Small firms that wouldn't quit - Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative program - includes list of companies designated as state consultants

Nation's Business, May, 1991

Small Firms That Would't Quit

It could not--by any stretch of the imagination--be called a grand opening.

First, heavy rains kept customers away from the new Heidi's Family Restaurant in Carson City, Nev. Then floodwaters ruptured gas-supply lines in the area, and the business had to close for a week while service was restored.

Then an out-of-control truck destroyed the front of the building. And the California company that had insured the truck had gone bankrupt. At a time of already serious cash-flow problems, it would take months to obtain payment for the $30,000 in damage from a California fund covering such situations.

Today, the company has three restaurants and a bakery, and its sales, which totaled $320,000 in 1987, are expected to exceed $2.2 million this year.

How that company overcame its disastrous beginning and achieved such success is just one of the 800-plus success stories described in entries in The Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative, a new program to recognize small businesses whose unique achievements can teach and inspire other entrepreneurs.

The initiative is sponsored by the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co. and endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Nation's Business.

Thus far, 201 entries have been chosen as state designees, and the top 51 in that category--one from each state and the District of Columbia--were sent to a national panel of nine judges for the selection of four nationala designees.

The terms "competition" and "winners" are not being used in the Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative. The purpose is to identify role models from which all entrepreneurs can learn, not to pit small businesses against one another. Timothy Maurer of Connecticut Mutual, director of the Blue Chip Initiative, says that each entry relates a "unique story of success" and that all the entries collectively "testify to the resiliency of small businesses everywhere and the need for a program to recognize and share their strategies for success."

Resiliency in the face of seemingly overpowering setbacks is a common theme among the businesses that have been designated for state honors and are under consideration for national recognition. The survival of many was threatened by such varied causes as destructive fires, floods, the collapse of markets, the unexpected loss of key leaders, and the sudden onset of overpowering competition.

A Michigan firm experienced within seven months the devastation of its dry-warehousing complex by flood, the sudden death of the chief executive officer who was directing the recovery program, and the destruction by fire of its refrigerated-warehousing facilities and corporate headquarters.

When oil prices declined sharply in the mid-1980s, a firm serving that industry described its situation this way:

"[The company] was faced with the major segment of its market in total collapse, with massive business closings, with increasingly delinquent accounts, with frightened employees who feared for their jobs, with panic-stricken lenders, and with a massive amount of debt to amortize in a declining economy."

Along with details of the strategies that enabled those and other companies to surmount such threats from the outside, many entrants conceded that their problems were of their own making.

The head of a Chicago company that supplies the auto industry says that in the early 1980s, "our deliveries were late, our technological support reactionary, our pricing high, marketing hollow, and our quality was, at best, mediocre. The environment in which we did business was becoming a world market, and our customers began looking to foreign suppliers."

In some cases, solutions to setbacks meant drawing on the dedication of employees, customers, suppliers, and others to keep a company alive while it recovered from a fire or other disaster. In others, it meant massive changes in production and marketing strategies.

The specifics of how companies overcame their particular brand of adversity will be made available through the Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative in both broadcast and print formats so other companies can learn from the experiences of the successful entrepreneurs.

Names of the four national designees and the other 47 state designess will be announced at the annual meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on April 29.

These are the state designees, with the company chosen for the national judging listed first (the nature of the business is described only when it is not evident from the company name):

Alabama

American Calculator and Computer, Birmingham; Lanace Garment Corp., Red Bay; SEATEC, Inc. (design/engineering), Warrior; Thermal Corp. (heating elements), Madison.

Alaska

Mila Administrative Services (temporary help), alaska Silk Pie Co., Pre Cast Co. (concrete products), and Transformations (interior design), all of Anchorage.

Arizona

Microtest (LAN devices), Phoenix; Artisoft (hardware/software), Tucson; Competitive Engineering, Inc. (machine parts), Tucson; Rio Salada Bank, Tempe.

Arkansas

F.M. Corp. (structural plastics), Rogers; Arkansas Printing, Pine Bluff; Will Acklin, Inc. (funeral services), Little Rock; World Travel, Inc., Searcy.