Jim Richards rides the business frontier in search of ‘Cowboy Capitalists’

By Russ Moore

Gary Meek

Jim Richards is parlaying a “lifetime of experience” in business into a strategy of aggressive growth and increased profits.

reat fortunes are made through specialization, and kept through diversification,” says Jim Richards, who is no stranger to helping build business fortunes.

When Southwire founder Roy Richards Sr., ME ’35, died in 1985, two of his sons—Roy Jr., 25, and Jim, 24, both Georgia Tech alumni—became CEO and president, respectively, of the Carrollton, Ga., company.

They carried on in the family tradition, taking a successful $450 million company and making it a mega-successful $1.9 billion company in 10 years.

Five years ago, James C. Richards, Econ ’81, started a new company to invest the family money through leveraged buyouts. That company, named simply Richards, is based in an Atlanta skyscraper overlooking Centennial Park.

“We buy a controlling interest in mature companies that already dominate their markets,” Richards says. “In many cases, the companies we buy have invented a product that gives them dominance. I always become the chairman of the board, and sometimes I plug in a new man as CEO to enhance the company’s management.”

The goal is aggressive growth, and Richards’ own experience in finance is the engine that drives the ship.

“We expect 45 percent per year in equity return,” he says.

Richards does not blanche at the pressure of maintaining such success. “It’s really just a matter of financing growth rapidly. It’s what we had to do at Southwire.”

Richards, 40, has been performing on the financial stage for most of his adult life, competing and succeeding globally. He was starting his third year of mechanical engineering at Tech when he saw the path he should take.

“My father was an engineer, and I was training to be one,” he says. “I analyzed his typical day, and I realized that most of the skills he needed to run Southwire—negotiation, communications skills and finance—were not the things I would learn becoming an engineer. I saw that the next generation leading Southwire would need more training in business and finance, so I changed to economics.”

After earning his degree, Richards went to work at Southwire and became company president in 1985. He lived in Atlanta and commuted to Carrollton for 14 years. In addition to his duties at Southwire, Richards served on the boards of the Copper Club, the Aluminum Association and several public companies. He was also the first American on the board of the prestigious London Metal Exchange (the equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange of the metals business). On his 35th birthday he opened the Atlanta office of Richards LLC.

Not surprisingly, Richards sometimes hires Tech alumni to run his acquisitions. “I look for cowboy capitalists, people very successful in their fields but willing to exchange comfort for risk—to take a leap of faith—for the possibility of making a fortune.”

One such “cowboy” is Ron Cook, a 1973 Tech graduate in behavioral management, hired this year as CEO of Exit Information Guides, a Gainesville, Fla., company that prints and distributes guides with coupons for discounted hotel rooms.

Under the combined vision of Richards and Cook, EIG has moved its industry leadership to the World Wide Web, allowing consumers to print coupons at home for hotels in 33 states from www.roomsaver.com.

Cook, a veteran with 27 years of hotel management experience, was intrigued by the pitch Richards used.

“Of all the offers I received, Jim was the only guy who asked me to write a check up front as I took the job. He wanted me to be at risk, too. It was a totally unique approach.”

With plans to expand to 44 states in 2000, Cook is leading EIG aggressively forward. The company is averaging 3 million users per month since its online rollout in June.

And while Richards’ work ethic is that of a high achiever, he also finds time to fly-fish and to hunt. He enjoys horticulture and gardening.

He and his wife, Janet, and their three sons live in Atlanta, and they have a strong interest in equestrian sports.

Russ Moore is a freelance writer.

Bob Gibson hasn’t followed a traditional path to find success

By Sherri Brown

Gibson: Continually remaking the firm is easier when it’s an “innovative business.”

ob Gibson met his wife, Vicki, during fraternity rush at Georgia Tech. As a nursing student at Piedmont Hospital, she had volunteered to help “woo rushees to our fraternity,” Gibson remembers. “We had the typical fraternity oath not to date rush girls, but I broke it.”

It wouldn’t be the last time Gibson broke rules to his advantage.

Today, as president and CEO of BOLT, he has led the Charlotte, N.C., company to integrate product development with brand development—a break-the-rules concept that led to a bevy of awards and a client list of Fortune 500 companies.

After graduation in 1974, Gibson went to work for the head of Georgia Tech’s Industrial Design department, Jack Seay, who ran a consulting firm for product development. “I have always had a love for how things work, and I try to find ways to improve on products,” Gibson says.

With that experience under his belt, Gibson joined Hummingbird USA, overseeing a team of 33 product-development specialists. The first thing his team developed was the first liquid crystal display fish finder.

“It was very innovative, very user-friendly, for the time,” Gibson says. “For that company it was a big success story.”

The team continued to develop offshoots off the original product, eventually growing the company from $13 million in annual sales to more than $80 million.

