An 80-year-old family business has changed with the times.
Photos by Glenn Triest
STEVE STEIN STAFF WRITER
Howard Stone
has been with
the company
since 1969.
1:1
t was 1914 when Abe Bad-
er began a textile bag ren-
ovating business in his
father's garage in Detroit.
He called it Bader Bag Co.
Eighty years later, the
24-employee company is
named Packaging Concepts
& Design and it's located
in a 16,000-square- foot of-
fice and warehouse facility
in Madison Heights. It moved
there from the Eastern Market
section of Detroit 23 years ago.
Instead of being primarily a
bag distributor, PC&D provides
custom packaging for industri-
al customers using a network-
ing system of designers and
manufacturers. Once PC&D de-
termines the most economical
packaging for a customer, it is
purchased from a manufactur-
er and sold to the customer.
This strategy is one of many
changes the company has made
through the years to meet the
demands of the marketplace.
Bader Bag became PC&D in
1987 to better reflect its role in
the industry, but the Bader
family still runs the business.
Abe's son, Martin, 71, is chair-
man and chief executive officer.
He has been with the company
since 1946.
Chief Operating Officer
Howard Stone, 50, has been em-
ployed with PC&D since 1969.
During his 25-year tenure, an-
nual sales have risen from $1
million to last year's record of
$15 million.
Among PC&D's major cus-
tomers are office furniture man-
ufacturer Steelcase Inc., of
Grand Rapids, and Johnson
Controls, a Plymouth-based au-
tomobile seat maker. PC&D
has more than 600 active ac-
counts and it ships materials to
35 states.
Mr. Bader is pleased with
"our current posture as a de-
signer and supplier of a broad
range of flexible packaging ma-
terials. We're able to supply the
largest users at multiple loca-
tions to their standards of qual-
ity, delivery requirements,
ecology concerns and commu-
nication systems."
From the present, Mr. Bad-
er also maintains a firm grasp
of the past. He remembers ac-
companying his parents on buy-
"I'm lucky that I
was born into my
family and in this
country."
Martin Bader
ing and selling trips and the day
his mother, Sarah, taught him
how to drive during a stop in a
small town in Canada. The car
was a 1928 Jordan. Mr. Bader
was 14.
Mr. Bader also recalls lunch-
es in the Samuels Brothers cafe-
teria in Eastern Market "with
the meat packers, fish house,
poultry and produce purveyors
in the neighborhood.
"I also remember the hun-
dreds of bottles of sacramental
wine that were made by my
widowed grandmother each
year for our mostly non-Jewish
customers before it was avail-
able in stores. The luckier cus-
tomers attended home-cooked
Shabbat lunches at her house
with all the traditional soups,
fishes, chickens, cakes and dill
pickles from the crock on the
back porch."
In 1943, Mr. Bader became
the first Wayne University stu-
dent to graduate with a degree
in metallurgical engineering,
"because my name was first al-
phabetically," he said. From
1943-46, Mr. Bader served in
the U.S. Air Force, operating
weather forecasting stations.
Mr. Bader and Mr. Stone,
who are both members of Tem-
ple Israel, are active in the com-
munity, donating both time and
money to several causes.
A member of the Allied Jew-
ish Campaign's Quarter Cen-
tury Club, Mr. Bader also
contributes to the Cohn-Had-
dow Center for Judaic Studies
at Wayne State University and.
PACKAGE page 32