Profile in Business: Sean Cota: Doing it the Old Yankee Way

Vermont Business Magazine, Feb 01, 2003 by Marcel, Joyce

weigh on-site than coal, fuel oil became the preferred heating source in New England. "That's because we're so far from the natural gas sources," Cota said. "If you get out of New England, the majority of heat sources are either electric or natural gas."

In 1972, the Cotas turned control of the business over to their son, Hugh, who created a corporation, Cota & Cota Inc.; 100 percent of the capital stock was owned by him. Although Cota, who was born in 1963, grew up working in his father's business, it was never clear that he would be the third generation.

"Throughout my life, my father and I never talked about whether there'd be a job for me," Cota said. "Maybe he didn't want to ask me because he didn't want me to feet he was pushing me. And I didn't want to ask, because I figured that if he didn't mention it, he didn't want me here. So we did this dance for several years."

Cota went to grade school in Bellows Falls, and to BFUHS for one year before transferring to Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, N.H. Afterward, he went to Kalamazoo College in Michigan to study international business soon after, he convinced his wife to marry him. "She was going to go to New York City; big surprise for her," he said. They have two children, a girl, 12, and a boy, 11.

"They're great kids, and we stay busy," Cota said. "We start at about five in the morning, and last night I got home at seven. My kids swim at night in the winter time at Dartmouth and get home at 10 p.m. It's a long day, every day, and I do my grandmother Helen proud. There are no idle hands."

After Cota joined the business in 1985, "my father gave me as much rope as I could take, and as long as I could justify what I was doing he supported me, and when I couldn't, there was hell to pay."

In 1995, when Cota was 34, his father sold the business to his sons and retired.

"My father was a very engaged business owner," Cota said. "He was here every day and felt that he needed to know what everybody was doing all of the time. And when he'd show up on a job site, he'd work twice as fast as everybody else, and then leave. He was a great guy. But when he sold the business, he retired completely."

The Oil Business

Cota works in an office that hasn't changed much since it was built in the mid1950s. Other than a few family pictures tacked to the wall, it is bare of decoration. Shelves of industry regulations line one wall, and Cota's main focus, a flat-screen computer hooked up to the world's spot oil market, sits close on the side.

From his desk, Cota tracks the fluctuating price of crude oil on the spot market, world events which will inevitably effect the price of oil, and whether an old lady living in the backwoods of Saxtons River has enough oil in her tank to make it through the week.

All energy is interconnected, Cota said, and what happens in the Persian Gulf will have a serious impact in Bellows Falls.

"It's like a big balloon - you push in one spot and its going to have an effect on the rest of the balloon," he said. "In the energy business, you're always pricing based on replacement costs, not actual costs. So something serious happening in North Korea, Venezuela, Iraq or Saudi Arabia could easily raise the price of energy here, That's why I'm a news junkie. I'm always looking at what's happening in the world." Drastic world events have already shaped the course of the company's history. Before the 1973 Arab oil embargo, distributors like Cota & Cota were connected with one single large oil company, like Shell, Esso - which became Exxon - or Arco. But during that crisis, Shell reneged on its contracts.