Leaving Hummingbird, Gibson moved to Charlotte to help a start-up business that lasted about a year. “It didn’t get off the ground,” he admits. “It reinforced the idea that it takes more than just a good idea to bring a business to market.”

Gibson then joined BOLT, returning to the consulting business again, “reconnecting with something I was in 20 years ago,” he says. “I started having that old fun again.”

It was at BOLT that Gibson led the group to integrate product and brand development. “It’s unusual for the same firm to offer both product and brand development: product is industrial design; brand development is very market-oriented,” he explains.

“The market that buys products looks for both brands and products that represent the company and communicate value to the consumer.”

Also, because a lot of companies focus on brand and consumer experience, there’s a need for technology and change at an increasing rate.

“The good news is the tools are available—like the Internet—to develop solutions at a faster pace,” he says.

This concept has allowed his firm to broaden its client base to include companies like Lowe’s. “A few years ago they wanted to get into the mechanics-tool business,” he recalls. “They came to us to find out how to position themselves and see what it would take to get into the market.”

Because of BOLT’s integrated services, they were able to help the company develop the product line, as well as developing the brand name, packaging and point of sale. The result was the Kobalt line of tools.

“We helped with the whole consumer experience,” Gibson says.

Today, besides Lowe’s, BOLT’s client list includes Coca-Cola, GE Lighting, Herman Miller, Izod and Ingersoll Rand.

“I get a lot of satisfaction out of the business,” Gibson says, “both the side that has to do with helping our clients succeed, and maybe even more importantly, helping everyone who is a part of this business achieve their personal professional goals.”

Gibson’s top rules for being a good leader are: “First, focus on customer service. Then, focus on meeting the needs of the staff and helping them with their growth plans. Do those two things and everything else falls in place.”

As business copes with a rapidly changing environment, it must continually remake itself, Gibson admits.

“The good news for us is we’re in the innovative business. It’s natural for us to do it.”

Sherri Brown is a freelance writer who lives in LaGrange, Ga.

Randy Swartz’s philosophy applies ‘Golden Rule’ to customers, clients

By Toby Druin

Randy Swartz’s work ethic—“Treat your customers and your clients the way you want to be treated”—has propelled him upward.

n October, Randy Swartz was named president and chief executive officer of Day & Zimmermann International, bringing more than 26 years’ experience to the job of running the engineering and construction division of one of the largest and most successful privately owned businesses in the world.

Swartz, who earned his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1973, also carries along a personal philosophy that he says has guided his business career.

“One thing that stands out in the way I do things is personal credibility,” Swartz says. “I believe in doing what you say you will do. That’s the way it always has been with me: Treat your customers and your clients the way you want to be treated.”

That work ethic has propelled Swartz steadily upward since he left Georgia Tech.

Before joining Day & Zimmermann in 1995, he spent 21 years with DuPont, from 1979-89, in various positions in sporting goods. In l989, he was named worldwide engineering manager for DuPont Lycra; then worldwide engineering director and president of the company’s Precision Concepts Company in 1993, with responsibility for more than 2,500 employees on four continents and projects totaling more than $700 million.

Swartz joined Day & Zimmermann in 1994 as senior vice president, where he was responsible for engineering, procurement and construction in projects totaling $200 million and employing 550 people. He was elevated to president of Day & Zimmermann, South, in 1995.

Day & Zimmermann International is the engineering and construction division of Day & Zimmermann Inc., a $1.5 billion enterprise founded in 1901 as a two-person engineering partnership; it was ranked 175th in last year’s Forbes magazine listing of the top 500 private companies.

The company provides engineering, procurement and construction, construction management, project and program management and maintenance services to the specialty chemical, microelectronics, food and beverage, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

“I travel so much, it is difficult to say where I will be on a given day,” Swartz says.

The company is headquartered in Philadelphia, where during an ideal work-week, Swartz spends four days and works a fifth day in Charlotte, N.C., where he lives. But in most weeks, he shuttles between those locations and wherever the company is involved.

He was attracted to Day & Zimmermann, he says, “because it is privately owned, has good values and gives you a lot of freedom to do your job. That’s very enjoyable.”

Swartz’s job is three-fold. “I make sure everyone follows corporate values; provide strategic direction; and help people succeed and grow in their responsibilities.”

Away from his job, he and his wife, Grace, like to travel, especially to places where they can play tennis and Swartz can golf—he admits to a 6 handicap. He likes to read, often poring over business and consulting books, but he also enjoys mystery novels by such authors as Ann Rule. He came to Tech after earning an undergraduate degree at North Carolina State University.

Swartz has two children by a previous marriage. His daughter is a sophomore at New York University studying foreign languages, and his son is a high school student in New London, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia.

“I guess my personal philosophy is to enjoy life,” he says. “I work hard to be a person of integrity, not taking things too seriously and always trying to be able to laugh at myself. You have to have a little fun in this life.”

Toby Druin is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas.