| CRBJ Charter Member: |
|
|
| CRBJ Home > August 2006 | ||||||
His roofing supply business went through the roofInterviewed by Nathan Leaf
A. Quite honestly, if you look out the window, it's pretty self-explanatory. It's probably the best spot in the whole southern part of the state. Where you've got good visuals out the window, you've got a park across the street. You're on a hill, on a bluff. It's an existing building. I've always liked to rebuild where there's an infrastructure in place. I think for the overall economy and the well-being of the city, (it's good) anytime you can take an older building and restore it. It's something that I've actually discovered by (restoring) older buildings, how much it draws them back to their hometown community. There's several people that have said to me "The only reason I'm here is this town seems to value the work that the people that built it did prior to the people that are living here now." It's just kind of a unique thing that I never thought about much before. But people really do (get emotional). They walk through here and get tears and say "My grandpa used to work here." Q. You've been involved in a lot of revitalization projects in Beloit. Why do you think that's important? A. The people that built the buildings are really the core of a community. Those are the people that paid taxes. They built the schools. The roads. Anything that is, their taxes paid for it in the past. There wouldn't be a city here if it wasn't for people that worked, paid their taxes and built the infrastructure. If you just tear all that down, it's like they worked for nothing. You've got the farmer in Madison, say on the Beltline, and he farmed there for years and now you've got (an insurance company) out there on the land. What does that mean to anybody? And the thing that will literally get tears to my eyes, and my wife will tell you this, I'll be riding in the car and I'll slow down and stop in front of a farm that's sitting totally vacant. And it's really kind of sad, because there were kids born in that farm. That guy who built that farm had dreams. And it's gone. It's a passion that I have for people that have contributed to the world that we live in today, that we enjoy and take for granted. And buildings are part of that. They really are. It's very self-satisfying. It ain't about the money. ... My passion's always been to be an architect and, of course, I didn't have the education for that, so now I buy buildings and fix them up the way I want to. Q. You seem to have a connection to the workers who built this town. How does that affect the way you manage your own company? A. I think that's one of the reasons why I've been successful is because I think in terms of the guy doing the work. If you did spend time here at all and just sat down and watched and listened, the doors are all open. We have one secretary in the whole company. We answer each other's phone. You know, it's all family working together. Everybody knows everybody's job and when they need help they help them. We don't close the door and you're in a work cubicle and you sit there all day and go home and at the end of the day you wonder what happened in the cubicle next to you. ... It's an attitude throughout the company that if you care about other people and their feelings, people finally believe in the company and what it is. Q. Why did you drop out of high school? A. I had a baby to raise. I worked two 40-hour-a-week jobs until I was 21 years old. Quit both of them and started a business. And did roofing on the weekends. Right now that baby happens to be the chief financial officer of (ABC Supply). Everything worked out. Ninety-nine percent of it is do what you say and say what you do and treat people right. You know, it all works out. Q. Was your experience working two 40-hour-a-week jobs good for you? A. The experience of those two jobs was basically how not to run a business. My life experience working with my dad was one of the other (important experiences) and it made the person that I've turned into today. It's how I (learned to) appreciate working people and how to treat people and how to treat customers. Q. What spurred your decision to go from roofing to roofing supply? A. Because I knew how the other distributors were treating their customers. And also, their employees had nowhere to go because they were independently owned. And the owner, he had his Mercedes and he had his golf clubs and so on like that but his employees had no place to grow because he owned one distributor yard or two and unless he died ... there really was no future (for the employees). But if you have a company that is growing you can start with us as a truck driver, a roof loader and end up in two, three years as a manager because we bought 10 more stores. We try to hire within our company. Q. Did you envision this kind of growth? A. Well, I envisioned what ABC was going to be. You can talk to some of the first employees that worked here and they remember saying, "You know, we're going to build this into a billion dollar company. We're going to have a store in every city that's over 250,000 (people)." Q. What made you believe that was possible? A. This is America. Anything is possible if you have the will and the want to do it. It really is. It's the greatest country in the world if you want to accomplish something. I never was one to sit on my hands. I never look to retirement. I don't plan on retiring. Q. Will you ever relax? A. Oh, I relax everyday. I enjoy what I do. I enjoy hiring that young kid, you know, out of school. He's a truck driver, a roof loader, or a warehouse guy. And three, four, five years later he becomes a manager and he's making 80, 90, 100,000 dollars - more money than he ever dreamed of. Just giving people that want to work hard a real opportunity to get ahead. There's so many companies that the first thing they ask is, "Where did you go to school?" A school don't have anything to do with what is in your heart. Or how you treat people. Q. What do you like to do when you're not working? A. Thinking about what I'm going to do next. I don't golf. I don't do the things that normal people do. Creating jobs and opportunity for people. Buying companies. ... They're not connected to ABC at all. They're just outside hobbies. I like to build. Q. What are the challenges facing ABC? A. Our written plan is we want to be at $5 billion (in sales) and we've got three years to get there but we have to slow down to get there. We're growing faster than that. We're growing at about 25 to 30 percent a year and we'll do $3.1 billion this year. Q. Is there a limit to the company's growth? A. I don't think so. We're 20 percent of the U.S. market now and I think we can be 30, 40, 50 percent. Q. What has been your biggest success at ABC? A. We're twice the size of our next competitor and they've been in business since the (1940s) and we're just now 25 years old. I don't ever say "I'm successful now." I don't look at it that way. Q. What have your mistakes been? A. We tried some companies that didn't fit. Doing things quicker than the company was ready to do. I mean, going into areas before you were really ready to take (it) on. But we corrected them, obviously, or else we wouldn't be where we are today. Ken Hendricks Founder, chief executive officer and owner of American Builders & Contractors Supply Co. (ABC Supply). Age: 64 Company at a glance: Headquartered in Beloit, has 330 stores in 46 states with sales exceeding $3 billion in 2005. Background: Born and raised in Janesville where his father was a small, residential contractor. Professional history: Started first business at 21, a roofing company in Janesville. Started ABC Supply in 1982. Education: Dropped out of high school in the 11th grade at age 17. Personal: Wife Diane, seven children, 14 grandchildren Quotable: "Twenty-four hours a day I answer my own phone. Every single employee has my phone number." nleaf@madison.com madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
|
|||||
