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When Ray Strumbly started to envision his retirement and the future of the business he spent decades cultivating, the idea of selling to private equity didn’t sit well with him.

“In my long history, I've yet to meet a private equity organization that made a company better. Usually, it has to do with reducing headcount and creating efficiencies, and then the company turns over repeatedly, and unfortunately, that's not good for your customer base,” he said.

Strumbly joined , a Mentor, Ohio-based distributor of loading dock equipment and doors, in 1997, working his way up from a sales leadership position to that of president and owner.

Strumbly said he first started considering employee ownership for Timbers-Kovar in 2003, but it wasn’t until this past year, in January 2025, that he finally completed the deal, after he and Eric Liebhardt, the company's vice president and chief operating officer, decided to take action. Strumbly sold his ownership of the business to Timbers-Kovar employees through an employee-owned stock ownership (ESOP) plan. While it took some time to ultimately make the decision, now that the company’s transition to an ESOP is complete, Strumbly says he’s happy with his decision.

“Incredibly happy, but I'm happy for different reasons,” he said. “I'm happy because there aren't too many times in your lifetime as an individual where you actually have the ability to own a business. People go to work every single day, and they do a good job for their employer, and I respect that a lot. I wanted to give something to our people. It's very rewarding.”

In that span of time between 2003 when Strumbly first began considering employee ownership, to 2025 when the deal was complete, he would occasionally reach out to Chris Cooper, director of the  (OEOC) at ����ֱ�� State University, to talk about his options.

The Ohio Employee Ownership Center at ����ֱ�� State University

What initially began as a research project started by John Logue, Ph.D., a professor in ����ֱ�� State’s Department of Political Science, has grown to become one of the oldest, continually operating state centers in the United States. Established during the economic upheaval the Rust Belt region of Northeast Ohio was experiencing in the late 1980s, the OEOC is now one of the nation’s leading knowledge centers on employee ownership and the only one of its kind in Ohio. The center provides everything from research and advocacy to education, training and technical assistance – working directly with companies looking to transition a business to an employee-ownership model. As an outreach center based at ����ֱ�� State, the OEOC is funded by grants from a range of public and private agencies and foundations, program income and fee-for-service work. In recent years, the OEOC has received financial support from the Cleveland Foundation, George Gund Foundation, Burton D. Morgan Foundation, Employee Ownership Expansion Network and the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. In addition, they have received support from the Russell Sage Foundation to create a first-of-its-kind dataset on worker cooperatives in the U.S. in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh. They are also regular contributors to Rutgers University's Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, one of the leading academic initiatives in the employee ownership sector.  

"Our mission is to expand and support the employee ownership community,” Chris Cooper, director of the OEOC, said. “The first leg is our business succession planning program, in which we work with business owners who might be interested in selling their company to their employees. The second leg is our training and education – it's probably the single biggest component of what we do. There are about 340 employee-owned companies in the state of Ohio, and we're out there all the time providing training to those companies with the goal of making them better employee-owned companies. And the third leg of the stool is our research and advocacy work for the idea of employee ownership."

"When we go out to companies and offer these training programs, we have immediate credibility that we know what we're doing,” he said. “When we're out there talking to business owners, they realize that we are a public service entity. The help and assistance that we're providing them doesn't come with a sales pitch at the end."

Cooper points out that in the instance of business succession planning, such as with Strumbly, it’s not just a fiscal decision; it’s also deeply personal, and that is reflected in the way the OEOC works with its clients.

"Business owners will typically spend more time with their business family than their actual family,” Cooper said. “They've spent a lot of time, effort, blood, sweat and tears in developing this thing. And for the typical business owner, that means a lot."

The Impact and Importance of Employee Ownership

According to OEOC research, there are an estimated 337 ESOPs and 27 worker cooperatives that contribute $2.8 billion to the Ohio economy, placing the state in the top three nationally for number of ESOPs. The employee owners themselves have an average individual account balance of more than $222,000 (in addition to other retirement accounts), demonstrating the powerful advantage for employee owners. While Ohio is one of the leading states for ESOPs, the national numbers are equally impressive.

“There are a lot of advantages to employee ownership,” Mike Palmieri, associate director of the OEOC, said. “You could think about the workers themselves. It's been shown that they have much more wealth, higher wages and income, and better benefits. So, if that's something important to you, employee ownership is great. But, also at the business level, there's a lot of success there. When compared, employee-owned companies outperform their peers across numerous metrics; they're less likely to go out of business during financial downturns.”

“When you add it all up together, employee ownership can be an economic development tool that's sustainable and benefits more than just a small minority. Employee ownership is a really powerful tool that interestingly has broad appeal across different demographics and political affiliations,” Palmieri said. “It's a proven business strategy that can achieve multiple goals for various stakeholders, be they workers, business owners, economic developers, or public officials concerned about retaining businesses in their community.”

Half of all small businesses in the U.S. are owned by baby boomers. The “Silver Tsunami” refers to the massive wave of business transitions expected over the next two decades as millions of baby boomer business owners reach retirement age, representing one of the largest private wealth transfers in U.S. history.

Ohio will feel the impacts. Today, an estimated 54% of businesses are owned by baby boomers, which employ 1 million workers, provide $45 billion in payroll, and generate $219 billion in revenue. Yet, only 20-30% of business owners have a formal succession plan.  

