Lighting a torch for small firms - Atlanta, GA, Olympics provide companies with opportunities - includes related articles

Nation's Business, April, 1996 by Tim McCollum

The Atlanta Olympics have helped a lot of companies experience the thrill of victory, but their entrepreneurial skills will be tested further once this business boom passes.

Competitors from around the world will take their quest for gold medals to Atlanta's Olympic Stadium in July at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. Atlanta small-business owner Thomas Harris knows a little about the kind of desire these athletes have to see their hard work rewarded. He has already captured some Olympic gold of his own: His company won the $269,000 contract to install the Olympic Stadium track

For Harris' firm, Essential Associates, the Olympics have transformed his onetime landscaping business into a growing com struction-management company with international connections. It all started, says Harris, with a chance encounter with an executive of Mondo S.P.A., an italian rubber-products company that was seeking the contract to provide materials for, and to supervise construction of, the Olympic track.

Harris met Mondo U.S.A. project manager Joe Hoekstra when he saw him surveying an Olympic practice facility near Essential Associates' office in Atlanta's Summerhill neighborhood. That led to an invitation to meet Mondo's president, Fernando Stroppiana, who was coming to Atlanta to bid on the Olympic track deal. Mondo won the contract and awarded Essential Associates the job of doing the grading and laying the track at Olympic Stadium and seven practice facilities.

Harris says the prestige that came with the Olympic connection has been a big boost to his five-year-old company. It helped the firm broaden its services and land new contracts, propelling revenues to more than $500,000. The work force has expanded from four employees and seven contract workers to 25 full-time employees. And other opportunities have opened up, including more Olympic and non-Olympic construction jobs in Atlanta and the possibility of additional work with Mondo at the Summer Olympics in 2000, in Sydney, Australia.

"I want to grab what the Olympics have brought us and take us forward," says Harris. "Because without the Olympics, it would've taken us 10 years to get here."

Small companies such as Essential Associates, along with many larger businesses, are enjoying a small part of the Olympic gold. The Centennial Games are expected to bring $5.1 billion in out-of-state privatesector spending to Georgia's economy, according to a University of Georgia study commissioned by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG).

About $2.7 billion of this spending will occur during the Games, which run from July 19 through Aug. 4, when an estimated 2 million people will visit Atlanta. The other $2.4 billion has been pouring into the economy as a result of the ACOG's preparations for the Games, particularly the construction of competition venues.

The committee plans to spend more than $500 million of its $1.5 billion budget to build 10 venues, including the $200 million downtown Olympic Stadium, which will be converted to a baseball stadium for the Atlanta Braves after the Games. Contracts for the stadium have been awarded to 108 companies, 70 of which are small businesses.

The Olympics have also been a catalyst for public-sector spending by the state and city on roads and infrastructure. Seven small Atlanta companies took part in a streets-and-bridges project through the city's Surety Bond Technical Assistance Program, which helps small businesses get the bonding they need to participate in city construction projects.

Participation by Georgia-based companies, many of them small businesses, has been an important part of the preparations for the Olympics. They make up nearly 60 percent of Olympic vendors. And besides the direct benefits from Olympic-related contracts, small businesses are being helped indirectly through increased sales in housing and retail and at restaurants.

Although getting a piece of the Olympic action held many potential rewards, it was an uphill battle for many small companies. Despite efforts by the ACOG to encourage local participation, there was only so much work to go around. Many companies that applied came away disappointed.

Even companies that were successful in winning contracts found the process difficult. "It was really frustrating because we didn't get some of the first projects we went after," says Cynthia Jones, a partner in Jones Worley, an Atlanta-based graphics and environmental-design company that is working on several Olympic projects. "I thought we were qualified. I thought we put on a good show."

Ultimately, some companies began to turn to non-Olympic projects. Olympic construction work pulled many companies away from other construction projects, creating opportunities for small contractors.

Many companies struck Olympic gold by becoming official Olympic licensees. But the competition for the licenses was fierce.

One small business that did win a license is San Diego-based Imprinted Products Corp., which will market collectible pins--traditionally a hot item among Olympic visitors--for the 1996 Games.