Not that everyone is equally impressed. Last fall, for example, Braendel presented Thrislington's modest accomplishments and ambitious plans to an "Entrepreneurial Forum" sponsored by the local chapter of the Stanford Business School Alumni Association and hosted by Peat Marwick.
As a pitchman, Braendel was at his best. He pounded a hammer on a sample panel; he sprayed it with paint and washed it off. He laid out his new business plan -- at that point only a draft -- for the audience. Members of the "panel of experts" assembled by the evening's organizers chimed in. A representative from Stumbaugh & Associates, which distributes both Thrislington and other manufacturers' partitions, testified to the product's appeal. An architect explained why he and others in his firm were beginning to specify Thrislington.
But the venture capitalists and potential investors in the audience that night weren't buying. You have no experience in the industry, he was told. Just look at your résumé! What makes you think you can manage a company that's growing as fast as you plan to? "We took a vote of five or six people after the meeting," growled one venture capitalist later, "and it was unanimous: they wouldn't get the money they needed and they wouldn't succeed if they did."
Braendel remains unperturbed by such criticism. That may reflect his eternally optimistic personality -- or it may reflect a set of facts that only a jaded venture capitalist could ignore. Thrislington's monthly sales doubled in October, doubled again in November, and hit a yearlong total of close to $300,000 at the end of December. With close to two years' experience under his belt, production manager Tim Haase had the little factory running smoothly; the company was building an average of 80 cubicles a month and had compiled an on-time delivery record of 100%. Thrislington's advertising program, though new, was already generating hundreds of inquiries monthly; one rep I talked with a few days after the meeting lamented that she could scarcely keep up with leads ("Right now I'm looking at 15 phone calls I have to return").
Maybe most important, the number of satisfied customers was continuing to grow. Kaiser-Permanente, the big health-care organization, was ordering cubicles by the dozen. UA Theatres was already up to 72. Vandenberg Air Force Base and Brunswick Recreation Centers, the bowling-alley company, were both happy with what they had bought. "Structurally, they're the best partitions I've ever seen," opined Joe Duzynski, Brunswick's regional service manager. The assistant superintendent of a school district, meanwhile, wrote the company that, after a six-month trial, Thrislington's cubicles had "no major damage, no missing doors, and graffiti had practically disappeared from the rest rooms." That installation, I learned, was in a junior high school in a low-income neighborhood. Not for nothing is one of Thrislingtons's model lines called Combat Range.
The market potential, moreover, remained huge. Test cubicles are slated to be installed at Wendy's and McDonald's restaurants, and at the University of California's Berkeley campus. Several customers -- the Wet Seal Inc. and Chess King clothing chains, for example -- were adapting the cubicles for use as dressing rooms, a big market in which Thrislington has no real competition. Then too, nearly three-quarters of the company's 1988 sales had come come from W. H. Steele, a fact attributable to Steele's early association with Thrislington and the long lead time between architectural spec and actual production. As other reps' orders begin to come in, the company should approach its 1989 goal of $2.7 million in sales.
Cash remained tight throughout 1988. Now that he had his business plan, however, Braendel was embarking on a serious search for capital: as Inc. went to press he and his advisers were developing a convertible-debenture plan designed to raise a minimum of $1.75 million, mainly from private investors. Finding such people, of course, is exactly the kind of job that would be impossible without well-connected partners. "I'd expect Greg to rely on us and his lawyers to ferret out sources of capital," says Peat Marwick's Van der Linde. "He'll get his money." Anticipating that happy result, Braendel hired a chief financial officer (an M.B.A. with 13 years' experience at such companies as Dart & Kraft Inc.) and a national sales manager (24 years' experience, including 3 in senior marketing positions with Control Data Corp.). Both were recomended by Braendel's contacts at Peat Marwick.
In the long run, prospects turn on the same factors that govern any business: how well he can manage his people and resources, how much the market likes his product, how fast the competition moves in on his turf. But he has already accomplished much. When an actor sets out to manufacture bathroom partitions, a company as far along as Thrislington is a pretty good track record.
For this, Braendel himself deserves plenty of credit. But he can also thank an economic environment that, at last, has realized the value of start-up businesses.
"You can look at the statistics nationwide," says Van der Linde's colleague Bob Swan, echoing an attitude that has come to permeate corporate America. "The innovation and the growth are coming from these entrepreneurial companies. If the Fortune 500 are all you service, you're going to be missing a lot."
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Research assistance was provided by Elizabeth G. Conlin.
THE LAST HOLDOUT
Will even the banks help out a start-up? Nope
"Back then I thought banks could do no wrong," muses Greg-ory Braendel, founder of Thrislington Cubicles. So, naturally, he expected them to extend lines of credit to his fledgling company.
Hah. Los Angeles's Wilshire Bank, where he did his personal banking, gave him credit only when he put up two buildings he owned as collateral. Later, when his company actually had sales to point to, he got introductions to some big Los Angeles banks from his accountants, Peat Marwick Main & Co., and his lawyers, White & Case. Such prestigious introductions, he figured, would stand him in good stead.
Hah again. Security Pa
