• Late-Blooming Entrepreneurs
  
• Shorter Careers, Longer Lives

LATE-BLOOMING ENTREPRENEURS
Six Princetonians Make Fresh Career Starts in Middle Age

There was a time, not long ago, when corporate executives upon reaching their fifties could safely calculate their mounting pension, sharpen their golf games, and begin dreaming about foreign travel. That, of course, was before restructuring, downsizing, outsourcing, and buyouts became part of the lexicon of American business. The economic turmoil of the 1990s has ended the notion of white-collar job security and has created both anguish and opportunity for middle-aged executives. The six Princetonians profiled in the following pages were in their forties or fifties when they made radical career changes. Some were spurred by economic events beyond their control, others just had an itch to scratch. A lawyer became a marketing maven. An ad man left a big agency to go independent. An executive quit one firm and purchased another to run it on his terms. A career diplomat took the reins of a for-profit corporation. An industrial scientist became a representative of an overseas chemical company. These late-blooming entrepreneurs have approached their challenges with the enthusiasm and energy of people decades younger. And by putting to work the skills and wisdom acquired in previous careers, they've been able to minimize (without completely eliminating) the mistakes and false starts that a young person might make.

Lew Coco '63 wasn't happy in his work. For most of his professional life he had been with the New York-based textile firm of J. P. Stevens. In 1988, the company was sold off in pieces. At the time, Coco was president of Stevens Elastomerics, a $100-million-a-year division located in Northampton, Massachusetts, which produced elastic for apparel and construction materials.
J.P. Stevens sold Elastomerics to Odyssey Partners, a leveraged-buyout firm. Coco was retained as Elastomerics's president, but the new arrangement left much to be desired. Odyssey was bleeding Elastomerics to pay off the huge debt it had incurred to buy it. Coco tried to purchase the company from Odyssey but couldn't come up with enough cash. In l992, at age 49, he told his bosses that he wanted to go on his own. They gave him a generous severance package, which kept him afloat while he looked for a firm to acquire.
Coco spent nearly a year searching for the company he would eventually buy. Early in the process he decided on the exact specifications of the firm he was seeking: a manufacturer of rubber or plastic products located in New England or the Middle Atlantic states and with gross annual sales between $5 million and $50 million. He looked seriously at 11 firms before settling on Julius Koch, U.S.A., a maker of tape and cord for Venetian blinds. Based in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Koch at the time had sales of $11.5 million and about 150 employees, but its margins had been deteriorating for several years. By 1993, when Coco and a group of Boston venture capitalists agreed to purchase the firm, it was losing money.
In the three years he has been Koch's CEO and largest minority shareholder, Coco has instituted major reforms. He has phased out much of Koch's outmoded production equipment and is working the remaining equipment much harder, going from one shift a day to three. Under Coco's direction, Koch also shifted from assembly-line production to "cellular" production, in which workers take responsibility for the whole product instead of a single part. To keep up morale, Coco meets on a quarterly basis with employees to discuss issues such as safety and production targets, and to hear their gripes. "This is very much a hands-on situation," he says. "In a small company like ours, if you make a decision, it gets implemented. But at a large company the troops don't necessarily march."
Abetted by a robust market for Venetian blinds and other home products, Coco's changes have increased production by 30 percent in two years. The financial results are also impressive. Coco estimates that he and his partners today could sell Koch for three times what they paid for it. But he thinks not about selling his company but about expanding it. He is looking to acquire a business whose product is related to windows and which would complement his sales of Venetian-blind materials. He recently added additional space to prepare for that eventuality.
Coco believes that his success with Koch stems directly from the care with which he selected the business. The key, he says, was his taking over a company ripe for improvement, and without excessive debt.

