Common Ground

View This Article in BOSS Magazine

The virtues of listening and finding harmony are guiding Central Garden and Pet to a new perspective on supply chain

“One blade of grass and one wagging tail at a time.” That’s how Central Garden and Pet (NASDAQ: CENT, CENTA) has evolved from a local distribution company to a home and garden powerhouse. The Walnut Creek, Calif.-based firm boasts a portfolio of over 65 high-quality brands including Amdro®, Aqueon®, Cadet®, Farnam®, Ferry-Morse®, Four Paws®, Kaytee®, K&H®, Nylabone®, and Pennington®.

Central offers a wide range of products, ranging from critter bedding, toys, and treats, to grass seed, fertilizer, live flowers, shrubs, and trees. Make no mistake, Central isn’t your typical garden supply or pet supply shop.

Aron Kolosik

In 1980, Central founder Bill Brown opened a small distribution company, parlaying it over four decades into a $3 billion-plus business as the second-largest home and garden enterprise of its kind in the country. “It’s been quite the journey over the last 40 years,” remarked Chief Supply Chain Officer Aron Kolosik. “One of the things that drew me to Central was the wide diversity and the opportunity to make a difference.”

Kolosik, a 23-year veteran of Procter & Gamble, was eager to apply the many lessons of his tenure to a different market. The companies composing Central’s burgeoning portfolio were big successes, and there was an exciting opportunity to explore synergies amongst them by leveraging the strengths already existing within Central, reapplying them across the portfolio, and taking advantage of the latest advancements in technology.

Kolosik is dedicated to harmonizing supply chain best practices across the company. Cost optimization ranked high on the to-do list, as did uniting the team. “It was an exciting time to teach what I had learned and been trained to do for over 20 years to team members who hadn't been exposed to something like this,” he said. “I could see the opportunity for reapplication of best practices and just the opportunity to teach and lead differently.”

The company is undertaking a cost and simplification initiative. “When you have different processes like accounts receivable, accounts payable, customer service, warehousing, shipping, order fulfillment, it forces you to think of what is ‘transactional’ versus what is ‘magical’ within a business unit,” he noted. Identifying which functions should be a shared service and which processes and technologies should be shared has led to simplification of their network, processes, and technology master plan.

Historically each business had its own ERP system, which, given the size of the organization, was untenable. Over the last several years, Central has developed a vision to shift to a dual ERP system model and updated its acquisition economics to roll the associated spending into the overall cost of acquisition. “There is a delineation between business unit specific needs and opportunities for a shared service or a scaled opportunity, which is new for us,” he explained.

The cost and simplification initiative includes streamlining the number of locations and sites as well as evaluating common technologies to understand where the similarities between business units can be used to their best advantage. “Coming up with common tools that can bridge across the entire company is a critical theme because we don't want to solve the same issue in different or in multiple ways.”

Common processes and tools are adapted uniquely within their business units. When it comes to skill building, Central partners with the Institute of Supply Chain Management to develop training capabilities and programs for procurement professionals across the company. “Skills can be the same, but their adaptation and  their application will be different within the business units,” he said.

The value of sincere communication

An entrepreneurial and growth mindset has been and will always be part of the company's legacy, and for Kolosik there's a strong link between unleashing the power of Central’s people and the corporate culture honed over four decades of prosperity.

“We're built on integrity, honesty, and trust, and that can only happen if we’re having the right conversations with our suppliers, our team members, and our leadership,” said Kolosik. Central’s six fundamental values are showcased in his direction of the supply chain organization.

“We are entrepreneurial, and that's one of the reasons why I love Central,” he mused, considering their “strive to be the best” value statement. “We empower our people to run the business. We become the best when we make sure that our people can become the best version of themselves.”

The company’s culture is predominantly led by each business unit (BU). Each BU is a tight-knit team, and they are committed to working together to succeed. “As a center of excellence if you will, the supply chain team needs to listen. We need to think through how we win together. Winning together means understanding our diversity and what's unique about ourselves,” he stressed, adding that there's not enough curiosity about the way people win and how their experience and background influence their success. “We recently had a cost summit and one of the things that we shared was to be curious, not judgmental.”

When it comes to the core value of growing every day, Central invests in its people and encourages career development. “I want my team members to grow, we want our teams to grow, and I want to grow. I want to help them see things differently than perhaps they've seen things in the past.” Kolosik’s energy, curiosity, and verve reflect the bedrock value that underpins all of Central’s core principles – to be passionate.

He is indeed passionate, and willing to start much-needed but often neglected conversations about leadership. “So many articles are written about the risks and supply chain, on supply chain contingency and risk management, but very little is talked about in the context of how leadership needs to adapt in a world that has gone remote. In some ways that's just as important of an unlock of our people as any other strategy.”

The post-pandemic hybrid remote-onsite work environment poses its share of challenges as boundaries blur, distractions mount, and isolation lingers. “Oftentimes, we overlook that we're not asking questions. We're not seeking to understand,” he said. “I'm not asking our team members to tell us the nitty-gritty details of their lives. I'm just asking that we acknowledge that taking care of mental health, taking care of relationships, and taking care of yourself physically, does affect your work. More important than ever, we need to equip our team members with tools, and we need to be listening to create an environment that helps someone be successful.”

There’s no shortage of irony in the fact that in business best practices are shared when it comes to tools and processes, but not when it comes to how to manage employees’ mental health, physical health, or relationship health needs at a time of continual, disruptive change.

“That's part of why I'm passionate about opening up this topic,” he said. “As a senior leader, oftentimes your team members  think everything's perfect in your life. Well, everything is not perfect. You can also be normal and still be in this role. Normal means that we have the same problems that everybody else does and normal means we should also share how we process them.” We told you: Central isn’t typical – and that’s key to their growth and success.