For Immediate Release
Leaving A Cooperative Legacy: After Five Generations, the W.J. Wheeler Insurance Agency Transitions to Worker Ownership
Contacts:
Michael Newsom, CEO, W.J.Wheeler Insurance Agency
(207) 774-9816
Rob Brown, Director, Business Ownership Solutions,
Cooperative Development Institute,
(207) 233-2987
Deborah Hawkins, Loan & Outreach Officer,
Cooperative Fund of New England
(207) 949-4632
SOUTH PARIS & BETHEL, MAINE—January 21, 2020—The employees of the W.J. Wheeler Insurance Agency, located in South Paris and Bethel, Maine, have recently formed a worker cooperative and purchased the company from the Wheeler/Cole/Newsom family, who have owned it since 1864.
“This transition has been quite a process, but a very rewarding and positive experience. The pride in having ownership of such a long standing, locally owned, family business is tremendous. Knowing that you are in control of your future is exciting and a little scary, but I can’t wait to see the new co-op grow and flourish for many years to come,” said Diane Merrill, the new co-op’s board chair and longest serving employee.
The agency serves clients throughout Maine with personal and commercial insurance products. The agency is also one of Maine’s leading individual health insurance and Medicare brokers.
New owner Hannah Savage, said, “When joining the agency in 2018, it was an intimidating concept to think that I’d be a part of a cooperatively owned business, but the opportunity this brings to my career has me excited,” Hannah Savage.
Wheeler’s previous owner and current CEO, Michael Newsom, first had thoughts about turning it into an employee-owned operation in 2015. “As a fifth-generation owner of this business, I was as much a steward of a family legacy as I was the owner of a corporation,” said Newsom. “Our mission was always to run a profitable, sustainable company that serves our owners’, employees’ and community’s long-term best interests. I felt that cooperative ownership was an excellent way to continue that mission and let a 6th generation develop it.”
So when he decided it was time to start planning for the future three years ago, he contacted Rob Brown with the Cooperative Development Institute (CDI), who led a series of workshops for Newsom and the employees to explain the mechanics of worker cooperative transitions and answer initial questions.
By the spring of 2017, the biggest questions remaining had to do with relationships, not business specifics.
“This business was owned by the family for a very long time and we were employees,” said Michelle Walker, another of the new worker-owners. “How could we effectively move previous owners and employees into new roles and relationships with each other? Was it even possible?”
To put these questions to the test, the family owners elected the employees to the board of directors of the corporation and worked with CDI’s Rob Brown throughout this three-year period to provide an intensive, real-world training program on the issues of firm governance, while also giving all involved – former owner and CEO Newsom and all employees – time to work out new relationships with each other. In short, it was an opportunity for all involved to prove to each other that they could do it.
“For all the support that CDI can provide in education, training, business planning, financial analysis and valuation and so on, at the end of the day, these folks just needed time and space to prove to each other that they could do this together,” said Brown. “It was both remarkable and inspiring to watch the level of seriousness with which they all approached this. They have built an incredibly solid foundation of respect and trust that will carry this firm forward into the future.”
While the workers never could have afforded to buy the company individually, they were able to do so through the cooperative ownership model and with financing from the Cooperative Fund of New England (CFNE) and the family. With financing in place, on 12/30/2019 the company changed hands.
“We were excited to provide our first loan to an employee-owned insurance agency in over four decades of financing cooperatives. This proved again that access to affordable credit is critical to co-ops forming to meet a community need, in this case preserving the legacy of a successful business and good jobs in rural Maine. We were proud to be able to support this conversion,” said CFNE Deputy Director, Dorian Gregory.
“At the end of the day, we still have our jobs to do. No one is getting a pass just because they’re a co-owner,” said Michele Lowell, another of the new worker-owners. “The difference now is that we own the company together, we’re mutually responsible for its success, and we will all benefit from that success.”