John Kogler '63 can remember precisely when, after 18 years, he decided to give up practicing law. It happened in October 1985, when he was 44. As a real-estate attorney and a senior partner with the Los Angeles firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, he was sitting through yet another interminable meeting concerning a closing. A call home reminded him it was Halloween, and once again he wasn't there to share it with his children, ages 4 and 3.
In what proved to be a defining moment of his life, Kogler decided to quit the firm. Exactly what he would do next he didn't know, but whatever it was, it would give him more control over his time. He wasn't exactly jumping without a parachute, however. He had prospered as a lawyer and could fall back on his savings. In addition, his wife had her own business, a direct-sales cosmetics firm. If nothing worked out, he figured, he could always return to the law.
Soon afterward, he was lazing around his house in Tustin, California, enjoying the weather and thinking about what to do with the rest of his life. He was also watching a good bit of cable television, and what caught his eye was a new type of program that spent a half hour or more pitching a product, usually cosmetics, and soliciting sales through an 800 number. These "infomercials" represented a new form of selling. Although he knew little about marketing, Kogler was intrigued.
Kogler and his wife, Clare, began taping the commercials. They viewed them together, analyzing the tactics of different companies. Kogler wrote down their thoughts and shared them with a friend in direct marketing, who suggested that Kogler produce similar reports and sell them to advertising agencies and consumer-products companies. Thus was born The JW Greensheet, a newsletter that covers the infomercial industry (the "JW" in the name derives from the Koglers' middle initials). Kogler says their publication is "half Nielsen ratings and half Siskel and Ebert," a reference to the glib TV movie pundits. The Greensheet tracks advertisers using infomercials and offers the Koglers' pithy and often biting commentary on the best and worst of the genre.
Kogler began with three subscribers to his first report, but within a few months the count was up to 50-enough to make The JW Greensheet, which is published in both weekly and monthly versions, a going concern. Today the newsletter boasts 300 subscribers, who pay $250 per issue. On the side, the Koglers also consult at a rate of $1,000 an hour. They each work about 60 hours a week. Close to 35 percent of Kogler's time is spent watching infomercials, about 20 percent writing the newsletter, and 30 percent doing business on the phone.
Kogler declines to reveal his income, but he says it is well above what he made as a real-estate attorney. He plans to sell his business in five or six years, when his children will be entering college. In the meantime, he and Clare continue to monitor infomercials on their 14 television sets, each with a VCR.

Dale Casto '58 had been in the advertising business for 25 years but was liking it less and less. The Boston ad agency he was working for had become oppressively political and petty. Matters such as titles and office size took precedent over clients' concerns. As an account executive, Casto was frustrated. He felt he couldn't deliver the kind of work his accounts deserved.
His frustrations led him to a decision to start his own firm. In particular, Casto thought there was an opportunity to serve smaller companies that couldn't afford their own marketing managers. He believed he could provide these firms with marketing expertise. By using artists, copywriters, and media buyers he had come to know over the years, he could produce ads, packaging, and other marketing materials for his clients.
In 1990, at age 54, Casto left the agency, taking with him two smaller accounts he had been handling. He secured office space in a small building owned by Wright Design, a Sudbury, Massachusetts, package-design firm he had used during his agency days.
One of Casto's first tasks was to create a brochure. He mailed it to more than 50 prospective clients, and the response was thundering silence. Meanwhile, he had begun networking among acquaintances, and before long he started to pick up some business. By the end of his first year as an entrepreneur, he was making as much money as he had at his former agency. And despite the constant need to sell himself and his firm, he was enjoying work a lot more than he had at his old agency. By using his own suppliers he was producing quality products. For Casto, the ad business was again fun.
His entrepreneurial career has since taken a new turn. Within two years of going on his own, Casto was hired by the head of Wright Design to take over the firm's administrative functions. In addition to running Casto and Associates, he now spends about 30 percent of his time looking after Wright's affairs. In 1992, he added a third hat by agreeing to become the New England representative for CRC, a New Jersey-based coupon-redemption firm that measures the response to coupons at supermarkets. The coupon-redemption work fits well with Casto's other activities. It is a relatively inexpensive service and thus not too hard to sell, and it gives him access to company marketing directors. "It's an excellent door opener," he says.
Gregarious and chatty, Casto is happy to be on his own, but he's the first to admit that entrepreneurial ventures have both their ups and downs. "You just have to get used to the fact that you don't have a steady income," he says. "On the other hand, it evens out over time. You have to be optimistic-nothing is more important to a businessman."
Casto is the first to admit he isn't getting rich, but his income is more than adequate to meet his needs. He points out that in every year since he's been on his own, he has made at least as much as he did when he was an agency employee. Last year he and his wife, Eleanor, felt flush enough to take a cruise through Alaska's inland waters.

