Executive Session with Tom Dowdy

Executive Session with Tom Dowdy

President of The Radiate Retail Group

PERSONAL

HOMETOWN: Cleveland, Ohio

EDUCATION: Bachelor of science in Advertising from Kent State University.

AGE: 54

HOW HE ESCAPES: "Golf, travel, mountains. Colorado - Telluride, I like the west because it's just the opposite of Sarasota."

HOW DOES A MIDWEST BOY END UP IN FLORIDA: "Moved here in 1990 from New York where I was working in White Plains, N.Y., and living in Connecticut and moved down here in '90 with a job opportunity and spent a couple of years working for someone else and then started National In Store in 1994 in Sarasota. So for me, it's probably like most people, you come down here as a function of better lifestyle, better climate and then developing the business from this location with no customers in this area, and we still don't have any customers in Florida, so all of our customers are some place else."

PROFESSIONAL

TIME WITH COMPANY: The global marketing firm Omnicom acquired National In-Store in 2003. Dowdy stayed on as its CEO/founder. The Radiate Retail Group, a newly created services division of The Radiate Group, named a network of independently branded marketing services agencies operating within the Omnicom Group. National In-Store will be a centerpiece of the new division, which will be based in Sarasota and will also include other complementary companies.

POSITIONS PREVIOUSLY HELD: "Cheeseboro Ponds, and that was an entry-level sales position right out of college. I went from Cheeseboro to Johnson & Johnson and that was a sales position and then moved to Pittsburgh where I ran their sales business. Then after that I went to work for a company in White Plains, N.Y., called Combe Inc. and started out with them in sales. I spent about 13 years there, and when I left I was in the marketing department. Along the way I transferred to New York, which it was great experience but in hindsight I would do it again, but I didn't enjoy living in New York."

WHY: "I guess it's from growing up in the Midwest. Being exposed to that lifestyle it's just not an easy place to live. There's a lot of commute time to get to and from work. Very expensive to live, and the job I had was very different than a sales position, lack of freedom and not being on the front line where it all happens. It was a good experience, but I always wanted to be in-front of customers selling."

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO START YOUR OWN BUSINESS: "After 19 years of corporate life, I had been on both sides of the desk - the sales side and the marketing side. I already had pretty good experience with retailers so I saw at that time there was an outsource model developing to provide staffing for retailer and vendors because of the consolidation of the retail industry. So I decided to give it a shot before I got too old. I started my business, and it worked."

COMPANY AND THE POSITION

WHAT IS THIS NEW COMPANY ABOUT: "We're going to provide (retailers) with a one-stop shopping resource for services. It's the space National In Store has been in for the last 10 years, and we have a strong capability and a strong foothold in the retail merchandising space. Providing self-training services, providing event marketing services, display setups, so on and so on. Now National In Store is going to be the centerpiece of this new division. We'll be adding on throughout this position companies in other areas of retail space like staffing, HR services, category management services, data analytics event marketing agencies and so on and so on."

WHAT CHANGES FOR YOU: "I'm going to be involved in acquisitions. Prior to that I basically was running National In Store day-to-day. I'm still the CEO of National In Store, but I have a competent management team in place here where the transfer of power has already taken place, and they're handling everything day-to-day."

WILL IT BE DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO HAND OVER THE DAY-TO-DAY OPERATIONS: "No, I'm still involved with the strategic direction of the company and keeping the company on that path, but at the same time we look to create an equation with the addition of these other companies and services where 1+1 = 4 because the companies coming on board are going to enhance National In Store because there's going to be lots of synergies."

IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES: "Identifying capability gaps and then identifying the best in-class companies to fill those gaps. That's just a lot of detective work and research to find out what are the capability gaps and where do we want to be and then defining how we're going to get there."

- Adam Hughes