Person to Watch: RON SIMON
We had Ron Simon on our watch list this year to see where he’d go with his efforts to apply the high-precision manufacturing techniques he honed in the cabinet-making business to custom homes.
The year turned out to be a transitional one for Simon. The founder and chairman of Newport Beach-based RSI Holding Corp. said at midyear he would shift his homebuilding business, RSI Development LP, away from development and become a contract builder. He has an eye on becoming a “super-sub” for homebuilders, developers and real estate investors.
RSI Development’s The New House sold out an initial project of 103 homes in Menifee but saw sluggish sales at a later 77-home project in Beaumont, where demand was strong but sales were hampered by tough mortgage-qualification requirements for would-be buyers. Simon set up a program to allow individuals to rent homes with an option to buy, which led to brisk business and prompted him to set his sights on becoming a contact builder.
“Now we’ve gotten traction, but we don’t want to be in the land business,” Simon told the Business Journal earlier this year. “We are not interested in competing with big homebuilders—we want to build for them.”
The company also does smaller-scale contract work, building replacement homes for owners who want to upgrade houses on their current properties. Simon credits his unique manufacturing process for keeping the replacement costs affordable, with cost-certainty. They also allow a replacement home to be built in less than eight weeks, from foundation to finish, reducing the time a homeowner would be displaced during construction.
—Jane Yu
Company to Watch: SUREFIRE LLC
The Business Journal last year chose to keep watch over Fountain Valley-based SureFire LLC, a maker and supplier of laser flashlights and other gear to the U.S. military and law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels. SureFire also serves the outdoors and sports industries.
The company’s goals for 2012 included launching dozens of new products and claiming a larger stake in the first-responder market. It ticked off that box big-time, with a wide range of newly marketed items including dual-output flashlights ideal for patrol officers or outdoorsmen, hands-free wrist lights and other tactical weapon products.
Recent cuts in military spending have led the company to seek more of the market for the civilian first-responder industry and the sports side of its business.
“We’re putting more focus on law enforcement and outdoors,” said company spokesperson Thomas Carlson. “We’re in the works of getting into big-box stores, like Walmart and Target. Of course, that’s with more general-consumer type of products, some of our lowest-cost and most-consumable lights for the average person.”
SureFire is on pace for about $75 million in revenue this year, about on par with 2011.
The company moved to cut expenses, laying off about 80 of 500 workers.
“But we have since started to pull back out of that, and we’re on the uphill,” Carlson said. “We did a lot of shuffling around, and we’re running a leaner shift.”
—Jane Yu
5 Big Manufacturing Stories
• Costa Mesa-based Ceradyne Inc. was sold to 3M Co. in St. Paul, Minn., for $860 million in an October deal.
• Stanley Black & Decker Inc.’s Hardware & Home Improvement Group in Lake Forest was acquired by Madison, Wis.-based Spectrum Brands Holdings Inc. for $1.4 billion.
• Japan-based Yamaha Corp. consolidated its U.S. music business—Yamaha Corp. of America—with its consumer electronics subsidiary, Yamaha Electronics, in a move expected to leverage the brand name and cut costs. The two divisions employ about 380 workers together.
• Orange County’s small and midsize manufacturers tapped into an “onshoring” trend that saw more manufacturing work coming back to local operations from lower-cost offshore markets. Rising costs for shipping and labor overseas, as well as the benefits of working closely with customers here, helped drive the trend.
• Irvine ranked No. 28 in the nation for industrial jobs, with about 42,000, according to a study by Manufacturers News Inc. The city’s mix of high-tech manufacturers helped it top traditional industrial centers such as Pittsburgh and Detroit on jobs in the segment.