R.M. Wade & Co.: 150th anniversary

The Beaverton, Ore. company created a website to celebrate its long history.

The Business: Robert Marshall Wade, born in Missouri in 1835, crossed the Oregon Trail in 1850. After first establishing a store in The Dalles, Ore., he moved to Salem, Ore., where he purchased an interest in a company; he then bought out his partner and changed the name of the business. R.M. Wade & Co. was established in 1865 as a hardware and dry goods store and soon shifted to selling agricultural implements, buggies and hardware to farmers. In 1885, the company moved its headquarters to Portland; branches in other cities in the Willamette Valley were opened and closed over the years. The business moved to Beaverton, Ore., in 1972.

Wade’s son-in-law, Edward J. Newbegin, became president after the founder’s death in 1915. In 1927, R.M. Wade & Co. acquired Multnomah Iron Works, which became the company’s manufacturing division. When Edward Newbegin passed away suddenly in 1929, his son, Wade Newbegin, took the reins at age 21 and guided the company through the Great Depression. During World War II, R.M. Wade & Co. received the “M” Maritime Award for outstanding contribution to the war effort.

After seeing a sprinkler irrigation system being demonstrated at Oregon Technical College (the predecessor of Oregon State University) in 1935, Wade Newbegin decided it would be a good fit for Multnomah, later named Wade Manufacturing. Wade Rain Sprinkler Systems were introduced in 1936 and were sold around the world.

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Fourth-generation members Wade Newbegin Jr. and Edward Newbegin were named to leadership positions in the early 1980s. Wade Rain entered the drip irrigation business in 1987; a year later, it moved into the leach mining industry. The drip division was sold in 1995, but the company retained ownership of its Ore-Max product line. Wade Rain outsourced its manufacturing in 2001 in order to focus on the international market. Fifth-generation member John Wade Newbegin, son of Edward Newbegin, joined the company in 1998 and founded Wade Rain of Mexico in 2001.

Wade Newbegin Jr. retired from R.M. Wade Distribution in 1998. His siblings Edward Newbegin and Susan Newbegin Russell amicably divided the family enterprise in 2004. Edward Newbegin took sole ownership of Wade Rain, which has about 125 employees and generates annual revenues of about $41 million. Susan Russell, who had worked in the distribution division, assumed control of R.M. Wade in order to liquidate the farm and garden business and transform it into a real estate investment company.

The Family: Russell, who calls the splitting of the company “completely amicable,” says she and her brother “just wanted to go in different directions.” The farm and garden division had not been doing well for more than a decade, she explains. “After a couple of years I didn’t see a way to change it because of the Internet and the direction that distributorships were taking. The dealers now buy direct from the manufacturer in most cases. So I decided that I was going to liquidate the farm and garden division and just focus on real estate, which is one of my passions.

The two siblings still work together and collaborated on the 150th anniversary website project. “We are very proud [of reaching the milestone], and Ed is the one who should be the most proud, because he’s carrying it forward, and his family is into the next generation [working in the business],” Russell says. Her two sons currently work in the computer industry and might consider joining the property-holding entity at some point in the future, she notes.

The Celebration: A special website, www.rmwade150.com, was created to mark the anniversary and showcase the company’s storied history. “We debated how to celebrate it, and we decided to use something that would reach as many people as possible,” Newbegin says.

The site presents a treasure trove of historical artifacts and a year-by-year narrative that weaves together company history and American history, along with a description of important agricultural and social developments. Among the gems available for viewing are an 1897 poem by the founder describing his experiences on the Oregon Trail; photos of family members, employees and facilities from all stages of the company’s history; old invoices and correspondence; company catalogs (the oldest dates from 1894); and photos of old equipment, along with YouTube videos depicting how the implements were used.

Searching the company archives for materials to post on the site “gave me a great appreciation of the history,” Newbegin says. “The biggest thing I learned in doing the website was that tremendous progress has been made in agriculture, in terms of a smaller and smaller percentage of the population producing more and more food. And it’s all through this mechanization of agriculture which has occurred. I’m not saying we did it, but we sold a lot of equipment that did it.”

From its inception, R.M. Wade played a key role in introducing revolutionary agricultural implements to the area, such as the Heider tractor (an early gasoline-powered tractor that replaced horse-drawn equipment), which R.M. Wade began selling in 1915, and the Ford-Ferguson tractor (the first modern tractor), introduced in 1939.

“From 1865 to 1925 we were a wholesaler, and there was a continuous stream of innovative new equipment that we could sell,” Newbegin says. “We’d bring it into the Northwest by train and redistribute it to dealers.”

The company was a pioneer on the manufacturing side, as well. The Wade Drag Saw was used for harvesting lumber — at least until the development of the chainsaw, a major impetus for R.M. Wade’s move into irrigation.

Exporting was a major revenue source early on. Wade Drag Saws were sold to Europe and Australia/New Zealand, and the company began to export its irrigation systems in 1952.

Today, Newbegin reports, “We’re very much involved in international agricultural development.” In 1992, Wade Rain was selected to irrigate a 25,000-acre site on the Majes Plains in southern Peru. As a result of the project, what was once an arid area is now an “incredible, thriving agricultural community,” Newbegin says.

The Planning: Creating the site took about six months, Newbegin estimates. “Most of the time [was spent] gathering the materials and writing the story,” he says. “We have to sort through boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff. “

Newbegin and Russell note that the experience shed light on how their ancestors lived and “solved some family mysteries,” as Newbegin puts it. “We did find some skeletons that came out,” he admits. He notes, however, that long-buried family secrets were kept off the website.

The Response: Newbegin says the 150th anniversary website has received nearly 5,000 unique visitors to date—even without a big publicity campaign. “People are finding it somehow,” he marvels.

The Future: “I said in June, ‘Well, we’ve spent the first six months of the year working on the past, and now we’re going to work on the future for the rest of the year,'” Newbegin reports. The positive response he has received from the 150th anniversary website has inspired him to create a website to sell irrigation equipment directly, he says. 

 


Copyright 2015 by Family Business Magazine. This article may not be posted online or reproduced in any form, including photocopy, without permission from the publisher. For reprint information, contact bwenger@familybusinessmagazine.com

 

About the Author(s)

Barbara Spector

Barbara Spector is Family Business Magazine's editor-at-large.


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