Industry Profile

WA Brown & Son

Innovation and determination have long been a part of Salisbury’s industrial history and the story of W.A. Brown & Son illustrates this fact. Mr. W. A. Brown started working in the family owned fish market located in Salisbury, North Carolina late in the 1890's. Soon, W.A. opened his own fish market, expanded it to include fresh meat and realized that he needed a better method to preserve the quality of his meat products.

W. A. became very interested in this new method of refrigerating food products after traveling to New Jersey to see it in use and he soon purchased and installed an early refrigeration unit. Other market owners heard of the Brown Market's mechanized equipment and came to Salisbury to see the Mechanical Refrigeration and how it operated. W. A. realized that an opportunity existed, ordered units for the impressed market owners and the business grew into a dealership.

In 1925, W. A. Brown gave his son, Dodd, an interest in the business and changed the name of the company to W. A. Brown & Son. By this time the company had begun building prefabricated modular panel walk-in refrigerators made of oak framing with granulated cork for insulation, and were connected by lag bolts. The entrance doors and reach-in windows were purchased, and the finishing work and assembly was completed at the Brown plant.

Originality continued as a hallmark of the company and Brown was the first walk-in manufacturer to offer smooth aluminum material as the standard walk-in cooler finish. The company helped develop a technically advanced insulated panel using polyurethane foam. W. A. Brown established a separate Electrical Controls Division in 1974 that quickly grew into Energy Management Systems serving customer needs for Lighting Controls, Commercial Restaurant Hood Controls, Fuel Dispenser Controls, and Power Quality Systems. The Division grew swiftly and spun off to Powerbox Solutions, LLC in 2001.

Brown has continued to expand its market and to keep abreast of new technology to produce its products. The walk-in product has been submitted and passed major testing conducted by Underwriters Laboratories, Factory Mutual Laboratories, and the National Sanitation Foundation and Brown manufactures a product today which meets the numerous state building codes. Recently an engineered material building, under the Better Building Products LLC brand, developed by Brown, was opened as a car wash and another as a quick lube business.

W. A. Brown & Son, Inc. has grown from operating a small meat market with three employees to employing nearly 200 workers in a 275,000 sq. foot state-of-the art facility opened in 1999 on Long Meadow Rd in the South Mark Commercial Center. Brown's current product offering includes Coolers and Freezers serving customers from the huge Paris Casino, to the local service station. Typical to the firms in the Salisbury- Rowan community, at W. A. Brown, as growth and change continue, quality and craftsmanship are traditions that will never be sacrificed.