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

Nation's Business, April, 1996 by Tim McCollum

Diversity has been important to the ACOG, which encouraged minority and female participation in each area in which contracts for goods and services are awarded. As part of this effort, the ACOG has compiled a registry of minority- and women-owned businesses that have expressed interest in obtaining Olympic contracts.

Cynthia Jones of Jones Worley says the ACOG policy gave minority- and womenowned companies a better chance to compete for Olympic jobs. "When they looked around trying to find someone who could perform and do the work, we were prepared," Jones says. "We had a place, we had technology, we had people who would vouch for our credibility."

Jones Worley got its foot in the door as a member of the architectural and engineering team that designed Olympic Stadium. The company's experience on that and other venue-construction jobs led to the firm's selection to the ACOG's "Look of the Games" team, which created the visualdesign concept for the Olympics. Jones Worley also designed the Olympic poster and the Olympic count. down docks over freeway overpasses downtown.

In addition to those working as sublicensees, some small businesses have found other opportunities providing services to larger comparties involved with the Olympics.

The ACOG recruited large companies, such as AT&T IBM, and United Parcel Service, to be corporate sponsors for $20 million to $40 million apiece based on their ability to provide needed goods and services. However, these sponsors in turn were good prospects for service-oriented small companies looking for Olympic business, and especially for firms that could help a sponsor promote its Olympic connection.

Atlanta-based event management company Thompson McCarthy Inc. is working with Olympic sponsors BellSouth Corp., The Home Depot, and Motorola Inc., as well as with Nike Inc., to provide hospitality services for the many visitors these companies will bring to Atlanta before and during the Games.

During the Olympics, the firm will be responsible for lining up transportation, hotel accommodations, meals, and visitor information for their clients' guests, as well as for putting together client events. All this means coordinating limousine and van companies, caterers, delivery companies, hotels, and tour guides. "We work with different kinds of companies, so we know what their niches are," says partner Patti McCarthy. "We can bring them in as we need them."

The Olympics present a stiff challenge for McCarthy and preener Mary Lynne Thompson, who liken the Olympics to having an event like the Super Bowl for 17 consecutive days. The duo has been planning for the Games for two years and add more than 300 staff people to their normal 12-person team.

Television-production company American Skylines faces a different kind of challenge: hosting 175 NBC broadcast affiliares during the Games. The firm is overseeing renovation of a 10,000-square-foot warehouse that will house production and editing facilities and sleeping quarters for the affiliates' broadcast crews.