ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 12, 1996 TAG: 9604120009
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: HOGES CHAPEL
SOURCE: CLAYTON BRADDOCK STAFF WRITER
In an industrial complex, chief executive officers are easy to spot. In the big cities, it's part of their persona. Unless you live in this neck of the woods.
They wear tailored suits, monogrammed shirts, maybe Italian shoes and $20 ties. They might even bear a name that speaks of elegance: like Daniel W. St. Clair.
Nobody would look for a baseball hat, tattered blue denim jacket, wide red suspenders, faded denim trousers, a screwdriver and wrench in his back pocket, grease smudges on his hands.
But under such a red hat is Danny St. Clair, the president and CEO of Danny's Small Engine Repair, spread out over five acres deep in the Hoges Chapel woods just west of Pembroke.
This CEO knows how to drive a business from zero to top of the line in a few short years, turning it into an enterprise he says is "too big to sell."
Danny's Small Engine Repair qualifies for something bigger than small. The business' annual revenue of $500,000 last year and growing is about as close as St. Clair comes to revealing its worth.
St. Clair - grease smudge, denim pants, red cap and all - is the living, breathing, soft-talking, hard-thinking, Mr. Fixit, American capitalist, good ol' boy.
It all got started back in the 1950s when an uncle suffered a heart attack near West Palm Beach, Fla. St. Clair left Pearisburg while still in high school to help his uncle's wife.
It wasn't long before he took his next step toward his later success in Hoges Chapel. First he had to do what he does best: work.
"I worked my way through Palm High School, working in a service station," he recalled.
"Then I bought half interest in a Gulf station. I kept it for a year. Then I bought two more."
How did the then-young man from Giles County do that?
"In 1954, a service station wasn't what it is today," St. Clair explained. "I had $500 of my own and I bought my partner out. I stayed in the partnership for a year and a half."
Then he bought two more stations.
"I borrowed $5,000 from a friend who had enough pull with the bank that he could co-sign a note and I got that paid back in a year and then I borrowed another $5,000 and paid that back and kept on going."
He wasn't done even then.
"After my son took it over, I helped him buy the property. He's got three stations now. He kept on trucking and I started this mess." The mess is a thriving business.
"I returned to Pearisburg where my mother had always lived," he said. "I bought this piece of property in Hoges Chapel and cleaned it up and started playing around with small engines." He taught himself everything he needed to know - including how to run a business.
"I started in the lawn mower business because I had my own equipment to work with and there wasn't anybody else with any parts."
When the word of his skills spread, "this fella and that fella would find out that I could fix things, bring it over and I'd fix it," he recalled. It wasn't easy, St. Clair said. He continued to work about two years, returned to Florida in the winter and would go back to Hoges Chapel in the summer.
What did you do in Florida? a visitor asked. "I was retired. Still am. I retired in 1980 at the age of 48. I'm 62 now."
Even though he was retired, nothing came easy for St. Clair. It took time and hard work.
"Nobody was interested in setting up a dealership, or selling me equipment or anything," he said. "They didn't think anybody would come out here in the woods to buy things."
But they didn't know the man.
"The first dealership I got was W.B. Clements, a Roanoke distributor who gave me a Snapper dealership."
When St. Clair started fixing lawn mowers and chain saws, he was in a small metal building deep in the woods of Hoges Chapel where it looked like he might be stuck at zero. "But I'm not that kind of man," he said.
"All I wanted to do when I got out of high school was work. I have always been good with my hands. That's all I know is working with my hands."
Now the small metal building where he began is just a small squared-off side of the new business, sprawled across five acres - left behind after he sold another 20 acres.
St. Clair's enterprise is the kind that comes as close to what most Americans dream about or hope for.
On any day, he fixes equipment, talks nuts and bolts with his seven engine technicians and talks long distance to big national companies around the country from which he orders parts and equipment. Or he might chat with his on-the-road salesman or the unofficial vice president - Elinor St. Clair, his wife. She deals with customers, orders and sends parts, works on the computer, or mails invoices.
St. Clair now stocks 35 lines of big national manufactures of lawn mowers, snow blowers, tractors, chain saws, garden tillers, weed cutters and other brands of equipment. "Every year we take on two or three more, depending on what the pocketbook looks like," he said.
"I had no idea this thing would go this far. It just got bigger and bigger," St. Clair said.
The people who know St. Clair have watched him work and grow.
Fred Kilby, a regional salesman with Briggs and Stratton, a national small-engine manufacturer, is one of them.
"He's crazy," he said, with a grin. An answer to a question helped understand the statement.
"He was retired. I asked him 'If you're retired, why are you working? You're crazy.'"
Don Clark, of the Don Clark Co. in Indiana, covers much of the eastern part of the nation. He has known St. Clair for 10 years.
"He started out from scratch with $500," Clark said.
But how does that make him a good businessman?
"He's a super businessman because he provides good products, good work and good service. He's good as a businessman but he's also a good old boy who works real well with people. People are instantly comfortable with him."
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Alan Kim. Danny St.Clair, owner of Danny's Repair Shopby CNBin Giles County, holds his denim jacket for this year. His wife,
Elinor, will throw out and replace the jacket with a new one at the
end of the year. This tradition started eight years ago when they
got into the business. color.