablonski: It was, Chris. And I’d like to say that, you know, our team took it and really enhanced that and exaggerated that. But, you know, obviously Whitney Brothers always had products that were regarded in terms of desirability and durability and were reliable. But, you know, they had catalogs—some of the older catalogs from the 1960s and ’70s were three or four or five pages deep. In fact, many times they wouldn’t print the date on them. They would use them for multiple years.
And so you look to what Whitney Brothers has been able to do in the last 5 or 10 years in terms of product development, product design, innovation—and that’s really been one of the reasons for the growth and what Whitney Brothers has been able to accomplish in the last five years in particular, winning design awards. That’s not an accident. It’s an awful lot of dedicated and knowledgeable people that have been driving that product innovation. That’s a big competitive advantage for Whitney Brothers in the marketplace.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. So there was kind of a kernel of that there probably—of this pride and workmanship and everything—but then you and the folks you work with, the team you put together, really kind of leaned into that. It sounds like.
Mike Jablonski: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Chris. And, you know, a big driver for that, a big part of that, are the folks—staff members at Whitney Brothers who are currently in education. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my daughter Celia, but there’s a number of people who either have been in education or have family members, and we’re constantly being reminded of, “Hey, you know what? You guys should have…” or “You know what you guys need?” And we’re always, always listening because, you know, we’re Whitney Brothers, we’re in the business, we’re manufacturing, we’re woodworkers. We’re not early education professionals. So when they speak and say, “Hey, you know what you’re missing in your line,” we want to listen to them.
And so we’ve been fortunate to have those kinds of people who have been giving us that type of input and that type of suggestions. And not every suggestion is a good suggestion, but we always want to be listening for those. And then if there’s a kernel of good idea or value there, we want to what we call “Whitney-ize it.” We want to bring it to the development team and have them exploit it. And, you know, our development team was really fantastic and continues to be great where there’s multiple people from different backgrounds and different ways of thinking about things. There’s engineers at the table saying, “Hey, I hear your idea, but that isn’t going to go to the factory very well.” Or sourcing supply people are saying, “Hey, what materials are we going to use for that? We need to make sure that we can get a steady supply of this that’s consistent and affordable.”
And then, you know, you need people that are creative to say, “I don’t care whether you can make it. This is a really cool idea.” And then we just have to Whitney-ize it and bring it all together. So having that product development team has been very, very rewarding. I think that’s been a key part of the growth we’ve seen at Whitney Brothers.
Chris Fredericks: I love it. I love that verb, “Whitney-ize it.”
Mike Jablonski: Yeah.
Chris Fredericks: So a business that lasts 120 years—you mentioned it has to get through adversity, major periods of adversity. I think also it probably has to reinvent itself a few times over the course of that time. We’ve mentioned, you know, toys to great new high-quality furniture. I think maybe I’m wondering if you would agree with this—another reinvention probably happened under your watch, you know, just modernizing, let’s say. I think you had to put a lot of thought and time and effort into what’s the Whitney Brothers of the future going to look like. How did you decide to do that? That seems like a big decision to make, maybe even a risky decision to make.
Mike Jablonski: Yeah. And so I think, Chris, you know, when I was hired, my boss David at the time really valued education. He valued travel opportunity and he really valued outside expertise. And so when I first took the job in 2000, before I actually started work, when we were talking about me coming to work, David said, “Hey, I’m going to need you to go to China. We’re looking at importing some baby cribs.” Baby cribs were big business for Whitney Brothers. There were very few manufacturers of baby cribs in the United States, and they were looking at importing. And he wanted me to go over to China and source some factories and help him make the decision of whether we should import. And so we ultimately didn’t. There were some serious quality issues, and, you know, as you can imagine with infants, there can’t be any room for quality issues.
But the point is that, you know, David really valued opportunity for travel, opportunity for education to see how other people in other parts of the world do things. And then understanding that as good as we think we are, there are other people that are experts in certain things, and if we invite them in, they can help us with our business. And so that opportunity, that training that David gave me, that way of thinking, really helped a lot. And so some of the ways that, you know, I got to see how other factories were operated—there are technical tours that go to other countries. So I got on a tech tour to Germany that one of the machine manufacturers put together. They invited us, a small group of Americans, to go over to Germany and travel. We saw the factories where they make the machines, and then we saw some of the factories that use those machines in manufacturing, whether it’s kitchen cabinets or closets.
