The owners of Korte Electric Inc. and Instant Copy of Northern Indiana have realized business is better the second time around after surviving corporate acquisitions.

Mega mergers, acquisitions and corporate downsizing have never been more abundant than in the past decade—and some Fort Wayne businesses got caught up in the hysteria. Many family-owned and operated businesses were dissolved, selling out to corporate giants. In most cases company names long familiar to Fort Wayne changed, and sadly, many customers and loyal employees went away.

How did local business owners become players in the acquisition foray? Some anticipated that the grass would be greener when a national corporation owned the company. Others mistakenly thought it would increase their business.

Jerry Korte, president of Korte Electric started the company with his wife Judy in 1965. For 32 years, the Korte name and the company's reputation for providing homeowners and businesses with electrical, heating, air conditioning and plumbing services was prominent in the Fort Wayne area. However, once the decision was made to sell out to a large conglomerate, American Residential Services (ARS), all of that changed.

"It appeared to us at the time that it was the right thing to do," Korte says. "There were a lot of large companies coming in and buying small companies like ours and for us it was a way to look at retirement down the road. At the time it looked good, a good proposition for the future. I was allowed to stay and run the company for them and could choose when I wanted to retire in the future. I was really planning for the future."

ARS, now owned by Service Master, owned Korte Electric for four years, which was just long enough for the Korte and their key employees to figure out it was not a good fit.

"It was interesting," Korte says. "For the first six months they left us alone and then they started making some significant changes. I didn't have time to run the business because they were demanding report, after report, after report. While reports may be necessary, you have to have time to run the business, too.

"It was just really hard and we even lost one good employee during that time," Korte continues. "It's pretty amazing to me how these big companies come in and say they are behind their employees and their customers, but who they really are concerned about in the end are the stockholders. It's a numbers game."

David Korte, Jerry's son and Vice President Of Outside Operations, was in direct contact with the customers during this time and found out first-hand what being acquired by a large company really meant.

"I felt pretty small and powerless," David says. "I had been working for my dad for 12 years and all of a sudden someone else steps in and starts telling us what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. It was too difficult.

"I am very hands-on with the customers and during that period I was on the front lines, providing service to new construction jobs in the area," he says. "There was a lot of resistance. I would drive up to a job site with a new logo on my truck and the other construction crews would question who I was. I couldn't help but feel a loss of control."

Eagan wanted the business back in an Instant

Like Korte Electric, big business stepped in and took over Instant Copy as well, changing its name to XYAN and causing management to slash jobs and redirect the entire focus of the company.

Hugh Eagan started working at Instant Copy right out of high school in 1980. Today, Eagan owns the multi-million dollar Instant Copy enterprise after realizing that the company he had dedicated himself to for so long was spinning out of control, a problem caused by the XYAN take-over.

"They were really going in a direction that I was not happy with and that was getting away from the retail-based stores and only working with large customers," Eagan says. "It really did not make sense for the locations that we had here in Indiana. Our customer base has always been built around local businesses and our retail environment is very important. I decided that the future didn't look all that bright in the direction XYAN was heading, so I bought full rights to the Instant Copy name, the trademark and everything. I took over full ownership of the stores in Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Elkhart and Warsaw last December."

According to Eagan, the most serious disappointment during the XYAN takeover was the big business attitude that spilled over to the customers and the employees.

"We lost a lot of key employees early on and XYAN started changing the way it looked at the businesses and did a lot of sweeping cuts of our employees," Eagan says. "It was not unusual for them to call me up on a Friday night and tell me they needed 12 names for termination by Monday. It was pretty drastic. XYAN is a national company and they were not making the profits that they needed. Instead of focusing on better selling or cutting back on costs, they just slashed bodies."

"We are working hard to get the customers back that left when XYAN came in and changed the focus of our business," Eagan says. "We are back to focusing on total customer service."

Eagan has three main reasons for buying out XYAN and returning it to its rightful name, Instant Copy. "I did this primarily for the safety and security of all the employees that we had working for us," he says. "I have worked with most of these people for 20 years and I felt that if we could get this company back, we could all work together and have something that would secure us in the future, and it didn't look like too bright of a future going forward with XYAN.

"Secondly," Eagan says, "I was concerned for our customers. We have been in Fort Wayne for 32 years and if something would have happened to XYAN, the partnerships that we have created with customers over the years would just disappear. Finally, as an independent business owner there is a great deal of pride in bringing a business back to the local community."

Both Korte and Eagan survived the trials and tribulations of working under the ownerships of national companies, but not without realizing the serious repercussions that can occur when dollars mean more than customer and employee relationships.

"We bought the company back when it was still profitable and we are now able to serve our customers better then when it was owned by someone else," Korte says.

Back to articles.