Phillips leads with people-first mentality

Phillips Tube Group CEO Angela Phillips

If you wonder how Angela Phillips has led the tube and pipe manufacturer that bears her family name through so many twists and turns, look no further than the sharp U-turn that swung her career back home.

Phillips’ late father, Ralph, started the company in 1967 just outside Shelby, Ohio. Since then, it’s grown from a single machine shop into Phillips Tube Group, which includes Shelby Welded Tube, Middletown Tube Works Inc. (Middletown, Ohio), and Phillips Tube Group of Alabama (near Birmingham).

Her Journey Begins

Phillips was promoted from vice president to CEO of the company in 2009 when her father passed away. But for her, taking the helm wasn’t always a fait accompli. In fact, one thing Phillips knew when she graduated from Hiram College in Cleveland was that she didn’t want to work for her dad.

“I had worked for him during high school and breaks during college,” Phillips remembered. “When I looked around, the women were either answering phones or filing or getting coffee for all the men, and I didn’t see that as my future in the steel tube industry. I thought, ‘Hey, this is male dominated. It’s not going to change.’ I really didn’t think there was a place for me within the business.”

Instead, she had set her sights on a law career. She had taken her LSATs and even moved to the Houston area to attend law school. And then …

“I think I called him because my car broke down,” Phillips recalled. “He said, ‘Why don’t you come work for me for a little bit before you go on to law school?’ And that’s how I ended up in the business.”

Adapt, Adjust, Advance

Surviving in that business has forced Phillips and her team—which she’s careful to credit for much of her success—to accept (sometimes drastic) change as a way of life and adapt accordingly. She pointed to temporary COVID-related layoffs and the ways it changed the labor market as just two examples.

How is she doing? Ask Ernst & Young, which earlier this year honored Phillips as one of seven 2023 Entrepreneur of the Year Award winners from its East Central region (comprising Kentucky, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and northeast and south-central Ohio).

“Every year, we are completely blown away by the accomplishments of our Entrepreneur Of The Year Regional Award winners, and 2023 is no different,” said AJ Jordan, EY Americas Entrepreneur Of The Year Program director, in a release. “We can’t wait to see how these leaders will continue to improve lives and disrupt industries.”

And after 29 years in the tube and pipe business (and 14 running one), she knows a thing or two about positive disruptions—and how to weather the ones nobody wants or sees coming.

“I think a lot of it is the resilience of getting through the challenges that have happened,” Phillips said when asked about one thing that’s led to her success. “It’ll be 14 years in September since my dad has passed and when I took over as CEO. Those challenges have kind of formed us and shaped us and caused us to change who we are as a company.

“A lot of it, I think, relates to the quality of the team I’ve been able to build over those years, starting out with my dad’s team that he had, and then adding in some really good talent that has helped us get to this level we’re at today.”

Bent Toward Growth

In growing to that level, Phillips’ company has played the long game, gradually expanding and acquiring other businesses as opportunities arose—changing its name and core competencies numerous times along the way.

It all started when Phillips Machine and Welding bought the Barker Tower Company in 1974 and became Phillips Manufacturing and Tower Co. (PMT). Next, PMT expanded by purchasing two small-diameter tube mills from Copperweld, followed in 1985 by its acquisition of Hedstrom Corp. in Dothan, Ala., and the renaming of that business to Dothan Tubular Products. Then, in 1993, the company purchased the mechanical tubing division of the former Armco Steel (now AK Steel), renaming it Middletown Tube Works Inc.

In 2016, with Phillips now at the helm, the company bought Pell City, Ala.-based Amtech, then East Palestine, Ohio-based Tubetech in 2017, and finally expanded in 2020 with the opening of Phillips Tube Group of Indiana.

Today, the company’s four divisions are simply known as Phillips Tube Group Shelby, Middletown, Richmond (Ind.), and Fabrication (Middletown). With consolidation continuing apace across the market, Phillips said the company is always looking for opportunities to expand beyond what it currently offers so that it can either bring something new to its current customers or reach brand-new ones.

“Continued consolidation of our industry is something that’s top of mind for me,” Phillips said. “We’re on the lookout right now for additional mergers and acquisitions. That’s a big part of it for us. We see a lot of consolidation happening.”

As the company has grown, so have the challenges of pricing, labor, raw material, and transportation faced by every tube and pipe business. Staying ahead of those problems while keeping the common touch modeled by her father is what drives Phillips to keep moving ahead.

“The thing that drives me is, the challenge is always there,” Phillips said. “The challenges are limitless. There’s always another problem to solve. There’s always something else going on. Sometimes I sit back and say, ‘Wow, I think we’ve seen it all. We’ve been there and done it.’ And then something like COVID happens—things that you don’t see coming at all.

“It’s just [getting] the right brains at the table to be able to say, ‘OK, here’s what’s happening. Here are all of our options. Let’s figure this out.’ And being able to do it in a very real-time way so we’re not hesitating. We’re not waiting for somebody else to do something. We’re trying to lead in a way that we think we can be successful.”

For Phillips, that means doing what she can to ensure the company has the kind of trained, skilled workers it needs to remain competitive. While some companies are looking to incentives, flexible schedules, wages, and improving company culture to achieve that, Phillips Tube Group has zeroed in on education—specifically, what it calls PTG Academy.

Phillips: A Learning Environment

Still in the latter planning stages, PTG Academy will offer an educational road map for employees hoping to advance—and the money to pay for those classes. Phillips is hoping to launch the program by the end of the year as a way to help everyone involved. Employees gain expertise, and the company retains loyal employees with growing skill sets. And because PTG has a habit of promoting from within, allowing its people to take courses at their own pace keeps with a tradition that has served the company well so far.

“They don’t necessarily know what [classes] would help them,” Phillips said of employees looking to advance. “They don’t know, ‘If I go to the local community college, what course should I take? If I want to become a supervisor, or I want to go into engineering, or I want to go into an office role in sales, what would be good?’

“So, we took the proactive approach. We said, ‘What if we selected that coursework that we want employees to take?’ We would pay for them to take that. And at the end of the day, the company benefits because now they’ve gained this skill or this knowledge.”

Looking at the success of her company and accolades like the Ernst & Young award earlier this year, Phillips credits her father for showing her both how to run a successful company and also how to treat the people around her.

“I had a great road map because, with my dad starting the business in ‘67, he had been doing it for quite a while before I took over the helm,” Phillips said. “So, looking at what he did, I think how he treated employees, how he treated customers, how he treated suppliers, and the way that he operated the business was a great road map for me and my staff.

“It has been a real people-focused atmosphere—safety first, a real respect for family. We do a lot to try and make sure that our employees have family time and some work-life balance. We want them to stay with us. We don’t want them in a position where they feel like they have to go someplace else so that they can spend time with their kids. It’s a matter of walking in their shoes. In a lot of ways, our employees have grown to really appreciate that we are there for them. I think that not losing that as we’ve grown has been the biggest part of our success.”