And so we got to see 200,000-300,000 square foot factories producing hundreds of cabinets an hour, running with 3 or 4 people with automation. And that was just like, “Wow, I know I can’t afford that today, but someday.” And it’s just sort of looking into the future. And it was the same thing with technical tours that I was fortunate enough to travel to Italy and to some other countries that are, you know, sort of leading the way in the woodworking equipment market. And so getting to see how they are doing things kind of planted the seed—okay, we can’t do all this today or tomorrow, but in time maybe we can develop a path to getting some of these machines and these capabilities and the software and have sort of a long-term vision to streamline some of these and automate some of these things.
And as you know, a lot of young kids coming out of high school, they don’t want to go into manufacturing anymore. So it’s difficult to find people. So, you know, being able to automate helps us continue to be competitive.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. That’s great. What would you say—advice given to business owners, business leaders of businesses—just lessons learned from your career. What stands out for you, like things that you’ve learned over a really successful career?
Mike Jablonski: That’s a big, big question. There’s lots of good answers, Chris. But I think what comes to mind is people and teamwork. And it doesn’t matter what you know, it doesn’t matter what you’d like to do or the vision that you have. If you’re all alone and the folks on your team don’t share that vision and aren’t united or aligned, nothing good is going to happen.
And so having a team that understands the goal—and even if it’s a mediocre player, if you’re all working on it together, you’ll be successful. And so, you know, having key people who want to be at work, who want to do their best, rewarding them, appreciating them, and getting out of their way when they’ve got a good idea—you don’t want to trip them up. Teamwork, employee satisfaction or appreciation—more so than automation, more so than anything technical—it’s all good, it’s all important, but teamwork, that’s what I would say.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. That’s great. You were kind of a Keene guy, right? You grew up in the area as well?
Mike Jablonski: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yep, yep. Both David and I were Keene State College graduates, so we kind of consider ourselves townies. We love the area—it’s a great place to raise a family. We’re very, very blessed, and it’s a good place for manufacturing.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. If I were you, that would make me very proud to have been a steward of—if anyone ever comes to Keene, they can see Whitney Brothers is right there downtown. It’s a really great visual presence in the downtown area. And it’s a 120-year-old employer. I just would imagine there’s a lot of satisfaction in what you’ve accomplished at Whitney Brothers.
Mike Jablonski: There is for sure.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah, yeah. One more question then—what do you think the Whitney Brothers might feel if they could look down from heaven? Are they happy that their business that they started 120 years ago is still going strong today?
Mike Jablonski: Absolutely. They’re happy and they’re proud of what we’re doing, Chris. And I can say that with some confidence. We actually had an exhibit at the local historical society, and one of the sons—it would be a grandson to one of the founders—his name is Richard Whitney. Richard is an internationally renowned artist who lives in Stoddard, New Hampshire, just north of Keene. And Richard came to the exhibit and sought me out and said, “My dad would be so happy. We’re just so happy with what you guys are doing.”
He actually, him and his wife, asked if they could come to the factory and get a tour. We gave him the tour, and he said, “My dad would be amazed at what you guys do and he’d be so happy with you guys.” So I kind of got that blessing—third-generation blessing. So I think they’d be happy. And addressing the fact that we’re employee-owned now, I think again, just rings the bell. You know, it’s funny—when the announcement went out that Whitney Brothers was sold and it hit social media, there were a number of people who were past employees who said, “You know, it’s really too bad that it wasn’t sold to the employees.” They didn’t understand what it meant. And it’s like, “No, it really was.” They were saying, “It’s too bad.”
So I feel like the Whitney Brothers looking down, I think they’d be very, very happy and proud of the work that we did to help get us to this point. I think they’d be very happy with it.
Chris Fredericks: That’s so wonderful. Thank you, Mike. This was really great—catching so much history in a brief amount of time here. But thank you again for choosing Empowered Ventures for Whitney Brothers’ future, and thank you for coming on Empowered Owners today, Mike. Really appreciate it.
Mike Jablonski: You’re welcome, Chris. Thanks for having me.
