PBN 2023 Business Women Awards
ACHIEVEMENT HONOREE: Tracey Beck | The Beck Cos. co-owner and chief operating officer
TRACEY BECK’S UNIQUE ENTREPRENEURIAL CAREER has become a family affair. Along with her brother-in-law, Ken Beck, and husband, Brian, Beck runs The Beck Cos., a group of related businesses that make a range of complementary products. KB Surfaces does stonework. Atlas Fabrication handles engineered counters. CAS America produces commercial shelving. Dark Horse manufactures custom metal work, such as steel counters. Closettec creates storage cabinets. Great American builds pool, air hockey and foosball tables.
The roughly 80 employees do everything from customer service and design to engineering, skilled carpentry and cabinet installation. Tracey Beck, who serves as chief operating officer, oversees design work and general daily operations; Brian Beck is the chief financial officer; and Ken Beck is the company’s engineer. Everything’s manufactured at the company’s North Smithfield facility.
Beck didn’t think she’d follow an entrepreneurial path. She studied marketing and fashion merchandising at Southern New Hampshire College, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business. Beck discovered she had a penchant for selling and customer service. She was in sales at a travel agency, a furniture rental company and phone company MCI before pausing to raise her kids.
The creative, entrepreneurial itch was still there, and it came to her two decades ago.
“I was having dinner with my mother-in-law. I was in my early 30s and she was very into aesthetics,” Beck said. “It was around the time Botox and Restylane were coming into use, particularly in California. She wanted to bring these services to Rhode Island and offer them at a med spa, with gorgeous surroundings but observing the medical side.”
The facility Beck launched as a result closed in 2007. That same year, Beck and her husband bought a bankrupt stone fabrication company and relaunched it as KB Surfaces.
The Becks gradually acquired the five additional businesses.
Like many small-business owners, Beck doesn’t work a 9-to-5 schedule. It’s just as likely to be a text at 5 a.m. telling her that a truck has broken down, or another text an hour later that a big commercial client wants to come in that day.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a serious impact on The Beck Cos., with labor shortages, long material lead times and freight cost increases. While the company has grown some 40% from pre-pandemic levels, the pandemic aftereffects linger in the availability of materials. Skilled labor is also hard to find, Beck says.
“Each of my businesses has a spot dear to my heart,” Beck said, “but I love the challenge of optimizing closet spaces to make them functional and beautiful, and I love seeing the excitement on people’s faces when they tour the new showroom.”
