Luck Companies

History

Charles Luck started the Luck Company in 1923 and also bought the Sunnyside Granite
Company in Virginia. During those times, people used sledgehammers to mine the graphite and
it was loaded into mule-driven carts by hand. Over the next 4-5 decades Luck kept on buying
more quarries and expanded the business. The company transformed its stone crushed business
in Virginia from steam powered to electric powered operations.

Charles III joined the business in 1955 when the company had already acquired 5 quarries
including a limestone operation. After 10 years, Charles took the reign and his father became the
Chairman of the board. Charles kept on expanding the business and in 1972 an electronic
ticketing was installed at the Sales offices. A retail store was opened in 1976 to display the
architectural stone display. In 1977, they achieved a new feat by developing fully automated
stone crushing plants that can be left unattended. Charlie Luck also known as Charles Luck IV
joined the family business in 1987. Before that he worked for 4 years building and racing cars on
the NASCAR circuit.

By the year 1990, the company had 14 crushed stone operations, one sand and gravel plant and
six Architectural Stone Centers. During this time the company had diversified its business by
entering into sustainable real estate. The company had also introduced the first self-service stone
loading system and computer monitoring system for crushing activities. By the time, the
company reached its 80 years of operations, Charlie became the CEO of the company and
Charles Luck III became the chairman of the board. Luck stone acquired a provider of clay
tennis courts. It also started providing the lighting, court services and accessories and became a
global supplier. By the year 2002, Luck Company became a global supplier with 4 different
divisions

 Luck Stone
 Charles Luck Stone Center
 Har-Tru Sports
 Luck Development Partners
The leadership of Luck Company was strong enough and they used to think over their mistakes.
In the year 2002, the growth rate of the company was good and all the financials were impressive
but the conversations and the flow of meetings did not go good. All the members were thinking
of themselves while trying to backstab each other. When the CEO realized that the company was
not going as per the vision and values passed from generation to generation, he decided to
rebuild the culture with the help of Holt Development Services, Inc. They introduced value based
leadership training for the employees starting with the top leaders within the company. The core
values identified are

 Commitment
 Integrity
 Creativity
 Leadership

Each senior official spends at least 10 days in the value based leadership training; all the new
employees are required to go through the training. Monthly classes on value and yearly
leadership development program were introduced for the 40 associates. The workshops focused
on social awareness, self-awareness and influence. Through this value based leadership, people
are challenged to work hard and improve the lives of others. Due to the training programs and
the efforts of the top management, employees at the Luck companies carry the value of the
company on their ID cards and take all the decisions while keeping in mind the values of the
company.

Luck Stone Company was in a commodity based business in which they applied their innovation
to stay ahead of their competitors. The company identified that culture is the most important
thing and the leadership instilled a customer inspired culture. This indicates developing an
emotional connect with the customers, understanding their world and the complexities faced by
the customers. From this come empathy, care and passion to serve the customers. All the tools
developed by the company take care of the remaining task. Luck Companies used to develop
customers which are both functionally as well as emotionally oriented with the customers. The
company used to majorly serve 15-25 customers. The employees used to visit the customers,
understand their operations and try to develop the solutions as per the needs of the customers.
They used to test the newly developed solutions at the customer site.
As the environment is becoming more competitive, it becomes very difficult for the customers to
plan for the upcoming demand. Sometimes the weather becomes unpredictable, there are issues
with the permit which causes unplanned demand and leads to disruption in the supply chain.
Luck Companies understood all this very well and worked in collaboration with the clients to
serve the unplanned demand as well leading to customer happiness. They introduced a non-linear
innovation process consisting of three steps. The first steps consist of creating where the
associates, customers and the stakeholders come up together to imaging the new things. Next is
the implementation phase where all the ideas are put on a roadmap. The final phase is the
realization phase where various initiatives that become successful are appreciated. Various other
initiatives are as follows:

 Centralized Order Management and Dispatch

 Delivering value to end-customers
 Becoming paperless
 Delivering value to luck stones dispatchers
 Implementing the driverless loader

These achievements are possible only when the values and the vision are passed on from
generation to generation and these are the ingredients for building a strong business. Charles I to
Charles IV all believed in customer centric ideology and tried to reinvent their processes so as to
serve the customers in a better way and stay ahead of their competitors.