NEWS >> 2008 >> 04 >> 23

Murray combines commerce, social mission

Casey J Dickinson
Business Journal - Central New York, The

Mar 24, 2005 19:00 EST

CORTLAND - J. M. Murray Center, Inc. ships millions of products each year. The 500-employee Cortland company combines business with a social mission. that gives the disabled meaningful work, says Kevin R. Crosley, vice president for sales and marketing for J. M. Murray Center, Inc.

Founded in 1966 as the Cortland Workshop, the J. M. Murray Center has transitioned through several businesses over the years. Once known for it furniture restoration business, the company now provides assembly and manufacturing services under government contracts and to private enterprises. Its signature products are the millions of toothbrushes it produces along with other dental-care items. The center has annual revenues of $8.5 million from the sale of its products and services.

The center is named for former Cortland Line Co. President John M. Murray, who helped found the center that now bears his name. Murray, who had a disabled son, and other Cortland businessmen created the business as a way to give jobs to disabled area residents while providing meaningful work, Crosley explains. After Murray died in 1973, the Cortland Workshop was renamed in his honor.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, the J. M. Murray Center built a reputation for furniture restoration, says Crosley. The business line once made up the bulk of its work. The center dropped the business line in favor of other ventures when the furniture business began 'straying from the center's core mission of training disabled workers.

In 2004, the center produced 4.7-million toothbrushes, 3.1 million tubes of toothpaste, and 34 million plastic bags. The center also packaged more than 7 million sample-sized packages under contract with Cortland's Marietta Corp.

State and federal contracts, which have preferences for businesses that hire the disabled, provide much of the center's work. In 2003, the J. M. Murray Center filed more than $3.4 million in oral-care supply contracts for New York State and the federal government. The finished products go to state and federal agencies for distribution to government-supplied institutions.

"You can find our products just about anywhere that is supplied by a state or government agency," says Crosley.

In addition to manufacturing, J. M. Murray's work force performs labor-intensive processes for several companies. Last year, the center's employees processed four million bobbins for International Wire. The wire company's plastic spools are not completely emptied during the manufacturing process, leaving valuable copper wire on the spools. J. M. Murray employees salvage the copper wire and prepare the small plastic spools for reuse.

"They [International Wire] were doing it themselves," says Crosley, "but we can perform the service more economically and give people jobs."

The J. M. Murray Center also operates a janitorial company that services businesses throughout Cortland County.

J. M. Murray has four locations in Cortland County. The center's main location on Route 13 covers 108,000 square feet. It leases 60,000 square feet in an adjacent building, has another 60,000 square feet at a building on Route 281, and operates a 2,000-square-foot, out-placement center as well.

Inside the company's main building, workers at several stations produce and package a variety of products. At one station, workers assemble pool ropes by placing plastic floats on a poly line. Other workers take the completed products and package them for shipping. At another workstation, employees assemble rolls of dental floss and plastic cases into the familiar container seen in stores and dentist's offices.

Across the open shop floor, workers assemble fragrant airfresheners designed for use in refrigerators. Many of the companies that contract the J. M. Murray Center have no manufacturing capability of their own.

"The companies get their products and our workers get jobs," he says, "'if the arrangement didn't make economic sense for both sides, you can bet it would end."

The center also packages thousands of ropes, irrigation hydrants, mirrors, and other products each year. '

Inside an enclosed section of the factory floor, the center packages toothpaste. The product arrives in a drum from a factory in Chicago and is placed into tube by a packaging machine that can fill and seal a toothpaste tube in less than one second.

Though many workers will stay at J. M. Murray for their entire careers, the center's goal is to place its employees in jobs with other companies throughout Cortland County.

"Our jobs train people to be the best workers they can be," Crosley explains, "and then we give them away." BOTW PROFILE

Richard Benchley

Chief Executive Officer

J. M. Murray Center, Inc.

* Age: 52

* Residence: Cortland

* Education: Bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts, MBA from Babson College

* Family: Two children

BOTW FACTS

J. M. Murray Center, Inc.

823 Route 13

Cortland, N.Y. 13045