Innovators Change Face of N.W. Ark. Business

Northwest Arkansas has been lucky.

The quality of life here has long been bolstered for more than two decades by innovative people who find new ways to do things in business and in life. Many people with extraordinary dreams and drive have come from Benton and Washington counties or were drawn to the area’s natural beauty and prosperity.

The force behind the economic success here has been creative entrepreneurs with the grit to finish what they started. The success stories are well documented — Sam Walton, John Tyson, Harvey Jones, Hayden McIlroy.

Here we list a dozen local risk takers who are changing the face of area business in marvelous ways. It’s only a sampling of the area’s innovators, any one of whom could be this business community’s next amazing success story.

Rick Bray
TVGuardian, Rogers

Although many movies and television shows may contain foul language, those same programs may carry an overall positive message.

Rick Bray didn’t like the way the government’s V-chip blocks entire TV programs.

So in 1997, he invented TVGuardian, a TV language filter. A year later, the invention won best of show at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev. Later that year, the first production units rolled off the assembly line in Franklin, Tenn.

TVGuardian is manufactured by Principle Solutions Inc., a Rogers-based company run by Bray, company president, and by Mike Seals, chief operating officer.

The little black boxes use closed captioning to blip out the audio for offensive phrases. A sanitized version of the caption is displayed on the screen for the viewer to read. TVGuardian has different settings, from strict to moderate.

The invention began selling for $250. The price later dropped to $150, and the box now sells for $90 at Wal-Mart Stores.

Debbie Bastian
Debbie’s Family Pharmacy & Healthy Living Center, Rogers

Building a successful pharmacy business for the last seven years wasn’t enough for Debbie Bastian. Driven to help people help themselves, she spent the last year and a half of her spare time working on an out-of-the-box health care concept.

The plan was to combine pharmacy and counseling techniques to take advantage of synergies in both medicines. The result might be the only pharmacy/emotional and physical wellness center in the nation.

Eight months ago Debbie, husband Bob and licensed counselors Martha Vastine and Judy Pufal established Debbie’s Family Pharmacy & Healthy Living Center in 3,000 SF on Pinnacle Point Drive in Rogers.

“Martha had worked for me at our downtown pharmacy before getting her counseling degree,” Bastian said. “We always brainstormed about ways we could help people by combining pharmacy and counseling work. I’ve always felt like if you’re a pharmacist and you just type, count pills and put labels on boxes, what you learned in school is really a waste.”

The pharmacy/health center offers individual and group sessions that address adult, child and family emotional and dysfunctional problems. But that’s only a snippet of the services Debbie’s offers.

George Connell
Village Chauffer, Bella Vista

A call to the Village Chauffeur won’t get you a stretch limousine. Instead, it summons a driver who is ready to take you anywhere the road leads — using your own car. Trips as far away as Canada and New Jersey may be scheduled, but quick trips to the pharmacy or the grocery store also are welcome.

Retired in Bella Vista, George Connell began the business after finishing a traveling-sales career in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Several widows and elderly residents of the area needed a driver for their car, so he offered his driving.

Now, Village Chauffeur uses 12 drivers, all independent contractors, and Connell scheduled 171 trips in October. In 2000 alone, his drivers’ paths stretched from California to Florida.

Fees depend on the average travel time, regardless how many ride in the car. Excluding fuel costs, a trip to the regional airport costs $12; $35 goes to the Tulsa, Okla., airport, and Kansas City, Mo., may be reached for $60.

For a long trip, Connell drives the car back and parks it in the client’s garage until the client returns or is ready to be picked up.

Jack De Vore & Jim Snow
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Sixteen years ago, two University of Arkansas professors set out to find a cheaper way to dry wood so that students in their woodworking classes wouldn’t have to pay so much for kiln-dried wood

Last year, Jack De Vore and Jim Snow of the College of Education’s vocational education department got their first patent for a solar-powered wood-drying kiln that could eventually save the lumber industry billions of dollars a year. Two more patents followed, and another one is in the works, all pertaining to the kiln and its design.

The students were paying $2.50 per board foot for kiln-dried lumber, which has a moisture content of 9 percent or less and is used to make furniture. Traditionally, kilns use electricity or burn wood for heat. Wood that is air-dried for 180 days usually has a moisture content of 16-20 percent, but that’s not good enough for furniture and floors, De Vore said.

“It’s unstable and cracks and pops,” he said.

