BIG Moves

COVER UPDATE

BIG Moves

A corporate executive who gave up a globetrotting career

for something more entrepreneurial likes the transition so far.

It was one crazy summer for Stan Kinnett.

It was his first summer in Florida after moving to the Gulf Coast from Columbus, Ohio in early 2008. He came to the area after giving up his job running a 3,500-employee dryer plant for Whirlpool.

But Kinnett isn't one of the countless Gulf Coast executives who failed at retirement. Instead, Kinnett came to Florida, to a rural one-room schoolhouse town about 30 miles northeast of downtown Bradenton in Manatee County, to try his hand at entrepreneurialism. Specifically, he came after buying an ownership stake in Dixie-Southern Constructors, an 80-employee steel fabrication company.

Dixie-Southern's niche is in the specialized world of fabricating carbon and stainless steel for use in building the pressure vessels and stacks that surround power, chemical and water treatment plants. With customers in places as diverse as Hawaii, Pakistan and Trinidad, the melding and welding company had grown to about $15 million in annual revenues by 2007.

Kinnett, working with financing provided by a national venture capital firm, set out to grow the company. Kinnett started his new job in April, mere months before the global steel market went haywire, he says. For example, says Kinnett, the company signed a contract to sell a shipload of steel to one customer, only to watch the price of steel rise 10% by the next day.

The rest of the summer would be a seesaw of price fluctuations, says Kinnett. One month steel was up 30% and the next month it would be down 20%. The market settled down by fall and by then, Kinnett and his staff had come up with some hedging strategies to guard against more fluctuations.

Kinnett also focused on the big-picture of growing Dixie-Southern's revenue and potential client base, partially by taking small steps. He hired a few more sales reps and redid the company's marketing and branding materials.

Of course, Kinnett is well aware there are few steps he could take, big or small, that would be able to put a dent in the economic downturn. He's already seen several customers delay orders as they wait to see if they have the money to complete the project they need the steel for in the first place.

While he declines to disclose annual revenues projections, Kinnett says if the company finishes 2009 with flat growth, "we would feel good about that."

Despite the hectic pace of Kinnett's first year in Florida, he says he's having fun going from being a globetrotting executive to having cow pastures as his business neighbors. Kinnett worked for Whirlpool for 30 years, including stints opening and running plants in India and Singapore.

He says going from corporate bureaucracy to a pure entrepreneurial outfit is a constant learning experience.

"I'm still having a blast," says Kinnett. "I'm still taking out my own trash. Occasionally."

-Mark Gordon