Taking risks, reaping rewards

Nation's Business, April, 1997 by Michael Barrier

For business people like this year's national Blue Chip Enterprise honorees, a major obstacle is simply the prelude to success.

Blue Chip Enterprises respond vigorously to overwhelming adversity and apparently hopeless odds. But they also see challenges where other business owners might not. What might look like a safe, comfortable existence can be--to a Blue Chip Enterprise--an opportunity to build something not only bigger but also more exciting and creative.

That appetite for challenges distinguishes all 170 companies chosen earlier this year as Blue Chip Enterprises in the annual program co-sponsored by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. (known as MassMutual--The Blue Chip Company), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Nation's Business, and "First Business," the half-hour morning TV news program presented jointly by MassMutual and the U.S. Chamber.

(For a complete list of companies honored nationwide, see the March issue of Nation's Business.)

The four companies designated as this year's national Blue Chip Enterprises best exemplify the spirit the competition seeks to honor, the program's judges believe. The national honorees received their awards in February at the annual meeting of the U.S. Chamber, in Washington, D.C. Those companies are:

* Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland of Frankenmuth, Mich.

* Accutec of Wallington, N.J.

* Computer Rescue Squad of Cape Coral, Fla.

* Howard Fabrication of Industry, Calif. Here are their stories:

Bronner's

When you see Wallace J. Bronner talking to a group of fourth-graders, your first thought may be, "If this man grew a white beard, he could make a perfect Santa Claus." It's a natural enough thought. Bronner, who turned 70 in March, has the white hair and the grandfatherly manner--and, on some occasions at least, the red jacket--that suggest the likeness to Saint Nick.

The connection is, however, much stronger than that. When Bronner talks to groups of kids, it's at his store--Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland, in Frankenmuth, Mich. The company bills itself as the world's largest Christmas store, and no one is likely to contest that title, at least until they come up with a store that covers more than the five acres Bronner's occupies.

Bronner's employs about 225 people year-round, a total that rises to more than 400 in the months just before Christmas.

To appreciate the entirety of the place, Bronner suggests, requires three trips through it--once around the edges (there are no aisles, only islands), once for the middle, and once for looking up at the large displays above the sales floor.

The store creates a feeling a little like a theme park, and there's no doubting that some people think of it that way. "We have a greeter who counts the people who come in the store, and we know how many sales are rung through the register, so we can do a people-to-customers ratio," says Maria Sutorik, one of the three Bronner children who work with their spouses at the store. Sometimes, says Sutorik, the marketing manager, the ratio is as high as 7-to-1.

The idea at Bronner's, however, is not to entertain visitors but to send them out the door with packages in hand. As Wally Bronner says, "Everything's for sale." Those oversized carolers and reindeer and Santa Clauses above the sales floor, for example, are not there just to enhance the retail atmosphere--commercial customers buy them, for displays at shopping malls.

Of the 10,000 different ornaments for sale in the store, about half are Bronner's designs. The business also supplies customized ornaments--bearing a company's logo, for example. "We are designers, producers, importers, exporters, and distributors," Bronner says. "We sell a lot of reindeer to Japan."

When Bronner went into business for himself 52 years ago, he didn't set out to become the owner of the world's biggest Christmas store. He speaks of opportunities that he just "fell into."

But his company's uninterrupted success--its growth is a "boring graph," he says--suggests another pattern: As opportunities arose, he seized them, even though they eventually led him straight out of the business he started in.

He began by painting signs on Masonite, some of them Christmas decorations for the streets of towns near Frankenmuth. The web of connections in small towns is such, Bronner says, that his decorations for public displays led quickly to sales for commercial use.

It was in the '50s that Bronner began selling decorations for homes, after some of those commercial customers told him, "My wife says I can't come here anymore unless I bring something for the home."

Within a few years, he had three Christmas stores clustered in downtown Frankenmuth, a German-flavored town of about 4,500. As his business grew, Bronner showed an unceasing alertness to his customers. For instance, he got into selling artificial trees--he now sells "many, many of them," he says--when a customer asked to buy a tree he was using to display ornaments; the customer's child was allergic to real trees.

Twenty years ago, Bronner made his biggest and riskiest move: to a 45-acre site on Frankenmuth's southern edge. Bronner describes his wife, Irene, as "really the motivator who said, `Get that bigger building built.'" They doubled the store's size in 1991. About 85 percent of total revenues at Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland come from retail sales.