Home Grown: Batteries Plus can power all your needs

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Jeremy England, general manager of Batteries Plus in Medford, tests the battery of a phone Friday.

Editor's note: This is one in a weekly series of profiles on locally owned and operated businesses in Southern Oregon.

What do you do and how long have you been doing it? We merchandise batteries, from a watch battery to off-road, heavy-equipment batteries for steam shovels. We provide batteries from automobiles to Zambonis. I've been running this store since Jan. 2, 2000

How long have you lived in the Rogue Valley? I was raised in Aumsville and after I was discharged from the military I ended up in Phoenix, Ariz. We lived in Grants Pass for a short period and then Eugene before moving back to Phoenix. We sold our battery business there in 1995 and moved here in 1998.

What inspired you to go into this line of work? I graduated as a physicist and realized a physicist without a Ph.D. was a glassware washer. I went back to school and got an engineering degree and went to work for Motorola and then General Electric. I realized the unit I was in wasn't going to survive and I started my own business distributing electronic components. I realized batteries were being misrepresented to the electronic entities and started a business that eventually became Batteries Plus.

What decision or action would you change if you could do it again? I would have gotten into it earlier. I would have taken a little more time in staffing. Right now I have a very effective staff, but it took a long time to develop them. Getting people familiar with electronics and particularly batteries was right next to impossible. I had to hire people with at least a good intelligence and teach them not only about battery technology but how to merchandise batteries. Battery specialties is a brand-new idea. Industrial people used to have to go to different vendors for all their batteries.

What's the toughest business decision you've made? Where to locate the business. When we bought the place, we looked for other places. After considering all the ramifications, we decided to stay where we are. We spent a lot of time coming to that decision, looking for another place and judging all the aspects, before deciding it made more sense to stay where we are. That forced us to stay in a building too small for what we did. So we leased a separate warehouse three-quarters of a mile from here to handle our storage.

Who are your competitors? When you say who is doing business like we do, no other places. But there are lot of places that sell batteries. In major component areas like cell phones, the biggest competition would have to be like the AT&T people and others that set up cell phones. The one thing that differentiates us is that we can test batteries and chargers and tell you if you need one.

What are your goals? Keep the company moving and growing and being able to find a successor that has the same kind of concerns. I've got people who I've had for 10 years and want to protect those guys. The first question I would have for a new owner is what would you do with the people working here. Hopefully, it will be attractive to someone with similar interests.

What training or education did you need? I have a physics degree from Point Loma College in California. My engineering degree is from Arizona State University. The only place you are going to learn about batteries is working with them. In all my college career there were no more than four pages in the textbooks on batteries. That was one of the things that led to my success — most engineers are not exposed to batteries. Honeywell was sending satellites into space and I was consulting with them on the battery requirements. Phoenix had 400 small businesses involved in technology. With few exceptions the principle engineers had no information about batteries. Understanding the circuitry, I could help them identify the batteries they needed.

What's your advice for budding entrepreneurs? Love the work you are doing. Be sure you are doing what you want to do and like what you are doing, then surround yourself with capable people.

To suggest ideas for this column, about locally owned businesses that are at least five years old, contact reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail business@mailtribune.com.

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