Family-owned Macon business helps keep people safe

Business 1 on 1 with Jim Jones, who co-owns with his wife, Barbara, Southern Safety Supply Co., 2135 Broadway, Macon, 478-743-1576.

How long have you been in business?: The company was founded in the mid-1960s and changed hands a couple of times by 2002 when the owner retired.

“I was working as a manager at If It’s Paper at the time. I always wanted to own my own business, and at the time we had two small kids. One was 3  1/2 and one was 1, so I didn’t want to start up something. I wanted something with a cash flow already in place.”

So, he asked Charles Jay with Jay & Associates, a business intermediary, if he knew of any businesses for sale, and Jay suggested Southern Safety Supply.

What do you like best about your job?: “The customers and the people we work with. ... It’s a challenge each day because you never know what’s going to happen. In this line of business, people’s lives are actually at stake, so you can help them be safe. One of our goals, just like in baseball, you want to make it home safe. We want our customers to make it home safe.”

What is your specialty?: “Of course, we service and sell fire extinguishers, and one of our big lines is fire protection. We sell industrial safety products for businesses and contractors.”

The company services fire extinguishers mostly in a 60-mile radius “and that’s where a lot of our business comes from. We will ship out of the area. ... We service gas detectors for confined spaces. We do calibrations on them.”

The company also sells a variety of items including hard hats, ear plugs, ear muffs, dust masks, respirators, traffic cones, flashlights, spill response kits, parking and traffic signs, caution and barricade tape, survey tape and first-aid products.

What are your future plans?: “I hope to sell it to somebody and retire at some point, but that’s maybe 20 years down the road probably. We don’t really want another location. … We just want to be the best at what we do and not so spread out that we can’t give our customers quality care.”

This story was originally published April 29, 2016 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Family-owned Macon business helps keep people safe."