When Ron Simon came up with a plan to compete with Taiwanese cabinetmakers, the new owners of Perma-Bilt Industries called him crazy. Then he resigned.
So in 1989, at age 55, Simon left the company his father had founded, and used the rejected plan to start RSI Home Products, a maker of bathroom and kitchen cabinets that counts yearly sales of more than $600 million.
“This validated my lifelong belief that adversity creates opportunity,” Simon said.
He’s the majority shareholder of RSI and serves as chairman of RSI Holding Corp., which oversees the company from Newport Beach.
RSI is the top seller of bathroom cabinets. The company’s products are sold through home centers such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, cabinet dealers and homebuilders.
Kitchen cabinets should become the largest portion of RSI’s business in a couple of years, Simon said.
Since RSI’s founding, the company has averaged about 25% growth per year. As you’d expect with the housing and mortgage refinancing slowdown, growth has been lighter this year, Simon said.
For more on this story, see the Aug. 13 issue of the Business Journal.
