Hussey Seating

July 21, 2025 – John Abrams

Among the many stories I had to leave out of my recent book due to space considerations, one of my favorites is about the Hussey Seating company. In 1835, William Hussey, a farmer in the small southern Maine town of North Berwick, designed a more efficient plow blade. The Hussey Plow Company was born, and the blade became internationally recognized for effectiveness and durability. The company would prove to be equally durable. After a fire in 1895 reduced the plant to rubble, Hussey’s grandsons rebuilt and redefined the company as a producer of steel products like fire escapes and bridge supports.

In 1931, Philip Hussey conceived of portable outdoor bleachers and started to produce them. When the baby boom of the fifties escalated the construction of new schools and gymnasiums, he adapted them to indoors and the company became the Hussey Seating Company. Many innovations later, the company’s 310 employees have made Hussey, still headquartered in little North Berwick, a world leader in the design and construction of seating for auditoriums, stadiums, performances spaces, and arenas. After 188 years in business and seven consecutive generations of Husseys, in 2023 the company was recognized by Maine’s Best Companies Group as one of the Best Places to Work in Maine for the fourth time.

Seven generations. Now 190 years. Why did the little plow company prosper, grow, and endure? Their website says, “Here's our secret: We're not a manufacturing center. We're an innovation center. While today we produce the highest quality spectator and audience seating in the world, our real business is listening to, understanding, and solving our customers’ biggest problems. From our time-honored craftsmanship to our cutting-edge manufacturing, we stand behind every seat, prepared for the roar of the crowd and the test of time.”

When you’re in it for the long haul, and listening all the time, innovation becomes part of the culture of doing business. It becomes your gravity. The solution-based mentality is baked into the company DNA.

Over two centuries, Hussey’s goals have not changed: a family business operating with honesty and integrity and caring about employees as much as profits and growth.

Rich Hussey is Vice President of Human Resources. After graduating from Colby College, Rich taught school in Boston, met his wife there, had kids, decided to move back to his hometown, and went to work at the family business. Not so easy to do. Family members have no inside track; they must apply for jobs in a competitive process, and they must earn their way. At the time, his older brother was CEO. Rich worked there for nine years and said to me with a wry grin, “It was not the best thing to endure performance reviews year-after-year from my older brother.” He left in 2006 to pursue a successful career in HR with other companies and returned in 2019 to the same role. Before that, he served on the board of directors for four years.

Until Rich’s brother’s tragic death at a young age, only family members had been CEO for six generations. After his death, the clear choice for CEO was then-CFO Gary Merrill; he became the first non-Hussey CEO. They are now on their second.

The Hussey family remains involved in the company in many ways, including ownership. They have created a complex decision-making system with five parts that has evolved over many years and includes: the family assembly, the family council, Class A shareholders, the board of directors, and management. Their decision matrix details types of decisions, who makes these decisions, who has input, and who is informed. The family assembly meets once a year and includes 35 people from the sixth and seventh generations, a few from the fifth, and spouses. The youngest member is 18. There is significant family education and engagement.

Rich chairs the family council, which has a legacy committee (the keeper of both the company and family histories), an education committee (responsible for educating new generations of Husseys), and an event planning committee. There are 10 Class A stockholders, all family members. The board chair is a sixth-generation non-employee woman named Leticia (Hussey) Beauregard and the seven-person board includes five non-family members. Rich is the only family member currently in senior management.

Hussey practices open-book management, sharing financials with employees on a quarterly basis and educating them about ways they can help the bottom line. Gross annual revenues are consistently above $130 million. For a time, they awarded Class B (non-voting) shares to employees, but the value of the shares fluctuated so wildly that they bought them all back and instituted a profit-sharing program instead, which rewards all employees and provides greater security. Profit sharing goes to employees before dividends go to shareholders. The Class B experiment was their only attempt at employee ownership to date.

The company has a history of remarkable employee longevity. As of the end of 2023, their 310 employees included 117 who had been there longer than 10 years, 67 longer than 25 years, and nine who had been there more than 40 years. The two longest-tenured employees recently retired after 46 years. The longest beat the second-longest (who held the door when the two friends went in to apply for jobs at the same time in 1977) by a few seconds.

Good wages and benefits, a family-friendly employee-oriented culture, and internal growth opportunities keep people there. Hussey has an Employee Value Proposition that continually examines what makes Hussey a good place to work and what could make it better, and, as Rich says, “what differentiates us from other employers.”

During the pandemic, the company carried more staff than they needed to operate. This impacted short-term profitability, but all the stakeholders (family owners, management, board) agreed to the approach. Rich related that their CEO said to employees when providing reassurance, “Hey, we can get through this—it isn’t even our first pandemic.” When the market came back strong, they were rewarded for their long-term thinking, as valuable team members were still in place.

The company does extensive local charitable giving, employees’ personal donations are matched by the company, and there is extra paid time off time for civic participation. Employees are educated about this so that, as Rich says, “when someone thanks them in the grocery store, they know what they’re talking about.”

Hussey makes the best, most lasting jobs in the area. If you are working for a company which cares about its employees’ and its community’s well-being, and provides opportunities for growth and change, why would you want to leave?

Although Hussey is not employee-owned, in many ways it behaves like the best of employee-owned companies. Their story is chock full of lessons about long-term business thinking, innovation, and community.

Given the history, it’s highly likely the story will not end anytime soon.