Distributors Raise the Bar
This says a lot about President Larry Zavadil's vision. His establishment of the Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) has been instrumental in the company's success. Now, with a national contract with Irving, Texas-based Novation, Zavadil sees the potential for unprecedented growth.
When he established the company in 1981, Zavadil was paying his sales associates 75 percent of the profit on custom jobs, and the remaining 25 percent went toward running and growing the company. Supplier rebates issued for prompt pay constituted another income category for the company. "It was a good model in my mind, and that is the way we have maintained it," he said. "Back then, most of the vendors we were dealing with were offering 5 percent prompt pay. But, over the past 20 years, that has slipped to roughly 1.4 percent."