History

Benjamin Wheeler Dyer Jr. was born in New York City in 1887. In 1903, when he had just turned 16, he was asked by his recently widowed aunt to take over his late Uncle Henry Ditmar's sugar business.

At the start of his sugar-business career, B.W. recognized the need for a trade organization fostering good business ethics. Thus, H.P. Ditmar's Company became a charter member of the National Sugar Brokers Association in 1903, when the NSBA was founded.

Because of B.W.'s efforts and success, in about 1908 he formally became the managing partner and the name of the firm was changed to Ditmars and Dyer. On July 1, 1912, after B.W. had graciously bought out his aunt's share of the company, the name of Ditmars and Dyer was discontinued and B.W. Dyer & Company was established.

In 1917, at the suggestion of Lamborn & Company Inc., a large sugar brokerage firm, a merger was effected with B.W. Dyer & Company, whereby B.W. Dyer became vice president of Lamborn.

B.W. Dyer & Company was reestablished as an independent firm in 1929 with offices at 82 Wall Street. Three years later the company relocated to nearby premises at 120 Wall Street where it remained for the next forty years. The company later occupied premises of One World Trade Center, where it took up offices in 1972. The company moved to Bernardsville, New Jersey in 1992 and then relocated to its current location in Telluride, Colorado in 2005.

B.W. died of cancer in 1953 at the age of 66. He had two sons, Benjamin Dyer III, born in 1913, and Daniel Lamborn Dyer, Sr., born in 1917. B.W.'s older son, Ben left school to start his sugar business career as an office boy for B.W. Dyer & Company in August 1930.

Ben became a partner of B.W. Dyer & Company in 1936 and a member of the New York Coffee & Sugar Exchange in 1937. From 1939 to 1970, when he retired, Ben served as a floor broker for the firm’s raw sugar futures customers. Ben passed away in 1983.

Ben's younger son, Dan Dyer, was born in 1917 the year of B.W. Dyer and Co.'s merger with Lamborn and Company. Hence the middle name, which continues to this day in the person of Daniel Lamborn Dyer, Jr. (Chip), present head of the family firm.

Dan Dyer entered the sugar business in 1935, starting as relief office boy during summer vacations from school and then called on the refined sugar trade as a company salesman.

In 1939 Dan became manager of Dyer's export sugar department. In 1942 he joined the Sugar Branch of the War Production Board in Washington, D.C. While there he was credited with inventing a metal container issued to soldiers for carrying sugar rations.

Dan returned to New York in 1943 to become a partner of B.W. Dyer & Company. Dan was a founding member and past president of the Sugar Club of New York, which has long since become and is still today an institution within the sugar trade community.

On April 1, 1990 Dan Dyer was fatally stricken with a heart attack while playing platform tennis. Dan was 73 years old.
After Dan Dyer's death, his son Chip took over as managing partner of B.W. Dyer & Co., LLC. Chip graduated from Ohio Wesleyan College in 1978. He worked with Irving Trust Company prior to joining the refined sugar department of B.W. Dyer & Company in 1979. He became partner in the company in 1981. Chip was elected a director of the Coffee, Sugar & Cocoa (CSC) Exchange in 1988. He was also a director of the CSC Clearing Association. He is a past president of the National Sugar Brokers Association, the same association to which his grandfather was a charter member.

Over the past 20 years the number of sugar brokers in the U.S. has declined from an estimated 300 to less than 100. With the decline in sugar brokerage business, Chip Dyer used his foresight and knowledge of the industry to add other food ingredients to the list of products for which the company offers brokerage services today. B.W Dyer & Co., LLC now represents over 100 different ingredient items with various warehouses and plants throughout the U.S.

Staff Bios

Chip

Growing up in the family sugar business, Chip was exposed to all facets of the industry from an early age. The valuable education he received with B.W. Dyer and Company ranged from hearing and sharing client interchange, witnessing negotiations and transactions and traveling.
Chip started working for Dyer as an office boy during his summer breaks from Ohio Wesleyan University. After graduating with an economics degree, he initially went into investment banking. Chip started working full time with Dyer in 1979.
Chip's grandfather, B.W. Dyer, who founded the company in 1903, would no longer recognize the business he started. Chip expanded the company focus from only sweeteners to an enterprise that today represents over 100 items. He continues to look to the future, all the time maintaining that the most important ingredient and commodity available are personal integrity and service.
Work experiences have included: President of the National Sugar Brokers Association, and member of the Board of Directors of both the Coffee Sugar and Cocoa Clearing Association and the Coffee Sugar and Cocoa Exchange, currently NYBOT.
Chip is an avid tennis player and a nationally recognized paddle tennis champion, a sport he loves almost as much as Dyer.

Nick

Nicholas "Nick" Kominus joined Dyer in 2005 as the editor of the Dyergram. Prior to that he represented the cane sugar refining industry in Washington for forty-two years. During that period he served on a number of Government advisory committees, testified many times before Congressional committees, and wrote numerous articles on sugar policy.
Mr. Kominus has also been actively involved in the management of the Sugar Club, an international sugar forum. He served as the Club's President in 1997/98.
In 1995, he received the Dyer Memorial Award and was named "Sugar Man of the Year." He has also received awards from the National Press Club and the America Association of Agricultural College Editors.
Prior to joining the refiners, he was an editor at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and before that a newspaper reporter.
Mr. Kominus graduated from Kansas State University with a degree in agricultural journalism and did graduate work at American University in communications. He served as an officer in the Marine Corps.
He and his wife Trudy reside in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Shirley

Shirley has lived in the picturesque mountains of Telluride for 14 years managing to find B.W. Dyer and Company, even before it had arrived. It was a chance meeting on the ski slopes between Chip and her sister that set the wheels in motion. One “cold call” letter, several phone calls and 10 months later she was helping to transition the offices from their previous home in New Jersey to the wide open expanses of western Colorado.
Shirley earned her Bachelor’s Degree in General Studies from Northern Arizona University. As her degree implies, she comes to the company with a variety of work background. Former positions include working as a chef, travel agent and supervisor for a governmental agency. All of these serve her well in her functions at Dyer: office management and customer service. Along with her comrade in arms, Mike, she keeps the wheels at Dyer spinning.
When the wheels aren’t spinning, her body is still moving. Shirley lives an active life outside the office and can often be found playing competitive volleyball, hiking or alpine skiing with her kids in the beautiful mountains we call home.

Mike

Mike graduated in 2002 from Ithaca College with a degree in Leisure Services, focusing in Outdoor Education and Adventure.  Since graduating, Mike has dabbled in a variety of industries, including telecommunications, recreation, entertainment and hospitality.  After cruising the Caribbean with Disney and hiking the Catskills in NY with the YMCA, Mike made the journey to Telluride in the spring of 2005.

Upon arriving in Telluride, Mike went to work at the Franz Klammer Lodge and this was where he first came into contact with the Dyers who were members.  Two years later, the Dyers and Mike reconnected when a position opened up at BW Dyer and after fierce negotiations, Mike found himself entering the world of commodities.

When Mike isn't at the office he enjoys snowboarding, snowshoeing, hiking, photography and quoting useless movie trivia (go ahead, test him).  On the weekends you can usually find him somewhere in the mountains with Nali, his Rhodesian Ridgeback and an attractive brunette.