Charles Scanio '62 loves chemistry. he has a doctorate in the subject from Northwestern University, and for six years he taught it at Iowa State University. He gets excited talking about what he calls "good chemistry." In 1986, at age 46 and after working for eight years as the director of research and development at two chemical companies, he decided to go on his own. Operating out of his home as a consultant, he made a decent living, but the work flow was sporadic. Then, in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.
Scanio thought he could find business opportunities in eastern Europe. Recalling scholarly papers by Czech chemists he had read as a graduate student, he decided Czechoslovakia would be a good place to look. The idea became more focused when a friend put him in touch with Jim Timourian, a mathematics professor at the University of Edmonton, in Canada, who in his spare time was a venture capitalist. The two met when Timourian stopped briefly in Boston while on a trip to the East Coast. Encouraged by their discussion, Scanio began looking for a Czech firm to join with him in a collaborative relationship. Using an international directory and consulting with a Czech chemist working in the United States, he zeroed in on Lachema, a company located in Brno, several hours southeast of Prague.
In 1992, Scanio and Timourian visited Lachema, which manufactures high-quality products used in the printing industry. Lachema's production of photographic intermediates, as they are known in the trade, had gone almost exclusively to countries of the former Soviet bloc, and output had dropped sharply due to political changes in the wake of communism's collapse. After three days of negotiations, Scanio and Timourian worked out a deal with the Czech manufacturer by which a company they were forming, Secant Chemicals, would become Lachema's exclusive North American distributor.
Photographic intermediates are manufactured by both German and Japanese companies, whose prices are significantly higher than Lachema's. This ought to have given Secant a potential advantage in selling in the United States, but American companies proved reluctant to buy from a new supplier-"a big surprise to me," says Scanio. To keep his company afloat, he had to invest an additional $75,000 of his savings, and Timourian's investment group had to come up with another $150,000 to fund Scanio's living and business expenses.
It was a disheartening start, but Secant has since won acceptance in the industry. Its cash flow turned positive in late 1995 as formerly timid customers increased their orders. And the future looks promising. A $400,000 expansion of Lachema's plant will result in a tenfold gain in production, laying the groundwork for what Scanio hopes will be a quantum leap in sales. To generate customers for this added production, he has been knocking on the doors of American printing companies. For the time being, Scanio remains Secant's sole employee, and he spends most of his time either selling to, or servicing, clients.
Secant is owned by a corporation controlled by Timourian, and Scanio has no equity in the firm. But his income is tied to sales, and he should profit handsomely when, as he expects, they soar. He and his wife, Kaaren, have been living on less than $50,000 a year. He drives a 1987 Volkswagen Jetta, has become an expert at securing financial aid for their two college-age sons, and when visiting eastern Europe he eschews fancy hotels for simple walk-ups. Scanio projects that within the next five years his income will increase to $200,000. He hopes to add to Secant's product line, and he already has a scientific institute in Prague at work developing new products that might be manufactured by his Czech supplier. "It's rewarding to know that I'm doing something that is highly creative," he says, "and that at the same time I'm helping some very good people in the Czech Republic."

Herb Wilgis '57 came to the world of business in a roundabout way. He'd enjoyed a distinguished career in the foreign service, including stints as the deputy chief of mission in Hungary from 1977 to 1980 and as chargé d'affaires in Poland from 1981 to 1983. In 1985, as he approached his 30th anniversary with the State Department, he assessed his career path and determined that it would be at least five years before he would be eligible for another challenging assignment and a promotion. He wasn't in a mood to sit it out, so he started networking to find a position in business in his hometown of Baltimore.
Wilgis wanted an entrepreneurial opportunity-a chance to run his own show. Some of those with whom he spoke doubted his background was suitable for business, but Wilgis countered their skepticism by emphasizing his skills as an administrator. "I had the ability to make decisions, to delegate, to see ahead and plan for contingencies," he says. He had also been tested under fire, running the U.S. embassy in Warsaw when Solidarity was banned by the Communist regime.
Wilgis's networking paid off. A friend, who also happened to be a Princeton graduate, was a member of the board of Penniman and Browne, a small engineering and environmental-testing firm that was looking for a new president and CEO. Within a few months, and while Wilgis was still working for the State Department, Penniman offered him the top job.
Penniman and Browne was losing money in 1986, when Wilgis, at age 50, took the helm. But within two years it had moved into the black, and by 1994 Wilgis had doubled its revenues, to $1.6 million. He managed this turnaround by substantially altering the firm's menu of services. Anticipating market trends, Wilgis cut back on asbestos testing and moved into other areas: the testing of soil and groundwater around underground storage tanks (primarily for commercial real-estate transactions), jet-fuel leakage (for a major pipeline), and lead contamination (for public-housing authorities and schools). He also beefed up the firm's environmental consulting.
"This is a tough business, because things can change so quickly," Wilgis says. "The technology is constantly evolving, and government regulations are fluid." It seems an ideal setting for a liberal-arts graduate who took not a single chemistry or engineering course while in college.
For Wilgis, the switch from government to private industry has gone more smoothly than he might have expected. "Almost all my management skills were transferable," he says. "The biggest adjustment was budgeting. When you budget in government, you try to justify expenditures. But in the private sector you try to minimize expenditures. It's an entirely different perspective."
His most important miscue? "Not taking more complete charge of the company earlier," he says. "I was too tentative. I should have moved more swiftly in making changes in technology and personnel."