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Jackie Liu Email
GROUP SUPERVISOR . The Pollack PR Marketing Group
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Employees:
16Revenue:
$2.1MAbout
"We want to sell our products internationally," says Blake, his eyes brightening. Stefan Pollack, 32, is one of those Gen X heirs who had never intended to join the family business but did so after becoming disillusioned with the world outside. "I was enamored with investment banking," says Stefan, who majored in business at the University of Southern California. But after the stock market stumble in October of 1987, jobs were hard to come by, and Stefan was impatient for success. Entrepreneurship began to look like an alternative. So he asked his mother, Noemi, to take him on at the Los Angeles public relations firm she had founded in 1985, representing law firms and executive recruiters, among others. She was not enthusiastic. "What the hell would you do for me? You're not a PR person," is the way Stefan recalls her unexpected reaction. He countered that he could handle the business side of the agency, The Pollack PR Marketing Group, while others did the creative work. "I would be what creative people call a suit," he says modestly. So ten years ago, Noemi, with trepidation, hired her son. "I had to bottle up my nurturing instinct," she admits. Coddling was not necessary. Now second in command as vice president to his mother, who is president, Stefan has faced a reality she had avoided. Relying entirely on public relations is chancy, because in an economic downturn, outside PR consultants are generally among the first to be fired. So Stefan has created another dimension to the company, a parallel business unit within The Pollack PR Marketing Group that operates as a marketing department for clients. He has targeted manufacturing companies with at least $6 million to $8 million a year in revenues and recently signed the division's second client. Revenues have doubled over the past year and a half, to $1 million, and Stefan can claim at least part of the credit. So he isn't just a suit after all. Jared Schutz, 24, is a highflier of e-commerce, one of those Gen Xers who measures success, at least in part, by the number of hits his Website receives. During one recent month, some 11.5 million computer users visited his site, Bluemountain.com, making it the ninth-most-trafficked Website on the Internet. For those who have not yet made the trip, Bluemountain.com is an electronic greeting-card shop, a place were you can browse among animated birthday, wedding, holiday, and other cards. When you select some, you can personalize them and dispatch them by e-mail to friends - free of charge. Jared has not only revolutionized his parents' greeting-card business but has also given a mature industry an enormous opportunity for growth. Stephen and Susan Polic Schutz, both now 53, started Blue Mountain as a greeting card company in 1971 in Boulder. The art was not traditional -- clearly influenced by Age of Aquarius sensisibilities -- but the message was transmitted on conventional paper stock and mailed in envelopes. The Schutzes say they have a 1% share of the $6.3-billion-a-year-greeting-card industry, a respectable slice. But until their son joined the business in 1995, while still an undergraduate at Princeton, Blue Mountain's future seemed limited by the reality that the industry is growing very slowly, a mere 3% or so a year. Jared struck upon the idea for a Website. "It wasn't really a business decision," he says, "more just a fun thing to do." Atypically, there was no generational conflict. His father, who has a doctorate in physics from Princeton, is no technophobe. He and his coterie of artists began fashioning the electronic images while Jared developed the Website method of delivering them. Bluemountain.com has been spun off as a separate entity, which executive director Jared maintains was an essential step. None of the talented Gen X nerds he hopes to attract to his workplace would think of accepting a position without stock options. So he has offered all of the company's 60 employees (including secretaries) equity. But there's a catch: Those options will be worthless unless Jared and his group can figure out how to turn into cash those millions of electronic images they give away every month. "That's a big challenge," Jared acknowledges. "We need to ‘monetize' those millions of eyeballs and create a profitable business." In months ahead, that might become more difficult, as rivals like Americangreetings.com enter the online business and erode Bluemountain.com's control of the market. Despite mounting competition, Jared does not plan to charge for the cards for now. Instead, he is trying to make money through companion businesses Blue Mountain has launched, such as ProFlowers.com. The pitch to visitors to his Website is to buy a bouquet of flowers (a dozen roses for $29.95 plus shipping) to accompany the free card. Because Jaymie Ridless, 33, is a woman, she probably wouldn't have inherited the family business, in a male-dominated industry, a generation ago. She has not only survived, but she has also saved the company from almost certain failure. Her father, Jim Ridless, now 78, had been fresh home from World War II when his father dies and left him the business, the New York metropolitan distributorship of Cincinnati Time Recorder, manufacturer of time clocks that keep track of employees' work hours. Although he was only 24, Ridless had piloted B-24s from a base in Italty to bomb Germany (an assignment that brings to mind Joseph Heller's Catch-22), so he was neither unaccustomed to pressure nor short of confidence. By contrast, when Jaymie joined the company in her mid-20s, her exposure to self-reliance did not extend much beyond an undergraduate course in entrepreneurship at Wharton. She acknowledges that school had not taught her everything. " I was amazed by how my father took the daily stress of business in stride," she says, "and at his practical approach to problems. When customers ignored their bills, I was inclined to negotiate. My father threatened to take them to small-claims court.The Pollack PR Marketing Group Address
1901 Avenue of the StarsLos Angeles, CA
United States