With De Vore and Snow’s invention, the energy cost is zero to kiln-dry the wood to a 9 percent moisture content. The invention itself — a 1,000-board-foot kiln — costs about $2,100 in materials. The wood is dried in 14 to 21 days, the same amount of time required for other kilns.

The two men have had inquiries about their invention from all 50 states, Canada and Japan.

Darren Farrish
AutoNet, Fayetteville

Darren Farrish was raised around computers when computers were rarely used in the business world, much less as a regular household fixture.

Farrish’s father, Frank, who is now deceased, developed the first banking data service and provided the first ATM machine service in Northwest Arkansas.

Today, Farrish has taken his computer knowledge to new heights.

AutoNet, the company he founded in 1985, merged in March with CarParts Technologies of El Segundo, Calif. AutoNet serves the business-to-business division of CarParts, the leading provider nationally of end-to-end supply chains to the automotive aftermarket.

AutoNet helps manufacturers, warehouse distributors, jobbers and installers better communicate through its Fayetteville-based server.

CarParts has more than 250 warehouse distributors in a national market of about 1,000. It reaches 47 states, giving it great potential in the $180 billion automotive aftermarket.

Farrish, 39, is still president and CEO of AutoNet. In 1996, AutoNet launched the first extranet worldwide in the automotive industry, allowing multiple types of companies to tie in together.

CarParts Technologies hopes to go public in 2001.

Ronnie Floyd
First Baptist Church of Springdale, Springdale

Anyone who says religion isn’t big business in Northwest Arkansas has not been to a Sunday morning service at First Baptist Church of Springdale.

A 40-piece orchestra, two big projection screens, studio lights, a theater-quality sound system and a choir of a couple of hundred accompany the senior pastor, the Rev. Ronnie W. Floyd, in front of the church’s 4,000-seat sanctuary.

That’s not counting all the door greeters, parking attendants and ministry staff that are required to put on one of First Baptist’s weekly services. One church member said the church’s high-tech productions would “rival any theater in Branson.”

Floyd acknowledged that this is not the old-time religion he grew up with in south Texas. It’s high-tech teaching, sermons with style. But he is adamant that the message is never compromised.

“I have tried to use innovative methods to involve people in the age-old principle of walking with Jesus Christ,” Floyd said. “We’re doing things to get the message of the Gospel out in a way that will be received by today’s culture. The message is the same; it’s just packaged differently.”

Since his arrival in 1986, First Baptist has grown from 3,800 people to about 12,000 today. The church’s budget has jumped from $1.3 million to $6.6 million, and the church has annual gross revenues of more than $12 million.

First Baptist produces large-scale events like its 800-person living Christmas tree where members form the shape of a tree and sing, organizes 50 Bible studies at homes and workplaces like Wal-Mart and J.B. Hunt and runs a Hispanic ministry.

Delayed broadcasts of First Baptist’s services are carried on three national cable networks and locally on KHOG-TV, Channels 40-29. Floyd has a daily radio program in Africa that is broadcast to an audience of 500,000.

First Baptist’s 40-acre campus also includes Shiloh Christian School, which has a $3 million budget.

Rob Merry-Ship & Richard Alexander
North College Development, Fayetteville

Rob Merry-Ship and Richard Alexander arrived in Fayetteville at different times from much different cultures. Today, the two share the same desire to take Fayetteville forward by renovating its past.

The two have worked on several real estate projects together with their companies Sixth Street Development and North College Development. Their foresight and mutual respect for the appearance of downtown Fayetteville have helped the town make monumental strides in keeping business interests in its historic district.

The two are not interested in putting four walls and a roof over a foundation, but rather in adding classic looks where needed and bringing back the original appearance at other sites they’re involved with.

They renovated the Ralston building just off Dickson Street, the former Campbell-Bell building on the square, the Ozark Theater and numerous older homes downtown.

“We like to control our own destiny where we invest,” Merry-Ship said. “I know when we start something, we could do it for much less by just building a brand new building. But you don’t get the same character or the same feel.”

Johnny Mrsny
What’s For Dinner? Johnnys!, Bentonville

Johnny Mrsny’s sixth restaurant business, What’s For Dinner? Johnny’s!, serves home-cooked food to families. In 1997, Mrsny read that Americans had begun to take food home to their families more often than they ate out in restaurants.

With that in mind, Mrsny opened What’s For Dinner? in May.

