Finalist
Specialty Products and safety
Bill Fink does not particularly care for luck.
Yes, a little luck of some sort is always somewhere around us all, and if Fink is the benefactor of some of it now and then, he will not brush it away. But he would rather rely on his smarts than on a little dumb luck. Heck, just take a look at the wording on his golf bag — even on the links, he believes “luck has nothing to do with it.”
That is how Fink built one of the larger insurance agencies in Northeast Ohio during the 1980s and early ’90s, how he and his wife, Beth, have bred and shown championship dogs and how he has expanded Area Wide Protective Inc. into one of the larger traffic control operations during the last 17 years.
Fink is president and CEO of Area Wide Protective, which doubled in size between 2003 and 2008. After Fink completed a recapitalization transaction with a local private equity firm in August 2008, the company appeared poised for further growth. But then, within weeks, the recession hit and the company lost more than 85 percent of service from its largest customer by the end of the following year.
Tough luck — but you already know that Fink does not care for luck.
So what did he do to keep his company afloat? He challenged his team to keep delivering the same level of quality work, he hired a new chief operating officer and chief financial officer, along with several new middle managers, and opened offices in Indiana and North Carolina. He also continued to drive a major IT project and spearheaded the acquisition of a competitor in Georgia. The company is now developing a streamlined electronic billing service to empower field employees and increase billing volume and customer responsiveness.
Luck has nothing to do with any of that.
How to reach: Area Wide Protective Inc., (800) 343-2650 or www.awptrafficsafety.com
