ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 29, 1996 TAG: 9612310002
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: BARBARA SULLIVAN CHICAGO TRIBUNE
When Mac Anderson was a young man attending Murray State University in Murray, Ky., he loved collecting inspirational quotations.
Quotes like ``The harder you work, the luckier you get,'' and ``Success is a journey, not a destination.'' He'd write the quote down, or cut it out of a publication, and toss it in a file box.
``It wasn't a religious thing, it was just that I wanted to achieve something in my life and I knew that sometimes the right quote at the right time can help,'' he says. ``Sometimes your goals are muddy, and if you just look at the right words, those goals can become crystal clear.''
Thirty years later, those words have helped Anderson, now 51, build a $55 million company in Lombard, Ill., called Successories Inc., built on motivational products that combine inspirational images with sage - or, say critics, simple-minded - sayings.
The pictures and words have been translated into some 6,000 products, ranging from $89.95 lithographs to $10 mousepads.
Successories grew out of a travel company, McCord Travel Service, that Anderson started in the mid-1980s, after working for Orval Kent Food Co. in Wheeling, Ill. He sold the travel operations, but kept the slice of the company that created and sold recognition awards. He called it Celex Group Inc., rechristening it Successories in September.
The company buys rights to the visuals from free-lancers and stock photo books and matches them with the quotes, many of them from Anderson's old files. Successories ships some 3,000 pieces of framed products a day and assembles 60 miles of black frame a month.
Where does it all go?
Companies like Southwest Airlines Co. are paying thousands of dollars for such lithographs as an eagle soaring over a mountain, with the message, ``No one can predict to what heights you can soar. ... Even you will not know until you spread your wings.''
Fitness buffs doing their thing in Wheaton can gaze at a picture of a well-built man glowing with sweat as he sprints up an unending stretch of stairs (Perseverance) or a person running beneath huge outcrops of golden rocks (Determination).
``Sometimes people lifting weights or riding a stationary bike might get to where they want to give up, and looking at those pictures can give them an extra push,'' says Jan Day, fitness director of the Wheaton Sport Center. ``I've even seen people writing down the quotes.''
Of course, not everyone gets motivated with motivational messages. In this era of downsizing and ever-increasing work loads and pitiful raises, many employees find more grim satisfaction from Dilbert or such popular posters as ``The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.''
``I finally hung them, but not until our hours went down from 14 to 10 a day,'' says Kate Starritt, general office manager of corporate finance at San Francisco-based Fritz Cos., after Fritz bought $20,000 worth of Successories posters, to be hung in the 300-plus offices.
``These posters came as a shock to us. When you're already working 12-hour, 14-hour days, and then you get posters telling you that attitude is everything and to do it right the first time, it doesn't go over real well.''
Even the Conference Board, a mainstream research group that tracks consumer confidence and the index of leading economic indicators for the government, recently published a biting article in its monthly magazine on motivational posters and other inspirational products.
Under a headline ``Simple - or Simple-Minded?,'' the article questions whether such tools do anything but promote cynicism and confusion.
``If the poster says, `Risk and Experiment,' but the company's message is, `Don't lose a dime of the company's money,' which do you think you're going to follow?'' asks the article, which concludes:
``Companies ought to stop thinking about motivating their employees and start talking about commitment ... that means treating employees like partners.''
Nevertheless, orders continue to pour in for Successories products, ranging from a $56,000 order from cable channel Arts and Entertainment to $16.95 spent by an individual for a rock that says, ``The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.''
But with all its sales success, the company almost failed.
It lost over $7.7 million in fiscal 1995, which ended April 30, although the year brought record sales of $42.8 million.
To use a quote from one of his popular lithographs, ``A bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn,'' and Anderson just about missed the turn.
What happened, according to both Anderson and Successories' new president, James Beltrame, was the company simply grew too fast.
Since 1989, sales rocketed from $4 million to a projected $55 million this year. Catalog sales account for 50 percent of revenues. The first retail store opened in a strip mall in Naperville, Ill., in 1991. Now there are 55 company stores and 45 franchises in about 15 states.
Similarly, the physical structure grew like topsy, from 15,000 square feet in a Lombard business park to 130,000 square feet at seven different addresses in the complex. Inefficiencies compounded as products had to be transported from one location to another.
``Our growth outstripped our infrastructure,'' Anderson says. ``We couldn't control the growth we had set in motion ... our controls were out of whack.
``I knew we needed new professional management, but I'm loyal to a fault,'' he adds. ``I was trying to promote from within rather than bring in people who could take us to the next level. I was trying to change the oil while driving the car down the road.''
Enter Beltrame, who had spent several years as a vice president of Hyatt International, working in New York, and then earned a reputation as a turnaround specialist, first with Restaurant Associates Corp. in New York, and then RTO Inc., a Deerfield-based furniture-rental company. He was hired as chief operating officer in March 1995.
``But I didn't come in here to do a real turnaround,'' Beltrame says. ``Mac just said he had some problems. After about a month, I became aware that they had a lot more problems than he thought. Whereas they thought they were making a profit for the year, the fact was they had lost $7 million.
``The company was in bad straits,'' he says. ``There really wasn't much that wasn't broken. It had a great concept, great images, a great product line, but nothing was functioning.''
The catastrophe that pushed the company into severe losses was a new computerized system that was supposed to automate the system of fulfilling orders.
The system didn't work, and its failure came just as the 1994 holiday season was going into high gear. Sales were at an all-time high, but the deluge of orders had to be hand-picked from warehouse shelves.
``It was impossible to pick product efficiently,'' Beltrame says. ``It cost millions in lost sales.
``One of the things I said was, `Well, you people preach this [motivational] stuff, but it doesn't look like you're using it very well in your own business because you're going down the tubes.'''
One of the first things he did, Beltrame says, was put one of the company's original little black and white posters up on company walls. It says, ``Do it right the first time.''
Beltrame took over as president in June 1995. Anderson retained the position of chief executive officer.
``Mac basically does the product development - his greatest strength is his vision - and he handles shareholder relations,'' Beltrame says. ``I run the company day to day.''
Beltrame initially cut between 25 and 30 percent of the more than 300 office and manufacturing employees, replacing many of them with new personnel, including a new management team. A second restructuring occurred a couple of months ago, with about 30 additional layoffs.
Recently, the company began building a facility in Aurora, Ill., that will bring all operations under one roof by next spring and will save the company $400,000 to $500,000 a year in rent, Beltrame says.
LENGTH: Long : 139 linesby CNB