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 company had hoped the project would lead to other Olympic jobs. "It just didn't happen," says Conrad. Even so, TW Design's president, Charles Wright, is hopeful the experience will pay off in the end as people are exposed to the company's work. He says IBM remains a customer. And TW did win the print-graphics contract to design the Olympic ticket. application brochures.

For many small-business owners, the Olympics have been a showcase for their companies, a chance to demonstrate their capabilities to potential customers. The Olympics have also given them an opportunity to establish a reputation and build relationships with corporate partners and new customers.

"For us, it's 'How do you establish the best relationship when the traveling road show leaves?' "says American Skylines' English. "It's an effort to do it as correctly as possible."

The Olympics have also provided a leg up and some stability for owners of young startups, such as Thomas Harris and Cynthia Jones.

"The [Atlanta] Olympics have been around almost as long as this business," Jones says of her five-year-old firm. "It has been what any small, fairly new business could dream of, and that is to have a single event to ensure your first five years."

Just as Atlanta sees the Olympics as a chance to boost its reputation international]y, these companies hope that the Olympics will take them to prominence at a higher level. It's up to the entrepreneurs heading the firms, though, to make the most of this opportunity once the Olympic torch is extinguished.

Coping With The Disruption

Like many downtown Atlanta merchants, store manager Randy Teilhaber at Friedman's Shoes expects to do big business during the 1996 Olympics. That is, if he can get to the store to open it.

"I've got a feeling we'll have to get here about 5 a.m. and leave late at night," says Teilhaber. "We're going to have to stay here about 24 hours a day."

As the Olympics approach, Atlanta's business and government organizations are urging companies to plan for the convergence of 2 million visitors on the city during the Summer Games.

Large companies have been out in front in preparing themselves for the Games, but many smaller companies such as Friedman's have only recently begun to ask how they will be affected.

"The problem is so monstrous," says Gerald Bartels, president of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. "Take a little five- or 10-person insurance company that happens to be downtown. They're going to have to operate by phone from home. They aren't going to have nearly as detailed a plan in place" as a larger company might have.

Much of the business disruption is likely to stem from the concentration of most of the Olympic venues within a small area downtown. To control traffic, the city will close or restrict access to many downtown streets during the Games.

So what's a small company facing such a dilemma to do? The advice being given to Atlanta business owners on where to focus their attention might be useful to firms elsewhere facing similar if less intense--kinds of business disruptions.