El Jefe - up from the ashes: a lesson in fortitude - Fox Manufacturing Company Inc

New Mexico Business Journal, Dec, 1990 by Jack Hartsfield

EL JEFE Up from the ashes: a lesson in fortitude

Dale Fox got a wake-up call in Albuquerque during the early morning hours May 12 that would change his life.

His furniture manufacturing plant was going up in flames and firefighters had no hope of saving it.

In the eerie light of dawn, Fox and his wife, Luana, huddled together outside the fire line, watching their life's work turn into charred, twisted rubble.

Fox Manufacturing, a premier furniture manufacturing company with a 16-year history of excellence and emerging as a respected nationwide marketer, was totally destroyed.

Everything.

Records. New orders. Patterns. Machinery. Supplies. Finished furniture waiting to be shipped. Original furniture designs. Raw materials. Fabric patterns. Upholstery. Work benches.

The loss was more than $1 million.

Almost 100 employees with annual paychecks totaling $1.3 million were on the job one day and out of work the next.

"When the fire hit, we were having a fabulous year and business was increasing," says Fox. "Our hearts were ripped out. We were in shock...."

A lot of executives made of less stern stuff would have thrown up their hands and folded.

Not Dale Fox.

By mid-afternoon of the day of the fire, Fox and other family members were in a strategy session with attorney Barry Williams, accounting consultant Bruce Malott, Realtor Seth Brown, insurance agent John Wright; and Jo McAlister, the company's in-house accountant.

Daughter Jill and sons Mike and Tim and Dale's brother, Gary, all involved in the company, pitched in to help get things moving again.

Edward Zozoya, the company's expert draftsman for seven years, also had his job cut out for him, recalling from memory all the patterns and designs. He'd start from scratch.

And recreating back orders of almost a million dollars in furniture posed a massive headache.

"We had made up our minds that we weren't going to go any place. No question in our minds what we were going to do. We were going to go back in business," Fox recalls. "We felt a responsibility to our customers, to our employees....

"We were committed to be back in full production in two months. And we were!"

Fox Manufacturing, along with its retail outlets, Autumn Woods in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Cruces, has proven if you're served up a sour lemon, make lemonade.

Sunwest banking executives Frank Rice, Curtis Comstock and David Allen ramrodded the preliminary proposal for reopening financing and got board approval in a scant three days.

Today Fox Manufacturing is back in full production in a 50,000-square-foot plant in the South Valley formerly owned by Pucci Distributing with plans to add another 10,000 square feet.

Despite the setback of a major fire, Fox Manufacturing is experiencing a 20-30 percent increase in business--with some new wrinkles of modernizing computer records and protecting patterns and other vital information in a fireproof walk-in storage.

"We did everything possible for the people, the customers who stood by us," Fox says.

Some customers showed unwavering faith the company would rise again from the ashes. Some, for instance, who had made partial payment on orders showed their trust by paying in full shortly after the fire, even before manufacturing had resumed.

In retrospect, Fox says there were lessons to be learned from what was his worst year and perhaps also his best.

"If you're in business, make sure you've got yourself a damned good attorney, a good CPA, a good banker, a good insurance agent--and make them a part of your company," he says. "Sure, it may be damned expensive, but in the long run it's worth it.

"Make certain you back up your computer records; put away copies of master drawings; make sure you've got business interruption insurance; make sure you're adequately covered."

Fox, however, said the fire led him to think about the role state and local government should at least consider in similar situations other businesses might face.

"After the fire, we didn't receive one call from the state or the city," Fox says. "Not one person for the state contacted us to offer any advice or any help....

"I'd think that any business with a number of employees -- we were a homegrown business with a $1.3 million a year payroll at the time of the fire -- would cause the state to at least voice some concern," he says.

"We weren't looking for a handout, but I would think that there were some programs in the state (other than unemployment compensation) that could be put to use in cases like our disaster," Fox says. "If such programs exist, I don't know about 'em....And nobody called. Not one call. Not one offer.

"We did send letters to the State Employment Office asking that because of the fire that the state not delay unemployment checks for the usual two-week period," he says. "They honored it with some of our employees, but not with some of our other workers."

The company manufactures living room, dining room, bedroom and office furniture in both comtemporary and Southwest styles in addition to customized furniture. Ninety-five percent is oak.