When will the Bartmann who's still dropping beers in the marketplace really feel he's arrived? Wayne Learned thinks he knows. He once asked Bartmann what his ultimate goal was. "I know I will have made it," Bartmann responded unblinkingly, "when I am subpoenaed to testify before Congress on monopolies."
Of course, even Bartmann admits that CFS can't maintain its hammerlock on the market forever. Aware that the publication of his numbers could launch a thousand business plans--"this article will create competition," he declares--he figures there's little to be lost in blowing his low profile. The challengers, he knows, are already coming. "We get calls every day," says Kim Betancourt of Standard & Poor's, "saying, 'Hi, we're XYZ company, and we want to be like Commercial Financial." Says Sheerin of Duff & Phelps, "The gravy train has to end."
By that time, though, Bartmann the ever-moving target will have taken CFS to some other place--some other market, some other line of business. Because for all the plaudits he receives for having "downloaded his brain" into the company's rule books and software, for having made himself, as some analysts claim, remarkably unnecessary to the company's continuing success, it is not what Bartmann has already imagined that sets him and his enterprise apart. It is, rather, what he will imagine still. That's what can never be "downloaded": the things he hasn't thought of yet.
"If we had to make a move today, we'd go into student loans," he says. "That's the next most inefficient marketplace." Already, Bartmann is plotting a 1998 expansion into Europe. And at a recent all-company rally (where a tent full of 2,000 pumped-up employees chanted, "We are not normal, we are not average, we are different"), he announced that CFS is getting into the business of issuing credit cards to its customers, whom no ordinary bank would touch. Debtors who start meeting their payment plans diligently will become eligible for one. If they continue to prove creditworthy, they'll soon become eligible for auto loans. Then mortgages. "We want to take people who are in debt by the hand," says Bartmann, "and show them the ladder to recovery."
A second chance. Who better to offer one than Bill Bartmann?
Jerry Useem is an associate editor at Inc.
Resources
Looking to get up to speed on the buying and selling of bad debt? Or to sell off some of your own tardy accounts receivable? Here are some useful contacts:
- American Collectors Association, in Minneapolis (612-926-6547). Carissa Hoffman (hoffman@collector.com) is the resident expert on the purchasing of receivables.
- Faulkner & Grey (800-535-8403), in New York City. It publishes two monthlies, Collections and Credit Risk magazine ($79 a year) and Credit Collections News ($295 a year).
- The Debt Marketplace (562-903-7220), in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. Founders Dennis and Judy Hammond educate both buyers and sellers about how to value bad debt properly.
- First Financial Network (405-748-4100), in Oklahoma City. Founder Bliss Morris serves as a broker and portfolio adviser to institutions that want to sell their delinquent debts. Working on commission, she stratifies, bundles, and prices the portfolios of debt, and then markets them.
- Heritage Financial Services (405-722-1409), also in Oklahoma City. This is another repackager, only it works as a reseller of nonperforming debt rather than as a commission-based broker. It buys debt wholesale from the source and cuts it into smaller fillets for sale to collection agencies and lawyers.
- Unifund CCR Partners (513-489-8877), in Cincinnati. David Rosenberg's operation buys and collects on various forms of bad debt, including credit-card debt.
- The Nilson Report (805-983-0448), published out of Oxnard, Calif. H. Spencer Nilson's bimonthly journal is a good source of information on credit-card debt; a subscription costs $745 a year. For more information on that topic, also visit www.ramresearch.com on the Web.
ACCOUNT PORTFOLIOS, Eric Woldoff, 500 Chastain Center, Suite 515, Kennesaw, GA 30144; 770-420-1070; fax, 770-420-1085 42
BILL BARTMANN, Commercial Financial Services, 2448 E. 81st St., 55th floor, Tulsa, OK 74137-4248; 918-492-5555; fax, 918-488-9139 42
KIM BETANCOURT, Standard & Poor's, 26 Broadway, New York, NY 10004; 212-208-8000 42
ROBBIN CONNER, Moody's Investors Service, 99 Church St., New York, NY 10007; 212-553-0300; fax, 212-553-3856 42
DUFF & PHELPS CREDIT RATING, Sean Sheerin, 17 State St., 12th floor, New York, NY 10004; 212-908-0200; fax, 212-908-0222 42
WEST CAPITAL FINANCIAL SERVICES, Manny Occiano, 5775 Roscoe Ct., San Diego, CA 92123; 619-560-2600; fax, 619-569-4694 42
