Bales’ Leaders Profiled in Finishing and Coating

Stacey Bales

I started working for the company when I was 12 years old because my dad and uncle owned the business, and that’s just what you do. So I started off cleaning the offices, and that transitioned to helping my aunt with filing, which transitioned to working in our masking department. I helped out in shipping and receiving and in sales; I worked my way up to office manager right about the same time that we opened a second location in Texas in 2001. My uncle had retired at that point and had moved across the country, and my dad was flying down to our Texas operations about a week or so out of every month. Fast forward to 2009. My dad was in Texas and just didn’t come to work one day; we found out that he had passed away at 53 years old.

So at 27 years old, I found myself owning an electroplating company with my younger 25-year-old sister, Sara, and it was just us. There was no transition; there was no talk of succession planning. At 53 years old, who thinks that something like that is going to happen?

Keep in mind we were right at the tail end of the recession in 2009, and we had just put a substantial addition to our building. When the bank learned our dad had passed —two days before Thanksgiving— the bank called us in to sit down. When they walked in, they didn’t say ‘sorry’ or ‘we heard about your dad’ — nothing of the sort; their question was, “How are we going to liquidate?” That just set the fire burning. 

Sara and I winged a lot of our transition; we are very fortunate that we have a lot of long-time loyal employees. We inherited some family members that worked there, and it was a difficult transition; nobody knew who was supposed to be at the top of the food chain, so there was a lot of tension around positions, responsibilities, and some trust issues.

To this day, neither my sister nor I can jump on any one of our plating lines and plate a part; we don’t have that in our wheelhouse. I’ve taken the CEF courses, and I retained about 50% of it, so we rely heavily on our team. I’m good at accounting, I’m good at business, and that’s my focus. I rely heavily on our experienced team to manage the day-to-day operations.