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10 minutes with Bridget Milot of PIP

Sep 22, 2016 • News & Events
Robin K. Cooper, Albany Business Review

Bridget Milot remembers waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of invoices rolling across the fax machine when she was a little girl.

She was 12 years old the first time her father, Joe Milot, took her to China to visit a business partner and suppliers.

And she cannot recall a time when she didn't see gloves hanging around her family's home in Niskayuna.

Today, Milot is the vice president of administration and corporate counsel at Protective Industrial Products. The Latham glove, goggle and hard hat supplier imports, makes and sells safety gear through a network of 2,500 distributors around the world.

She and her younger brother, Joe, grew up in the business their father started in 1984 by selling gloves out of the back of an old station wagon.

Now, she is one of the leaders of a company with a payroll of more than 300 and annual sales that have surpassed $250 million a year.

What were your first jobs at Protective Industrial Products? During summer vacations, I worked as a receptionist. I have worked in accounts receivable, inventory management and accounting.

You joined the business full time in 2005 after graduating from Albany Law School. What was your role at

that time? I started doing more legal work. I worked on trademarks and investigated compliance and regulatory issues for products.

I had a chance to put my education to use right away. We jumped into an acquisition of the Great Southern Corp. in Memphis, Tennessee, shortly after I joined. I spent a lot of time going back and forth doing our due diligence. That was when we acquired the Brahma Glove brand. [Those are the gloves on the racks inside Stewart's Shops convenience stores.

Did you always plan to join the family business? I love international travel and interacting with different cultures. I spent a semester in Hong Kong during my junior year. And I interned at CNN in Hong Kong working on the production side for a group that did financial markets reporting.

What prompted you to go to law school? I used to have long talks with a woman who worked at PIP. I remember her telling me that I should go to law school if I wanted to learn how to think differently.

Did it work? By the time I went to law school, I knew I wanted to work here. I immersed myself in contract law and business law. You just read so much. You are forced to challenge arguments that you thought were absolute. You learn to challenge your own thinking and to look at things in ways that you never have before. Being forced to think about things from different points of view has helped me with negotiations. It helps in discussions with customers, vendors and personnel.

Your family has become close with your father's longtime business partner Wellson Tao. When I was in school, I used to go to Hong Kong and live with them for weeks at a time in the summer. The Tao family's two sons lived here with us when they were going to high school and college. It was like growing up with two families.

Because you, your father and your brother all work at PIP, do you find yourselves talking shop outside of the office? I think it is very challenging for my mother...During family dinners or at Thanksgiving, we try to steer the conversation away from work. Because we are so passionate about it, it definitely is the default.

You went to school in Niskayuna until seventh grade. What was the transition like to Albany Academy for Girls? My parents had always instilled the value of education in me. They wanted an opportunity to get me in an all-girls environment. At Niskayuna, I was distracted with clothes and trying to be one of the cool kids.

I grew up riding horses with some girls from the Academy, so it was an easy transition. Honestly, I thrived at the Academy. I was class president and went all the way up to being student council president...It might not be the right fit for everyone. It was the right fit for me.

Tell me something your father taught you that has shaped your philosophy about business. A lot of the companies we have acquired have fallen on hard times or the owner might have died and left his widow with the company...My father has a reputation in the industry about being fair, honest and knowledgeable. He became known for doing the right thing, so people would contact him.

That stuck with me...You only get one reputation. Everyone is going to know it. So do what you say and stick up for the right things. He gets so much joy from furthering the business. It's not about the 300 employees. It's about the 300 families that we impact.

He has this quote, "If we are so good, why aren't we better?" I have very much taken that to heart. That

drive to be better makes me extremely motivated. I can see the vision that he has and where we want to be

as a leader in this industry.

SOURCE: http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/news/2016/09/22/10-minutes-with-bridget-milot-of-protective.html