It’s hard for Tom Sincharge to forget the phone call that changed his business. It came in September 1998, and Sincharge, president of Cleveland-based tubing manufacturer Yesterday Corp., wasn’t the least bit prepared when the CEO of Yesterday’s largest customer issued his ultimatum: “Bring your company’s technological capabilities in line with your competitors within four months or lose our business.”
“That was the day we realized Yesterday Corp. was living in the past,” Sincharge recalls. “They (the customer) wanted us to be able to accept their orders and payments electronically, like the rest of their vendors. If we hadn’t complied, their CEO was prepared to take his business elsewhere.”
Sincharge admits his hands were essentially tied.
“We didn’t have much choice, because they accounted for about 15 percent of our customer base,” he says. “It was a pretty grim situation. And we didn’t have much time to react.”
Sincharge rushed off to several IT consulting firms and returned with action plans for consideration by Yesterday’s board of directors. The board voted to embark on an ambitious e-commerce project, which would be implemented one piece at a time.
Yesterday’s project began when Sincharge hired a full-time IT director, T. Robert Slick, who installed a new network and contracted a Web design firm to develop and launch a full-scale Web site, intranet and extranet.
“Ironically, looking back at it now, it doesn’t seem all that difficult a thing to accomplish, considering how quickly e-commerce advancements are coming these days,” Sincharge says. “But for us, then, it was a serious wake up call.”
The moves, however, did more than simply allow Yesterday Corp. to keep its largest customer. They positioned the company for unprecedented growth. By adding e-commerce to its conventional sales model, Yesterday tapped into new markets, and its revenues grew from $40 million a year to $60 million.
Increased demand allowed Sincharge to open small satellite offices in Detroit, Miami, Phoenix and San Francisco. He hired 10 new independent sales representatives to blanket the rest of the United States, Canada and Mexico.
But these moves created new problems, and once again sent Sincharge in search of answers.
“Our top priority is figuring out how to maximize communication among all of our new branch offices, sales reps and our corporate offices without spending a fortune on long distance phone calls, airfare and hotel charges,” he says. “Our IT director suggests exploring the Internet, so we’ve decided to look at the options.”
Among the issues Sincharge says must be resolved are:
- How to allow remote sales people to access internal databases and networks;
- Solutions for holding monthly sales meetings and planning sessions;
- What to do about on-the-fly Internet options for employees traveling on business or out in the field;
- Whether to invest more money in the latest technology; software and hardware; and
- How to integrate everything into existing systems to better communicate with Yesterday’s mobile employees, virtual work force and customers.
Dustin S. Klein is editor of SBN.
About Yesterday Corp.
Yesterday Corp. does not exist.
It is a composite of various companies, assembled by SBN for the purpose of creating a case study that would provide the greatest benefit to the widest range of our readers.
All quotes and decisions attributed to personnel of Yesterday Corp. have been constructed based on conversations with a variety of business owners and executives.
All other information in this section — whether quoted directly or indirectly — is derived from actual interviews with sources and meets SBN’s high standards for accuracy and credibility. Aside from Yesterday Corp. personnel, all names, companies and products cited in this section are real
Yesterday Corp profile
Nature of business: Manufacturer of plastic and rubber tubing
Customer base: Manufacturers, and distributors of raw materials to manufacturers, in the automotive, appliance and consumer products segments
Annual revenues: $60 million
Annual earnings: $9 million
Employees: 165
Year founded: 1949
Corporate offices: Downtown Cleveland
Manufacturing facilities: Twinsburg (plastic tubing); Canton (rubber tubing)
Satellite offices: Detroit, Miami, Phoenix, San Francisco
Distribution: Its own U.S. distribution system, with reliance on an outside distribution agreement with another manufacturer in Canada and a distributor in Germany for the company’s European market.
Sales force: Internal sales team for direct sale to manufacturers, external sales reps who sell to distributors and other companies around the U.S. and abroad.
