"Niche" is a word perhaps too often applied to the specialists in the world of industrial distribution, but it's rarely used more appropriately than in the sales-and-service world of Jerry Brothers Industries. Light-duty industrial belting has been the company's one and only specialty since 1905, when leather was the main material for making conveyor and power transmission belts.

Narrowing the niche even further, Jerry Brothers supplies almost half of the belting it sells to the tobacco industry. With standards far more stringent than other consumables manufacturers, the tobacco industry uses belts approved only after months of development and possibly years of testing, according to Ted Lushch, company owner.

Since the end product (cigarettes) is combustible, all products that touch the tobacco must pass stringent "burn tests." The industry will not allow any combustible residue or particles to be inadvertently processed into cigarette products. That includes the raw leaf processors and the cigarette makers, Lushch says.

The latest result of this strict application and testing process is Poly-C/S tobacco belts. The product's "tobacco approved" label means it can be used on original equipment conveyors or as replacements for old belts. Poly-C/S material extended belt life from about weeks to months.

"We don't sell products, we sell solutions," says Lushch, echoing a common but important mantra for small distributors today. "We're a small, specialized group of experts in what we do. If, in fact, we have a solution for a tobacco process, we travel the world with it. Believe me, countries like Turkey can buy belts elsewhere, but our expertise is the value we bring to every sale," Lushch says.

The founding family sold Jerry Brothers in 1979 when the two brothers parted ways, Lushch says. Lushch bought the company in 1988, becoming only the third owner of a business approaching its 100^th anniversary.

The trio of Lushch, vice president of sales Scott Kesner and Mike Barker, vice president of Charlotte, N.C. branch operations, are leaders of a company in an evolving industry. Although the company specializes in belts for the tobacco industry, it has begun to penetrate the food service and packaging industries more than ever before.

Kesner has 15 years of experience selling and specifying belting, and Barker has 12. Lushch has well over 20 years. In that time, they have dealt with many belt end-user industries including food, textile and paper converting. Kesner has a lot of multi-industry, international experience. In the tobacco industry, Jerry Brothers deals mainly with six major players: three cigarette makers and three tobacco leaf processors.

Lushch is on the board of directors of the National Industrial Belting Assn. and on its education committee. Kesner is on NIBA's Member Services & Marketing Committee.

"It's very difficult to break into the tobacco supply business. It's not as big as everyone thinks it is. There's a painfully slow approval process. They hold our feet to the fire because they demand the safest plants imaginable," Lushch says.

The technical aspects of belting, and the materials from which belts are made, have changed a lot from the slow speeds of the flat leather used in 1905.

"Belting is one of the few MRO-type industries with no standards authority telling what the belt is, what it does and what it must be capable of doing. Nearly all other industrial product groups have a lot of standards to follow before you start the sale. In bearings, grinders, tools, there are standards; in belting, you learn as you go," Kesner says.

"Now, it's not that we want a lot of standards [in the form of] rules. We've worked long enough to know how to get the customers what they need. But humidity, temperature, speed and raw, dirty product are all variables that change the belt specs. That need for expertise will never go away, so non-standardization has become a plus for us," he says.

Last year was the best ever, Lushch says, in both tobacco and non-tobacco business. The warehouse floor was so full of belt rolls that they had almost no room to cut and splice.

"We must be doing something right. We had our cake and ate it, too, in the last 12 months. Not only did tobacco industry sales boom, but so did food and paper converting. It was not uncommon to work 12- to 14-hour days in order to meet customers' needs," he says.

Some examples of the intricacies of tobacco processing are belts that operate at high speed, up to 1,200 feet-per-minute, and have special holes and cleats that hold tobacco leaf without damage. Another line has an electronic eye that can determine 200 shades of brown. When a bad leaf comes across the eye, a shot of air blows it off the conveyor.

"We tried to fool it by laying a ten-dollar bill on the belt, and the eye saw it as a contaminant," Lushch says. "We had to scramble to get the bill off the floor."

Tobacco belt life is rated in terms of seasons. The processing season varies by country and location. When the processing plant is out of season, all the equipment is broken down, cleaned and overhauled, Lushch says.

