Weekly Briefing: Boating Clients Lead to Business on Solid Land
Tom Sullivan was 15 years into his 18-year career repairing, designing and rebuilding interiors for a Redondo Beach boat yard when customers began asking him to make deck chairs. So in 1988, he and his wife, JoAnne, formed Goodwood Inc. an El Segundo deck and beach chair maker. When the movie industry came calling, Tom changed the name to Hollywood Chairs Inc. and moved the thriving operation to North Hollywood in 1998. Then, when the market softened, he formed a division that is proving to be his biggest success yet.
“We used to sell our beach and deck chairs at crafts festivals during the summer. Occasionally a movie industry person asked me to design a comfortable tall chair. It started out by word of mouth because I didn’t advertise in the movie industry. But the industry is very tight-knit. So we got one chair on one set and then it pretty much snowballed. Each time I went to a set I would be introduced to 10 people and they would take those 10 chairs and with each chair, 10 new people would see them. We then realized there was a strong market in Hollywood.
“The turning point was in 1997, when we were delivering a chair to the makeup artist of the ‘Drew Carey Show.’ Drew saw them and said, ‘Hey get me one of those (each) for my entire crew.’ It turned out to be a 50-chair order and keep in mind these are $250 chairs.
“We now offer eight different directors’ chairs made from white oak or bamboo. Our base chair starts at $220 for a short chair made of white oak and go up to $500 for a tall laminated bamboo chair. With accessories (underseat ice chest holder, extended foot rest, built-in drink holders in the arm rest, swiveling computer table, wheels on the chair and embroidery) our most expensive chair can go up to $900.
“Last year, we did about $350,000 in sales. This year, because it’s a softer market, we’ll probably do about the same. We’ve found that we’ve hit a saturation point. Pretty much every movie set in Los Angeles has a couple of our chairs.
“Stores, with the exception of three or four in this area, won’t carry the chairs because there’s just not enough of a (profit) margin for them. They sell them for the same price we do, but with the discount we give them they can only mark-up 20 percent.
“We’re thinking maybe $2 million in sales in 2002. We’ve got five employees not including us a shop crew of four people and one office person.”
David Greenberg
