Atthowe Fine Art Services, now in the hands of the employees

[Music] my grandfather started a business and that was in the late 30s and when World War II was over my grandfather and my father wound up getting into the general trucking business and in 1947 Incorporated uh I to have transportation in about 1973 74 I had the access to a truck so we started uh moving objects of art for different small museums and said h i could make a business out of this maybe and the beginning of next year will be our 50th year in business this is the environment that Scott grew up in and after going to Art School he saw a need in the Bay Area art community mostly centered around installation transportation and storage of artwork and that there needed to be a skilled group of people that were sensitive enough to work with Fine Art and he saw this as a way to transform a part of his family business into something that would fulfill this need uh for 50 years Scott the former um president he uh he made Community you know for 50 years and I think we're pretty installed in in community here I think the work that you see atau put out there really speaks for itself either the big installation jobs the private household moves um some of the gallery work that we do and then like the packing and cating that's out there in the world uh I think it really sets us apart and of course you know I don't think you can go 6 months without hearing about some amazing work that ATA did in the community or in the like art World in like the Bay Area in general so um I it's just yeah it's just impressive yeah I've been here a long time and I think my I was first struck by it really was a community of artists um it was our Founders idea to to have a place for artists to be able to work and get great health care and um have a good job and still be able to do their art uh when I first met Scott he told me that his dream was to sell the company to the employees and I found that really fascinating and it's probably given me a lot of um purpose to to be here and to help him see his dream turn into a reality I had heard Scott was retiring and that he was selling his selling the company to the employees I didn't know what that meant you know the word Co-op didn't really pop into my head at first um but I knew that that was a big change over in the company that you know the quote unquote patriarch of the company is kind of selling his company to his employees when Scott at town was getting to the point where he was going to retire he had a wish to sell it to the employees he had thought about a co-op but to be honest with you nobody knew what that meant I got probably two or three inquiries a week about people that wanted to buy our company and basically build it up and sell it I thought that is not what I wanted do he kind of saw the writing on the wall that this was a a really emerging business that would be very successful and very lucrative for someone else to come and just buy up he was adamant he was that he did not want that to happen maybe they won't put the company out of business but they're putting they will definitely be laying off the people and the people that really make the company and made the company what it is today the consolidation is happening in our industry but it's a different business model and they are eating all the little guys one thing about our founder is he didn't want to have anything to do with it and he you know his attitude was I've done fine I'm going to do this for the employees I lose count of the conversations where people are so happy that we did this primarily because our main competitor was just swallowed by a huge National company now people who work in museums even people who work at said competitor will tell me it's so cool what you did okay I'll take it I started the company I like the idea of some sort of thing that the owner didn't reap all the benefits that's how I started into looking at project e we just literally found them on a website we just did a Google Search and they were local and we couldn't have done it without him like we had no clue what was coming finding uh project equity was was a huge help is if we hadn't found project Equity it would have taken 10 years to do it to figure all of that out so it's a huge help guiding the path and you know writing bylaws and all of that stuff is daunting but so it's a good you know it really made it possible working with project Equity was wonderful we had so many questions also for them and they were able to to answer the questions and if they didn't know anything they found out and but they mostly knew everything um project Equity really helped us um they shephered us through that process it was very professional and um they have a lot of integrity and they were also very patient with us we were allowed the opportunity to explore what our personal goals were and what the goals for the company were and we really were able to uh collaborate so that we were able to let the come and have the best ideas has put forward and we went from you know from the feasibility study all the way to creating all the words in the bylaws it was it was quite an involved process and we took great great care in each moment I knew that this is was really important to him that everyone keep their jobs and so it was a lot of work and I just always felt like it was well worth it and from what I can tell it seems like you know they really have stepped up to the plate and it's fun to watch that happen because I think some of them probably were nervous about it and you know can we do it and do we want to do it you know because it takes a lot of work and it seems like they've figured it out and yes yes it's worth it and we we can do it project Equity showed us what a co-op could structure like and it fit and we're lucky so I'm very proud I'm I'm not just proud because I'm an owner I'm proud because I helped it happen and it changes the outome for a lot of people that I really I've worked with for a long time and I that's the payoff right you change the outcome for the people the the notion of employee ownership and ownership mentality is now in the room all the time a lot of new clients are really happy to hear that we're a worker on Co-op it seems they almost seem more reassured that the work that we do for them is going to be good work but it's actually care and attention going into each job it's so hard to say any bad things about being a worker owned cop I think there's only positives you become a worker owner and it's like it's like on it's like okay the whole perspective of the work you do at the company just changes it's like a pretty significant paradig shift currently at to fin art Services is roughly 45 uh employees and about 33 three are worker owners our Co-op was founded in 2021 early 2021 and so it was within a year and a half of the co-ops founding that we sent out our first patronage checks people when they got their first um patronage check were pretty excited and those who weren't owners yet saw that excitement and wanted to participate and felt more confidence and what that actually meant if I'm at a company I'm working there and I'm going to try my best to push that company forward it just what sets this company apart from others is now it feels like what I do actually affects me it's not just I'm making money for somebody else that it's I'm making money for me I'm making money for like this Collective team of people I see that not only staff want to work here people who are applying for jobs here are very excited by the model um so it's definitely getting a lot of very qualified candidates our employees and worker owners are are going to take it to the the next level I I definitely have great confidence that we will succeed at what we've begun [Music]