New D&H Headquarters Is ‘Transformational:’ Dan And Michael Schwab

D&H Co-Presidents Dan and Michael Schwab speak with CRN about the impact the move to a new campus—which includes a state-of-the-art solutions center and workspaces—is having on the 101-year-old company’s co-owner employees, vendors and partners.

D&H Co-Presidents Dan and Michael Schwab—who celebrated the grand opening of the company’s new high-tech campus with a gala event for 300 vendors—said key to the design and build-out of the new headquarters was input from the distributor’s co-owner employees.

“We listened to the employees,” said Michael Schwab. “We purposefully asked for their feedback. We asked them what was important to them for the new facility. It wasn’t just us articulating our vision. We asked the 750 employees that work across these two buildings what is it that they would like to see in their new D&H headquarters. That is where we came up with all the innovation and ideas.”

Dan Schwab said that constant feedback from co-owners is at the heart of D&H’s success. “We are a bottoms-up driven company,” he said. “Most organizations are top-down. With every co-owner on their one-year anniversary we have ‘Pizza with the Presidents’ and ask them to tell us what we don’t want to hear. Most companies don’t want to hear the bad stuff. We’d much rather hear the bad stuff than the good stuff because that is how you get better. We know we do a lot of things really well, but we are always striving to be better.”

What does it mean to the business to now have this new headquarters?

Michael Schwab: This is transformational. The best analogy came from one of our employee co-owners who said to me, ‘I feel like I have the same responsibility, the same job, the same daily routine but I am working for a brand-new innovative company.’ The only thing you can attribute that to is the fact that we are in a brand-new building and we have been able to realign the workspaces in a way that gives people the freedom and flexibility to be more collaborative and innovative in how they accomplish their responsibilities.

We have seen that already literally, even though we have only been in the building for three weeks. We have had to tell people, literally, ‘It is time to go home.’ They just love being here so much with the natural light and greenspace. They find this a very welcoming environment. They are very comfortable spending as much time as they need to here.

In our old property, though it served us well for 67 years, the opportunity to create that environment—based on just the age of the building—was just not available to us. The fact that we were able to start the design with the end result in mind was a huge game-changer for us.

Can you tell us about the ability to collaborate that is unleashed by the space and innovation?

Michael Schwab: We have tripled the number of what we call ‘huddle spaces’ compared to the old facility. There are over 100 collaboration rooms in this building alone. The vast majority of those have state-of-the-art technology for video collaboration. So whether we are talking to our Canadian operation or vendors or our partner customers, having that immersive experience in each of the conference rooms is compelling.

We wanted to make sure the entire building is taking advantage of all the great technology that we sell. So for example we have got a huge digital signage initiative as an organization. So from the video wall as you walk in the lobby to all the digital signage that is dispersed among the entire footprint, you can see we have leveraged all the resources we have to take advantage of all the technology that we aspire our resellers to bring to market and sell.

Can you talk about the role employee co-owners played in the build-out of the new facility?

Michael Schwab: We listened to the employees. We purposefully asked for their feedback. We asked them what was important to them for the new facility. It wasn’t just us articulating our vision. We asked the 750 employees that work across these two buildings what is it that they would like to see in their new D&H headquarters. That is where they came up with all the innovation and ideas.

They were interested in work/life balance. [We have] a walking track and great outdoor space. We also wanted to create a great indoor space so we created something called ‘Izzy’s Game Room.’ That is a stress and relaxation area for our co-owners to take five to 10 minutes throughout the day and destress with ping-pong, pool, chess and all sorts of games to enjoy and be free of the daily routine at their leisure.

Our co-owners thought it would be great if we had a cafeteria on site, which we never had before. It’s a full-service breakfast and lunch. The response has been great on the quality and pricing of the food.

Dan Schwab: We really listened to our employees—just as we survey our customers as to where we can help them. We never assume we know the answers. We asked our employees what they would like to see and we let them name all the conference rooms. We had four themes: superheroes, movies, music and sports. Some of the favorite ones are the ‘McFly’ conference room from ‘Back To The Future.’ The ‘Burgundy’ room for ‘Ron Burgundy.’ For superheroes we have the ‘Kryptonite’ room, ‘Gotham.’ It’s fun.

Can you talk about the mixture of hard work and fun that you are bringing to the workplace?

Dan Schwab: Everyone is an employee owner. Everyone treats D&H like this is their own business. Think about a small-business owner and how dedicated they are to their business. Their work/life balance blends because it is their baby. That is really how the D&H co-owners operate. It is their company as well and they share in the success.