Putting Ownership Into Practice

Becoming an ESOP is just the beginning. After the transition is complete, it’s time to educate employees about what ownership actually means and how to keep that culture alive as the workforce evolves.

, a managed IT services firm based in Northeast Ohio, became 100% employee-owned in 2018. While the OEOC wasn't involved in the conversion itself, the relationship that followed has proven invaluable. Michelle Tomallo, co-founder and chief people officer, said the educational and networking opportunities OEOC provides are crucial.

"I think one of the biggest things is connecting with other ESOPs,” she said. “We need to help tell the story and the benefits often about ESOPs because it's a long-term benefit, and especially in a market with a workforce that has changed from when we became an ESOP in 2018."

For , a majority employee-owned construction services firm based in Sharon Center, Ohio, that ongoing education is built directly into how the company operates. Ruhlin has been an ESOP since 1977, making it one of Ohio's longest-running employee-owned companies. It also was recently recognized by OEOC with a 45-year award. 

Sean Demlow, the company's chief financial officer, said OEOC's training resources have been central to keeping that ownership culture intact across generations of employees.

"The OEOC really helps us with our required ESOP training,” he said. “We take our ESOP culture very seriously and each one of our employee owners has to complete a certain amount of ESOP training every three years. The OEOC provides that through their annual conference, webinars and things like that. OEOC really helps drive the message home that, ‘hey, you have a responsibility and it is also a benefit for you to be an employee owner.’ So, some of the functions that they offer in terms of training are very valuable to us.”

More Than a Game

OEOC's work extends beyond ESOPs to worker cooperatives as well. , a Cleveland-based organization that converts existing businesses in low-to-moderate income neighborhoods to employee ownership, has partnered closely with OEOC to build out its employee education infrastructure. 

Emma Sherrie, marketing and network support coordinator at Evergreen, said OEOC developed an entire online training module program from scratch for Evergreen's employee owners.

The partnership also produced one of OEOC's most distinctive training tools, adapted specifically for Evergreen's worker cooperative model. OEOC had previously developed what it called the ESOP game, a hands-on simulation that puts employees in the role of business decision-makers. At Evergreen's request, OEOC developed a cooperative version.

"We've been doing the co-op game with all of our employee owners at each of our locations," Sherrie said. "It's a full-day training where all of our employees are gathered, they're on teams with their other employees, and they all are making real-time business decisions, working together and understanding what it's like to run an actual business."

The game deliberately mixes employees from across all levels of the organization – from frontline workers to the CEO – and walks them through real business decisions, including bonuses, raises and safety investments, tracking the financial impact of each choice on a profit and loss statement.

"The main goal of the game is to have everybody understand the business decisions that go into an organization,” Sherrie said. “It's a time for everybody to get together and to understand that every ounce of a decision that you make interplays with something else. And they all get to understand how they impact the bottom line and how they can actually make more money for themselves by making more money for the company."

The response has been strong enough that Evergreen has asked OEOC to develop a more advanced, second version of the game for employee owners who want to go deeper.

Ongoing Support and Networking

Beyond formal training, OEOC functions as a steady resource that employee-owned companies can turn to as questions arise – a standing advisor on what is, for many companies, an ongoing journey.

Demlow said he reaches out to OEOC roughly once a quarter, often to benchmark Ruhlin's practices against what other employee-owned companies are doing.

"A lot of times those are just questions like ‘hey, we're thinking about doing this, have you seen other companies that are doing this?’ It's good to compare yourself and have that resource to find out what other ESOP companies are doing," he said.

That peer network is one of the most cited benefits among Ohio ESOPs. Tomallo described an almost immediate sense of alignment when connecting with other employee-owned businesses through OEOC – a shared language around values, culture and long-term thinking that makes those relationships feel distinct from ordinary business networking.

ESOPs are also quick to select other ESOPs as business partners as well, Strumbly noted.

Bringing It All Together

The OEOC's annual conference serves as a centerpiece of that network, bringing together employee-owned companies from across the state for speakers, vendor tables and peer exchange. FIT Technologies has become an active contributor to the event, with staff members leading sessions on topics including AI and cybersecurity. Will Elffers, business development team lead at FIT Technologies, sees those contributions as a natural extension of the company's values, and a way to introduce the ESOP model to business owners who may not yet have considered it.

Elffers noted that conversations he has with executives and owners exploring exit strategies often lead naturally into a discussion about employee ownership, making an early connection to OEOC especially valuable.

Tomallo added that OEOC also opens doors for FIT employees beyond simply attending events.

"So not only just educating our employees, but then the opportunity for our team to volunteer, be on committees, be in leadership roles there," she said.

Cooper says they take pride in the annual conference, which sees about 400 attendees each year and offers something for everyone interested in the employee ownership landscape. Regardless of an employee's level, OEOC offers the tools and training to empower and educate them. But moreover, he's proud to know of the positive impact the OEOC has on the lives of individual employees.

"The impact is people,” Cooper said. “Whether it's helping that business owner achieve that final component of being a business owner by creating a good succession plan, or the people in the employee-owned companies — these are everyday working people, our friends, our neighbors, the people who live across from us. Being able to be a part of that work, that change, that impact — I think is really our biggest legacy."

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