Business school teaches you many things. How to work with a mother-in-law isn’t one of them, joked Travis Winsor, chief executive of Orange-based Raymond Group.
When your mother-in-law also is chairman of the company you run, keeping up family relations becomes a necessary business skill.
Luckily, Winsor said, he gets along well with his mother-in-law.
Chairman Mary Raymond “holds me accountable,” as does much of the extended Raymond family,most of whom work for the 70-year-old construction company,said Winsor, who’s been with Raymond Group for more than a decade.
Raymond Group was honored with the large business award at the annual Family Owned Business Awards luncheon, hosted by the Business Journal and California State University, Fullerton’s Family Business Council. It was held Nov. 19 at the Hyatt Regency Irvine.
$300 Million
The company has nearly $300 million in annual revenue. It’s best known for wall and ceiling work,it was recently listed as the country’s fourth-largest wall and ceiling subcontractor,although its business spans a variety of project types.
It has done core and shell work for Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory, tenant-improvement work for the Ford Premier Automotive Group building in Irvine, and design and engineering work for Paris Las Vegas hotel and casino, among other high-profile projects.
The company recently completed work on Irvine Company’s ritzy Resort at Pelican Hill.
Looking at the end results of the luxury resort project, “you’ll get a new appreciation for plaster,” Winsor said.
Raymond Group employed nearly 100 craftsmen on the Pelican Hill project, which was overseen by Irvine-based Snyder Langston. The company typically is subcontracted for big projects by some of the area’s larger general contractors, including the Newport Beach office of St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Cos., San Diego-based Roel Construction Co. and San Francisco-based Swinerton Inc.
The company counts about 170 office staff and 1,500 employees in total, including a number of family members.
Winsor is married to the daughter of former chairman Carl Raymond.
His wife, Nicolle, and her sister Kirsten act as directors, secretary and treasurer for the company. Kirsten’s husband, Michael Potter, runs the San Diego operations.
They’re the third generation to run the business, which began in 1936 as a housing lath and plaster company by founder George Raymond.
George’s only son, Carl, started up the company’s commercial drywall division in the late 1960s, and expanded the business to include interior systems and exterior panel systems. The company moved its headquarters from Montebello to Orange County in the early 1980s.
Following Carl Raymond as chief executive wasn’t in the plans for Winsor when he married into the family. He’s a lawyer by training and already had about five years of a trial experience under his belt when he went back to school for a master’s in business administration.
Winsor “had no intention” of working for Raymond Group when he made the decision to get an MBA, “but I knew that I wanted to move into more of a business environment,” he said.
It wasn’t until Carl Raymond offered him a job that he realized there was a future for him at Raymond Group.
“I went from attorney to drywall,” Winsor said.
Joining the family business wasn’t as nerve-wracking as it could have been. Winsor had known the family since childhood, when his family vacationed in the summers alongside the Raymonds at Lake Arrowhead.
But that didn’t mean Winsor started at the top of the family business.
Carl Raymond said that to learn the ins and outs of the company, Winsor should start on the operations end of the business. He began working as an estimator and project manager.
“All family-owned businesses are faced with challenges,” Winsor said.
Challenges, Opportunities
For the Raymonds, the biggest challenge of late was when health issues pushed Carl Raymond to retire early this decade.
Winsor was named chief executive about four years ago.
This will be the first down construction cycle Winsor’s had to negotiate as chief executive.
“These types of cycles are never easy,” he said.
The company’s still seeing work in healthcare, landing design-assist work for a 365,000-square-foot expansion planned for Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach in the next few years.
The fourth-generation Raymonds,consisting of five children,are being groomed for the family business.
Each of the kids “already has their own hardhat,” but they’ll make their own decisions on whether to work in the family business, Winsor said.
