By JEFF BOUNDS, Dallas Business Journal
Published on July 29, 2005
© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Linked with permission of Dallas Business Journal; www.bizjournals.com.
Stacy Sawyer has a knack for interior and exterior architectural design. In the ’90s, she won two prestigious awards for projects she had done while working at a design shop.
But while she has other skills, like working with clients, she makes no pretense of being able to do it all. “I’m not a numbers person,” she says.
So when she ran into a guy who wanted to join forces with her in setting up their own shop, it turned out to be a good match. He recognized the need to not just do good design, but to get work done within budget and on time. The arrangement played to their respective strengths: Stacy focused on design, he helped find opportunities and made the trains run on time.
It worked out, and not just on the business front. Stacy and John Michael Sawyer were engaged at the time they launched the new shop, Sawyer Design Associates L.L.C., in 1997. They married not long thereafter.
First hire
Fortunately, John also had Stacy’s ability to recognize what he did well, and what he didn’t. “One of the first things we did was (hire) our first employee to handle the books. I’m not good with detail,” he says. That employee, Kay Whelan, is now Sawyer Design’s chief operating officer, and the Sawyers say she has been as instrumental in the business’ success as anyone.
Clear-cut roles among principals and partners in professional-services firms have several benefits, according to Greg Bustin, president of the Dallas business-development consultancy Bustin & Co. Aside from allowing individuals to focus on particular tasks, it also allows them to say no to jobs that fall outside their job description, and avoids confusion among staffers about who has the say-so on a given issue, he says.
Their division of labor not only allowed John and Stacy to keep a happy marriage, but also helped them take advantage of new opportunities.
After a series of moves to increasingly larger space, they wound up in a 5,400-square-foot spot, complete with some warehouse space, on Highland Drive in the Design Center. That allowed Sawyer to do its own receiving, warehousing and installation of furniture, cabinets, artwork and other finished products that were going into clients’ buildings.
In-house advantage
The Sawyers say the problem with outsourcing that job is construction dates are always in flux. A week-long delay can mean trucks loaded up with products with no place to go.
The idea was so successful that the Sawyers created a separate business, Precision Design Services, about two and a half years ago. Though they own it, and their design shop does business with it, Precision is a stand-alone business with a separate management team and a separate locale in the Design District.
Meanwhile, Sawyer Design today has a 25,000-square-foot headquarters in Dallas’ Design District, about half of which is warehouse space for its delivery arm. It has about 35 employees, an office in Maryland and one opening soon in California, and about $5 million in projects for 2005, including 100 currently in the pipeline.
And with Whelan working with most of Sawyer’s new prospects, John has adopted a consulting and chairman’s role, working with his wife and Whelan on strategy issues like attacking new markets.
And like always, Stacy Sawyer remains focused on one thing: design. “That’s what I do best,” she says.
Copyright 2008 by Greg Bustin & Co., unless otherwise specified. All Rights Reserved.
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