"The Virginia processing season starts in August and goes to April or May. There is processing around the world that goes on longer," he says.

Gary Brannon, purchasing manager at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-Salem, N.C., is responsible for purchasing all MRO and capital machinery for the company. He has been buying from Jerry Brothers for 12 years.

"We have five-, three- and one-year cycles for inventory, with minimums and maximums. The system looks back and sets an ordering point," he says. "Jerry Brothers has been supplying belts [at R.J. Reynolds] for 20 or 30 years, I imagine. I've been working with them for 12 years. They do a good job for us," he says.

Brannon adds that he buys between 30 and 40 types of belting from Jerry Brothers, and each is specifically engineered for a part of the tobacco processing function.

"Raw tobacco travels automatically on belts from the start of processing and is not touched until it goes into the cigarette maker. Sometimes it is wet or dry, and we add flavors, and some goes into drying ovens. Each belt must be specific to the weight and speed of the process. We use flat, ribbed and pyramid belts. They are two-, five- and seven-ply belts," he says.

Tobacco is not the only industry that needs specialty belting. Food processors and paper product makers have become such large customers in the last several years, according to Kesner, that the company stocks over 25 belt types for those industries. As lately as three years ago, they stocked two.

Barker has a lot of experience in food and paper processing.

"Here's a way belts have become high-tech like so many other goods: There are limitations in the way you can process food, so the maker wants more cookies per hour, and wants to cook them faster. They make bigger and wider ovens that need bigger and wider belts. But the belts have to meet all the strict food processing regulations at the same time," Barker says.

"Of course, doubling a belt width doubles the size and weight. So you are looking at larger equipment [to carry the belt]. It all works together in what is actually a very technical way."

Customer relationships are the driving force that makes Jerry Brothers a successful player in a large-company field.

"We're sometimes financially creative with customers to get them what they need, but in general we deal with much larger firms than ourselves," Kesner says. "We do business back and forth because we trust each other. The product and service and expertise has to be there or they won't be back."

The food service industry is one of those large-company industries that run mazes of conveyor belts through spotless plants located throughout the world. The way to upsell one of those customers is to get him more uptime and faster production. If you can do both, Lushch says, as they did with Poly C/S belting, they are more than satisfied.

"Belting products, with few exceptions, remain basically the same, so innovation in speed and endurance means everything. Fortunately for us, that has to be learned as you go," he says.

Also a challenge is the folding box industry that uses conveyors for everything from transporting raw pulp to high-speed miniature folding operations.

"There's an old New England company that folds 8,000 boxes a minute that hold two Chiclets® gum pieces. They're about one inch by a half inch. They are moved into [folding equipment], folded and moved so fast you can't see it, all by lightweight conveyor. Some day they want to fold a million an hour," Kesner says. "The point is that you can configure cleats, holes, bends and vertical angles in nearly any configuration with today's belting."

In the last year, Jerry Brothers grew more than in any prior year. Lushch says the product groups in non-tobacco belting exceeded all expectations. However, the market has changed at a rapid pace and Jerry Brothers management is finding more competition knocking on customers' doors than ever before.

"It seems that with every new customer we get a new competitor, but we try not to let external factors get to us. We're pretty aggressive and we have longevity here in Virginia," Kesner says.

And longevity in the business is something shared by Wayne Hoffman, president of Siegling America and a longtime friend of Ted Lushch. Siegling is a primary supplier of lightweight belting to Jerry Brothers and, according to Hoffman, the companies have collaborated on many projects. Hoffman is also president of the National Industrial Belting Assn.

"Ted travels the world solving problems and making recommendations. He's positioned himself around the world to serve customers, but I think we have a unique situation here in [the mid-Atlantic coast], also. There are huge national accounts as well as local, and we are always interested in working together and protecting them. [Ted] recognizes that," Hoffman says.

Siegling America, based in Huntersville, N.C., has been supplying belting to Jerry Brothers for over 10 years. His salespeople, Hoffman says, always work well with Lushch's people.

"Ted and I go way back to [B.F.] Goodrich Co. We have a healthy respect for each other and in that region of the country, we are always working together. We have a high level of trust. I hope we have that kind of relationship with all our customers, but I know we do with Jerry Brothers," he says.