Michael Schwab: We also added what we call a ‘Recharge Room’—a quiet space with nature sounds in the background. It’s basically a little pod that our employees can sit in and take a few minutes to decompress. It’s a way to decompress and destress so you can come back with a new mind-set and attitude.

How are you going to maintain the long-established D&H DNA with the new campus?

Michael Schwab: A very important aspect of the organization is maintaining the culture. Dan and I meet with every employee on their 90th day to share with them our history and articulate the culture. They don’t just walk into this building, do their job and never get to experience what got us here. Dan and I take the time to do that with every employee. We meet with them again on their one-year anniversary to find out what they like about the company and what we can do better.

One of the parts of the culture that we want to maintain is we don’t offshore customer-facing responsibilities. It’s not like our salespeople are located anywhere else around the globe—they are right here in central Pennsylvania. In fact, we have added 160 people over the last year at our corporate headquarters. We have 750 employees at our headquarters and 1,400 overall.

Dan Schwab: We are a bottoms-up driven company. Most organizations are top-down. With every co-owner on their one-year anniversary we have ‘Pizza with the Presidents’ and ask them to tell us what we don’t want to hear. Most companies don’t want to hear the bad stuff. We’d much rather hear the bad stuff than the good stuff because that is how you get better. We know we do a lot of things really well, but we are always striving to be better.

Can you tell us a little about the Wi-Fi capabilities that permeate the entire campus experience?

Michael Schwab: Think about a university campus that is immersed in Wi-Fi. That is the expectation of every student on campus. We similarly saw that as a value-add whether you are outside on the walking track, having lunch in the picnic areas. It doesn’t matter where you are on the 50-acre campus, it is immersive Wi-Fi.

Dan Schwab: And when the next generation of Wi-Fi is introduced, D&H wants to be at the forefront internally—training our resellers to leverage the opportunity.

Does the philosophy or culture change now that you are in a modern state-of-the-art campus?

Dan Schwab: We are still conservative in nature. As a company we invest for the long term. We were at our old facility for 67 years. That was built that in 1952 by our grandfather David.

Michael Schwab: Think about David’s vision at that time. He probably thought we would never outgrow that building. There we were 67 years later and if we hired one more person they would have had to work in a broom closet. We were out of space.

What is the continuum from the old facility to the new campus?

Dan Schwab: When we moved here to the new campus the goal was to accentuate the collaboration, partnerships and relationships. This whole building is about driving better communication with our vendors and partners with more meeting areas and much more collaboration between employees.

We have tripled the amount of training facilities for our solution provider customers for things like webinars and in-person training. In addition to the ability to train literally hundreds of resellers at a time, we now have the capacity to do multiple webinars every week to train our thousands of small-business partners.

Partners can visit us, but for many small resellers it is cost-prohibitive to travel. Now we can do two or three webinars a week on emerging technology and new solutions. Some of the webinars we can now do are how to install digital signage into a small retail; how to add video surveillance to the dentist’s office that added a second facility; how to leverage new server technology from HPE or Cisco to upgrade a small-business network; how to take advantage of government funding to drive wireless in K-12 schools; and how to set up an E Sports facility in a K-12 or college.

Michael Schwab: We get the sense that the manufacturers we work with are not offering as robust presales support as our resellers need. Therefore, we are taking it upon ourselves to build out that fundamental knowledge base to train our salespeople and then turn around and train the resellers—providing that education downstream from both a content and marketing perspective.

Can you talk about D&H Fest and the celebration of D&H with partners?

Dan Schwab: We have over 350 different vendors flying in for the event. We saw a couple this morning at breakfast who told us they only came for the opening because it is D&H. It is personal. Relationships still matter. We are big believers in relationships. We think it is not just price and other factors. Relationships stand the test of time. That is a key to our longevity.

How do you envision the new campus helping D&H build stronger relationships?

Dan Schwab: Some of our vendors have offices literally on our sales floor so they can interact with our salespeople. Remember, we have an open-door policy. Vendors can visit us anytime. We now have training in the middle of our sales floor so vendors can grab groups of salespeople a few at a time and train them and do a deep dive on technology. There is much more space for vendors to come in and meet with employees. We didn’t have enough conference rooms. We tripled our conference rooms.

What impact is the new campus going to have on recruiting new talent?

Michael Schwab: From a recruitment standpoint as we look to hire new talent, this facility creates a whole new perception of D&H compared to the first impression that the old physical plant gave to new employees. It is the same people, same culture and new buildings.