Takeout skirted several problems that had troubled Mrsny’s other restaurants, such as finding solid staffing in Northwest Arkansas’ labor market.

Initially, Mrsny’s Southern-style comfort foods had some trouble entering the market. A restaurant with no chairs seemed strange, but now area residents have begun to catch on. Customers carry an average of 120 pounds of meatloaf and 150 pounds of roast beef home each week. Sales average $380 per night. Because the storefront closes on the weekends, Mrsny grosses about $7,600 per month.

Mrsny’s plan is to franchise the business.

Albert Sanchez
Sift N’ Save, Springdale

Dirty work is Albert Sanchez’s business — Sift N’ Save. Manufacturing litter-box liners that allow owners to refresh their cat litter without pitching all of the box filler, Sift N’ Save produces an average of 5,000 units per month, said Sanchez, president of the Springdale-based company.

The liners are actually a series of plastic sheets, all except the bottom of which are perforated. Cat owners simply sift the soiled litter from the box using one of the slitted liners.

Sanchez competes with major names like Tidy Cat, which can manufacture goods overseas. Discount stores like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kmart Corp. carry Sanchez’s competitors because they manufacture many different product lines.

Although Sanchez said he would like to score a mass marketer like Wal-Mart, he distributes the liners to grocery chains such as Fred Meyer Stores. Mail orders from catalogs also add to Sift N’ Save’s business.

Rod Thomas
Tyson Foods Inc., Springdale

Tyson Foods Inc. didn’t become the world leader in the poultry industry without constantly looking for ways to improve. And often, those ways come from within the company.

Rod Thomas, vice president of Tyson’s Center for Operational Excellence, leads a 26-member team that was founded in April under one of the company’s new strategic initiatives.

The group is composed of some of the company’s brightest process engineers and processing managers.

“The decision was made by the senior leadership in our company to have a group go out to our facilities and take advantage of the things we do well and do them well at many of our facilities,” Thomas said. “When you have a company as large as we are, we need to take advantage of the talent we have.”

Tyson made the commitment to run the group out of its corporate office, sending the team around the country to its 70 plants to identify and share each plant’s best practices and new technologies. Those ideas are then introduced at the other plants.

Bill Stribling
Stribling Packaging Inc., Rogers

In the early 1980s, Stribling Packaging Inc. made bulk bins and ice packs for the poultry industry. Seven years later, the company got into standard brown boxes and slotted containers for industrial clients.

Both segments remain important parts of Stribling’s business, which has been run for the last five years by Bill Stribling, son of the company’s founder. But the local retail vendor influx of the 1990s has sparked a new direction.

New Creature, a partnering firm operated by Stribling’s brothers-in-law, Patrick Sbarra and Brad Jones, now focuses on design and project development for speciality in-store displays.

The Stribling family of companies, which also includes a partnership with Kim Campbell’s Cargo Net contract packaging, warehouse and distribution firm, can now handle packaging jobs through the stages of design, manufacturing and fulfillment of delivery.

Because of its ability to adapt to the changing demands of the market place, Stribling Packaging is setting the curve for its industry.

“We do quite a bit of work with Fortune 100 companies,” said Stribling, who added the company’s motto is “correct and quick.”

Stribling has turned jobs around from design to finish in a week’s time before, but three to four weeks is the norm.

Lee Thompson
Vision Technologies, Rogers

It’s only about the size of a pencil eraser, but the minuscule digital camera Lee Thompson developed at Vision Technologies Inc. in Rogers has been causing quite a stir.

The camera is the only one equipped with a constant-focus lens. The company has had a barrage of inquiries about the invention — even from NASA, the CIA and the movie industry.

Thompson came up with the design in 1996 for use in surgery but then decided to tailor it to other industries, particularly aviation. Vision Technologies then developed what Thompson believes is the world’s first digital maintenance log to keep track of work on aircraft. The log uses digital images of aircraft parts and is stored on computer disk.

Vision Technologies has 14 patents in the United States and the world and has an additional 30 pending.

Thompson is also working on a system that would place the constant-focus cameras on aircraft wings as part of the flight data recording system. The cameras would take eight to 10 images per second, and the information would be relayed to a computer on board. But such cameras probably wouldn’t be used unless mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The camera systems cost from a few thousand dollars each up to about $30,000, depending on the application. Thompson said Vision Technologies has had purchase orders but has yet to ship any product.