Profiles in Business: Peter and Richard Asch: Twincraft Soaps

Vermont Business Magazine, Nov 01, 2004 by Marcel, Joyce

Most people don't think much about hand-and-body soap. It comes in liquid or in bars, right? It's on the supermarket or drugstore shelf, right? It's either scented or it's not, right? And if it lathers up and cleans you off, what more can you want?

Plenty. For many sensual people in this post- aromatherapy age, soap that comes in bars is a glory, a luxurious, affordable, lathering, sweet-smelling joy.

It can be clear, colored, striped, or dotted with globules of emollients. It can be scented with such romantic things as lavender, vanilla, lemon grass, apples, verbena, rosemary, pomegranates or the weirdly-named ylang ylang.

It can be rich in tea tree oil or olive oil or vegetable oil or aloe or shea butter or even Dead Sea minerals.

Besides being able to clean your hands after you've changed the oil in your car or planted the spring bulbs, it can relax you, whiten your skin (extremely desirable in the Asian market) or tan it, help remove blemishes, moisturize, exfoliate, massage, deodorize, disinfect, and do other things so secret they remain, for the moment, proprietary information.

In the bar soap world, there are only two kinds: the mass-produced "commodity soaps" like Ivory and Dial, and the upscale luxury soaps that come with fancy labels like Henri Bendel, Banana Republic, Victoria Secret, the Gap, Dove, The Body Shop, Avon, Mary Kay, Herbalife, Dove or Avena. One thing these soaps have in common is that they are manufactured in Winooski by a company called Twincraft Soap.

Twincraft, a privately-owned family business, was originally a Canadian company, founded in Montreal in 1972 by twin brothers; hence the name. The twins, Robert and David Asch, first had a plastic bottle company they called Twinpak, and then a bottled water plant they called Twincraft. They kept the name when they sold that and started manufacturing soaps.

Robert handled operations while David handled sales and marketing, and even in their later years, the twins remained close, dressed almost alike and worked out of the same office while sitting at facing desks. The twins retired from the business in 1997, when they sold it to two of Robert's four children: Peter Asch, 44, who entered the company in 1984, and Richard Asch, 41, who came in 1994. Peter and Richard have run the company ever since.

Peter, the president and CEO, is responsible for strategic planning and internal operations. Vice president Richard focuses on sales but has some responsibility for special internal projects, training, and strategic planning.

"When there are decisions to be made, Peter will get 95 percent down the road and then we'll sit together and go over the final decisions," Richard said. "We both have our strengths, and they don't overlap a lot."

In person, Peter and Richard are both fit, athletic and personable men, but there are significant differences in their personalities. Peter is the intense one: a cartoon on his bulletin board shows a crane swallowing a frog; even though the frog's head is halfway down the bird's throat, its arms are wrapped tight around the its neck. "Don't ever give up," reads the caption.

Richard calls Peter a "Type A personality, outgoing, and very much a peopleperson who trusts people." Richard, a natural salesman, is softer and a bit more introverted. He likes to work on his own, and describes himself as less trusting and more technically proficient than his brother. Their differences are complimentary. The brothers are known for their devotion to each other, to their families, to their friends, and to Vermont.

"Peter and Richard may have been born and bred in Montreal, but they've become true Vermonters now," said Richard Wolfish, a tax partner at Gallagher Flynn & Company who has been Twincraft's accountant for the past 10 years, and is also a personal friend. "They care deeply about their company, their employees and their customers. They both love hockey, and we like to go to Montreal Canadien games. They're both good family men. In fact, I'm sure that's the most important thing to them in life, their beautiful families. They're still friends with the kids they grew up with in Montreal, which shows me how loyal they are. They get their loyalty from their father and uncle, who are in their 70s and still have friends they knew in childhood. So they're a family that values friendship and loyalty."

A family business can be a great or a miserable thing, depending on the relationships within the family. At Twincraft there seem to be few problems along that line.

"We act as professionals," Peter said. "That's something I truly learned from my father and my uncle. Family business can be the best, and it can be the worst. I can tell my brother in very crude terms things I would never tell to my employees. It's important to understand that and not cross the line - you have to remain professionals. If it were about power and money, we would fight. Our relationship is more important than money and power."

Nepotism played no part in passing the company on to the second generation; neither Peter nor Richard inherited their positions. According to a "tough love" philosophy laid down by the twins, strict rules govern how family members can enter the business. A 1994 article about Twincraft in Inc. Magazine lays them out: