Biography
Jon Bacon started working at his dad and grandpa’s company in 1977 during his high school summers. He painted Bauer Products’ building and did general maintenance.
“At night, when everybody left,” Bacon said, “we would go up and take out the exhaust fans and windows to clean them. Even as a kid growing up, I knew my dad worked hard down here.”
Working part-time at the family company while getting his degree in biochemistry, Bacon started full-time at Bauer Products in 1984. He slowly worked his way up, starting by convincing his dad and uncle to replace the office’s manual typewriters with Macs.
“My dad and uncle were at the stage in their life when they were not comfortable with computers,” Bacon said. “So, I had to prove that. From there, I started going around seeing how we could make each department a little better.”
Bacon worked with the company’s die casting team for a bit to figure out what to order and run, then handled overseas ordering.
“Knowing what it would cost to get product over here, that is how I got into pricing,” Bacon said. “From that point, it snowballed.” Now, Bacon is president of operations, handling overseas orders, quotes, invoices, customer relations and coordinating assembly work.
“I have been growing in this direction since the mid-1980s,” Bacon said. “I try to take a lot of things off Bruce so he can focus on developing new products,” he said of his brother. Bauer Products has around four times the product they did when they took over the company in 2001.
“I’m proud that we put out quality parts that we can stand behind,” Bacon said. “The only way to survive is to work on making better parts and procedures.”
