Profiles in Business: NEOS: Hardy shoes for hardy weather

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

By 1999, Nash and Hardy had decided that running a weather- dependent business was just too difficult.

"If it snowed, we would have strong year," Hardy said. "And if it didn't snow, it was a terrible year. It was somewhat like running a lopsided wheel on an annual basis, and if it was a bad winter, it was sort of a lopsided wheel."

Either they needed to either buy another company to round out the wheel, or put NEOS up for sale.

Quaboag

Just after Nash and Hardy decided to look for a buyer, a buyer found them.

"We started the process at the January set of trade shows, and just when we were out finding the target customers we wanted to talk to, one came to US," Hardy said. "Quaboag came through with an offer. It wasn't the offer I was hoping for. I wasn't really interested in leaving Vermont. That's why I started a company. I wanted to have a job in Vermont. But they wanted the company to move to their home in North Brookfield, Mass."

After six months of negotiations, Nash, Hardy and Quaboag came up with a package that involved Nash moving to Massachusetts to integrate NEOS into Quaboag, and Hardy remaining in Vermont to work on new product development and other projects.

Things fell apart at the last moment.

"The day we were supposed to sign the agreement, Woody ended up getting cold feet," Hardy said. "I said, 'Let's get this thing done, and in five or six months we can figure out another way to do this. But don't sink this deal.' He said, 'Watch me'."

In an effort to salvage the deal, Hardy spent another five months negotiating with Quaboag.

"Quaboag said they'd buy Woody out as well as our original investors, and I would stay in the company for five years and help integrate it," Hardy said.

Nash went back to New Jersey, where he began a dot.com enterprise that eventually failed. Hardy was based 'in Vermont, but he started spending a lot of time in Massachusetts.

According to Quaboag's president, Kevin Donahue, the company bought NEOS because the product was unique and had the potential for profitable growth. But there was another reason too: It was based in Vermont.

"Originally, I'm a Middlebury graduate and I have a strong affinity to helping a company that was started in Vermont,"

Donahue said. 'It gave me another excuse to drive up there. But it's not that easy to start and keep a company going in Vermont."

Partnership

Hardy was surprised when Nash pulled out of the Quaboag dell at the last moment, but he' believes the trouble might have started years before, when each man got his own office.

"I think that's when things started to fall apart," Hardy said. "You don't know what the other person is doing. People ask me about starting businesses and having partners or not having partners. Sometimes they say, 'I've got two partners.' I say that's real suicide." Partnerships are wonderful in the beginning, Hardy said, when companies are struggling to survive.

"A partner is someone who pulls you up when you're down, and you try to do the same," Hardy said. "And certainly, some partners have worked fine. But you're both only in the same place at one place in time. Outside forces change you, and you change the same way or differently.