Built for Speed

At the Atlantic Group, everything about the way the company operates is designed on one principle: speed. Is this the ultimate competitive advantage?

Face flushed and sandy hair askew, Roger Abramson bursts through the revolving doors into a Park Avenue office building, barks into a cell phone, extends a hand and flashes a smile to a visitor, and scans the lobby directory to locate his 9:30 appointment. His pace reflects his obsession with time. A minute spent on only one task is a minute squandered, and wasted time infuriates Abramson. He shouts at a taxi driver for taking the wrong route, slams down the receiver in disgust when a vendor puts him on hold, rips up an employee's work because she didn't follow his exact instructions. And to his family, fiancÉe, and friends, he issues a stern warning: "If you are not producing revenue, do not call me during the day." Abramson's mantra is speed, and heaven help you if you get in his way. So what's the rush?

Abramson doesn't have the luxury of slowing down. He doesn't have a unique product to sell, he didn't invent anything, and he hasn't unearthed a new market niche. He's an office-furniture distributor, which means that his company, the Atlantic Group Furniture Procurement and Project Management Inc., is in a commodity business in which margins are traditionally whittled away by both customers and manufacturers. All companies struggle to escape that cycle, seeking to distinguish themselves through tremendous customer service or by providing some additional value to their product. To be sure, Abramson does all that. But his true currency is speed. "From the time a dealer meets a customer until the time an order is placed usually takes a month," he says. "We can do it in a day." And it's not just about how fast he can deliver the goods; it's about how quickly he can track down new business, gather industry information, get customers to make decisions, guarantee results from his employees, and persuade manufacturers to go the extra mile. Spend a few days with Abramson and it will come as no surprise that he has built such a company; he is incapable of working any other way. What's impressive is how he and his partner and alter-ego, Mike Leiderman, have taken what seems to be pure compulsion and systematized it, deliberately creating a quality-driven company that's also hell-bent on hyperspeed--ostensibly incompatible goals that have yielded a total of $30 million in sales in just two and a half years, and profitability from the second month of operation. "We created a whole new business model," boasts the 30-year-old Abramson. "And if you don't like our system, you can go somewhere else."

That's what Abramson did. As a top salesman for a major Manhattan furniture dealer for seven years, he earned a mid-six-figure salary, yet was constantly frustrated. "The library never had any manufacturers' brochures in it. I used to have to run around to seven different showrooms and spend hours in traffic. My assistants were constantly on the phone with manufacturers to get samples we didn't have," he recalls. "And not once in seven years did I invite a customer to my office." Unable to sit for more than a few minutes at a time, he paces, throws up his hands. "Roger believed that he should be changing the rules and doing things in a very progressive fashion," says Chuck Hyman, his former boss, now senior vice-president of sales and marketing at Dancker, Sellew & Douglas, an Atlantic Group competitor. "It was difficult for us to constantly provide him with everything he needed at the speed he needed it."

Back then, Abramson learned an important lesson: you can't be really fast on your own steam. Sure, you need to vastly reduce cycle time, keep up with the latest technological advances, stay ahead of the competition. But unless your company is built in such a way that all that becomes second nature, you may as well be running in place. Abramson knew that he needed up-to-the-minute industry information, committed outsourcing partners, responsive manufacturers, and dedicated employees, and that he would have to make extraordinary demands on them all. To win their unwavering loyalty, he would have to make the payoff so clear and so attractive that they would never need to question the urgency of any request. And so Abramson, first and foremost a salesman, a master of the win-win deal, built his company as a symbiotic web of business relationships that, at its best, serves the most compelling interests of each participant. He sits at the center. And he is watching the clock.

Choosing the right
SOURCE OF CAPITAL

If speed is Abramson's vehicle, control is the engine that powers it. From the beginning, he and Leiderman were determined to start a business that was beholden to no one. In their industry, that isn't easy to do. Typically, says George Kordaris, coeditor of officeINsight, an industry newsletter, the cost of entry into the office-furniture distribution business is so high that most entrepreneurs are forced to seek financing. "They need elaborate CAD systems, software, and a staff of at least four or five to service customers," he explains. Private investors typically demand a presence on a company's board, a full-blown business plan, and an exit strategy. That kind of accountability was abhorrent to Abramson and Leiderman. "If you have other people investing, they want to be involved in decision making, and I didn't want to constantly have to justify what I'm doing," says Abramson. "I didn't want to waste my time writing reports. This is the Roger and Mike show, and we're the only people who get to vote." So they bankrolled their start-up with $500,000 in savings, eschewing all other financing options and agreeing to remain true to their original philosophy: to make money, they would need to spend money. Their own.

Several months ago they did just that, moving to their third location in just two years. The company, begun with six employees in 1,700 square feet of midtown office space, had already moved once but had grown to 25 employees and was bursting at the seams. Abramson, using commercial real estate contacts he had cultivated during a brief career as a broker, hunted down 10,000 square feet of space at 46th Street and Sixth Avenue, where he and Leiderman spent close to $1 million to transform an entire floor into a thoroughly modern workplace, with gleaming maple floors, arched windows, exposed-brick walls, and meticulously designed workstations outfitted with the latest technology. Tucked toward the back, adjacent to Abramson and Leiderman's shared corner office, you'll find a pool table, a big-screen television connected to two satellite dishes, a fully stocked kitchen, and (for company-hosted parties) Sam Adams beer on tap. To investors, if there were any, it might all appear wildly extravagant--the self-indulgences of an underage, overconfident spendthrift. But Abramson knows that everything, right down to the fine French wine stacked next to the CD player, serves a purpose.