Jay Alber

Jay Alber didn’t inherit a title. He inherited a century of trust to protect. He is the fourth-generation president and owner of ILLING, the family-owned packaging partner his great-grandfather H.T. Illing founded and that his grandfather Bob Illing and father Mike Alber carried forward before him. Next year, ILLING turns 100.

He came up on the manufacturer side, at 3M’s Tapes and Adhesives division, before joining ILLING, where he has spent 23 years, the last nine as President and Owner. In packaging, where private-equity churn has made consistency a competitive advantage in itself, that kind of continuity means something.

Jay lives in Richfield, Wisconsin with his wife Jenelle and their two children, Cayden and Colton. He’s an outdoorsman and hobby farmer who loves to create solutions, at home or at work. It’s the same instinct that builds a custom labeling machine when a customer is told it can’t be done.

Jay’s philosophy is simple: show up on time, provide a solution, execute it at a fair price, and follow through on every commitment. Standing still isn’t stability; it’s decline in slow motion. His instinct, in sales, service, and operations, is to stay on the front foot and anticipate a problem before the customer has to name it.

The core of what ILLING does is inventory management: holding goods, delivering just-in-time, and keeping a customer’s cash from sitting in unfinished inventory. Jay’s shorthand for the whole business: we are an investment banker in other people’s packaging.

When a long-term customer was getting inconsistent print quality and poor service direct from a manufacturer, Jay didn’t point them to an off-the-shelf fix. He built one: a custom labeling solution that unified the look across seven pail sizes, at competitive pricing and flexible enough for small and large volumes. It now runs on more than three million pails a year for Bell Laboratories of Windsor, Wisconsin, an anchor account and one of ILLING’s top five customers for 20 years.

Inside the building, Jay leads through the principles of Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, built on trust, accountability, and collective results over individual ego. It’s the same instinct behind the culture he built, and the reason a 90-person company across four locations still runs like a family business.

Written by Jay, lived by the team. It’s not a poster on a wall; it’s how ILLING shows up for its people, its manufacturers, and its customers.

Jay has earned multiple packaging design awards, recognized by Silgan, the National Association of Container Distributors, and Mauser Packaging, for innovative packaging solutions tailored to each customer’s application.