Don Vivrette launched his market research firm MacKenzie Corp. 34 years ago, after spending years as an independent data analyst helping corporations leverage data to grow revenue and customers.
The entrepreneur never intended for his Lake Forest-based firm to be a family-run operation.
His twin daughters, Jenny Dinnen and Katie Rucker, had a different plan in mind.
“He was just getting tired of the day-to-day, and he started vocalizing that he wasn’t sure what the long run would be and thinking of phasing down on some projects,” said Rucker, who serves as president of operations and co-owner with Dinnen, president of sales and marketing. “That’s when Jenny and I started meeting on our own.”
That was almost nine years ago. Now, under the helm of Rucker and Dinnen, the data analytics company has expanded its services, grown its staff to 14—including analysts, database and application developers, marketers, and others techies—and is considering opening a second outpost.
MacKenzie Corp. received the Business Journal’s Family-Owned Business Award in the small category. The 20th annual luncheon was held on June 4 at Hotel Irvine (see other profiles, pages 1, 14, and 19).
First Step
Vivrette hit success fairly quickly after he founded his firm—initially out of a home office—snagging Atlanta-based Yamaha Motor Corp. as its first client. The maker of motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, and other powersports vehicles remains a key client.
“He was an entrepreneur, and he started the business to support his family,” Dinnen said. “It was never with the dream of starting a family business, and quite honestly, we didn’t even know what he did growing up. I knew he worked with computers and traveled a lot.”
Dinnen first pursued a career in marketing, spanning over 15 years, working at companies such as HSBC and HD Supply Inc., while Rucker’s career was in corporate meeting and event planning.
By 2008, both had joined MacKenzie and worked their way up through the business.
Rucker said as she took on more responsibility it became clear that “we were heading into something really exciting.”
When their father expressed the possibility of winding down the business, the sisters quickly tapped JoAnne Norton, former consultant at The Family Business Consulting Group Inc. and Rick Muth Endowed Chair in Family Business at California State University-Fullerton.
Norton’s specialty is helping multigenerational family businesses. She helped Dinnen and Rucker for about a year on how to navigate the process of taking over their father’s business.
Dinnen said it was important to avoid the challenges other family-owned businesses warned them about when it came to passing off the baton to another family member.
The two soon approached their father—presenting a five-year business plan of where they wanted to take the company—and worked with him on the transition process, before taking co-ownership two years later in 2012.
Next Frontier
Dinnen said the core of what the company does has remained the same, but it’s made sure to evolve the business to keep up with the latest technology and market needs.
“We empower businesses to make better decisions by leveraging the data that they have and customer insights,” she said. “[But] services that we provided back in the day have now become a commodity—think SurveyMonkey and all these DIY tools. So now, we’re adding strategy around it.”
In addition to offering clients customer surveys and analytics, it’s become focused on helping clients interpret the information and create business strategies to reach their respective goals. For example, if its motorsports client requests a consumer survey, it will first ask how the results will be used such as for a new marketing campaign or product development.
“I mean, anyone can go out and do a survey, but [the question is] are they doing it in the right way to [help] achieve the goal,” she said.
A recent MacKenzie-run survey on the Great Park Neighborhoods for Irvine’s FivePoint Holdings LLC, for example, queried potential homebuyers on their priorities when searching out a place to live, with questions focused on the benefits of buying in a master-planned community.
Changing Times
The sisters acknowledge the market is changing as more companies offer services around strategy and interpreting data.
“Everyone is in the data space—even our technology partners are getting into the consulting business and they’re not just collecting data,” Dinnen said.
The partners said they’ve already looked at ways to evolve outside of their history of serving a handful of industries to other areas like nonprofits, sports, and lifestyle companies.
Rucker said it’s one of the many strategies it has in place as it looks to hash out its next three-year plan.
“It’s not just about how we are expanding our services [but] what skill sets do we need on the team and also looking geographically,” she said. “We love Orange County, but are there other cities and hubs we could be expanding into? That is something we’ve never looked into before and something we are [now] very aggressively looking into.”
