April 2017 | Business View Magazine

G eorge Kauffman has always been around cars. He’s the fifth generation of a fabled Columbus, Ohio family that has been in the transportation business, in one form or anoth- er, for 120 years. “My great-great-grandfather, George W. Byers, found- ed Blue Ribbon Stables in 1897,” Kaufmann re- counts. “He was a horse trader and he built bug- gies for Chillicothe and Columbus. He was a pretty renowned show- man; he once staged the largest horse sale in central Ohio. He rented the entire Ohio State Fairgrounds and he installed electric lights, at his own cost, back in 1899. He was a for- ward-thinking, aggressive salesperson.” In 1929, the company founded by George W. changed its name to George Byers & Sons, and the two brothers, The Byers Automotive Group Still family-owned Byers THE Automotive Group 39 38