Profiles in Business: NEOS: Hardy shoes for hardy weather

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

Scott Hardy's father is an entrepreneur and his mother is an artist and interior designer. So it comes as no surprise that in choosing a career, Hardy became an inventor whose largest project is designing the perfect business model for his life.

Hardy, 34, a fresh-faced, earnest young man, with blue eyes and a calm demeanor, is the CEO, owner and cofounder of NEOS, the New England Overshoe Company, Inc. The company makes lightweight but heavy-soled overshoes which were designed to be worn by urban businessmen, but have turned out to be adored by outdoor types who mush dogs in the Iditarod, climb Mt Everest, work on top of Mt Washington or run helicopter tours to Alaskan glaciers.

Hardy is also the president of Ulu, LLC, which makes a high-style, three-season line of shoes, some of them based on Inuit designs. He is also the president of an umbrella organization for NEOS, Ulu and the companies yet to come, that he calls Linckia, LLC.

Linckia is the name of an unusual starfish. Ordinarily, when a starfishs leg is torn off, it regenerates a new leg. But the linckia regenerates a new starfish, making it the perfect symbol for Hardy's business plan.

"I created Linckia, basically, to follow my interests and what drives me," Hardy said. "And that's taking an idea, whether it's on the back of a napkin or whatever, and developing it into a consumer product, putting the marketing package together, and developing a business around that idea."

In order to have time to create new products and new businesses, Hardy has stripped his company down to the bare minimum. He manages only four employees himself. Everything else is outsourced: the manufacturing is done in China, and the warehousing, customer service and accounting are done by other companies in Vermont.

This is all a part of Hardy's drive to improving things.

"Whether it's a product or a service or whatever, I want to make it better," Hardy said. "Sometimes a poorly made product will just frustrate the heck out of me. I joke with my wife about it - how can someone can go through the whole complex manufacturing process in order to put a piece of junk on the market? So I'm always trying to figure out how can I improve my life or make things work better. Some things, of course, you can't avoid, like the 27 hours it takes to get to China."

Hardy has already invented a variety of products, such as a backpack for carrying snowboards up mountains and the high, silver-winged "anti-cube" desks he and his staff work at. He has even invented a driveable dock for his lakeside home.

"The lake gets progressively more shallow as the summer goes on," said Hardy's friend, musician Matt Bonner. "To deal with the huge distance from the shore to the boat, he invented a driveable dock. He called up whomever, ordered these big floating plastic wheels, had a frame welded together, stuck a motor on it, and voila! One thing I will say about Scott is that he is a constant flood of ideas about anything having even remotely to do with design or innovation."

Hardy and his former partner, Woodward Nash, started NEOS in 1994. In 1999 they sold the company to Quaboag Corp in North Brookfield, MA, which manufactures the Vibram sole. After the sale Nash left the company, but Hardy remained. Then, three years later, Quaboag asked Hardy if he wanted to buy his company back. He did that in 2000, moved the company back to Burlington, and created Ulu.

NEOS, Ulu and Linckea are small and privately-owned, and Hardy is reticent to talk about his sales figures. He is willing only to say that they are "under $5 million." The businesses, however, appear to be thriving.

"Scott's had it back less than a year, and we're like 30 percent ahead of June numbers for last year," said Melissa Cook, vice president of operations and administration for Karhu USA, which runs Hardy's operations from its offices across the hallway from NEOS in a restored chocolate factory in Burlington.

"We're way ahead of the curve in NEOS. With Ulu, which was a startup product last year, we've already doubled last year's sales. So it's looking to be a really strong year."

In his short career, Hardy has attracted some powerful mentors. He's very bright, very energetic, very thoughtful," said Fred "Chico" Lager, former CEO of Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc and now a consultant to small businesses. Lager served on the original NEOS board and still advises Hardy.

"He has strong opinions, but he also listens to advice and considers it. That is not too common among entrepreneurs. A lot are headstrong, sure they know what they're doing, 'Give me the damn money and get out of my way.' He isn't like that."

Lager also praises Hardy's ability to create new products.

"He's got great intuition about product and product development," Lager said. "(Hardy and Nash) came up with this idea for the product and put together a prototype. The initial design was good and functional, but they were smart enough to realize it had to continue to improve and evolve every year. A lot of people come up with an idea, say 'That's my idea' and try to sell it. They're not smart enough to realize it's not perfect right out of the gate, that it needs to be refined over time based on the feedback they get over time. Scott, especially, was very good at that."