1992 ~ 2005
Prior to Air Source One, I had never worked in retail. While I was engaged in Aviation Software sales, I was a tenant at Meacham Airport when one of the largest flight schools filed for bankruptcy. When students arrived on Monday, the school was locked and notices were posted to contact the law firm representing the bankruptcy. Most students were foreign, many had lost their life savings and without a sponsoring school, they now faced deportation. Monday was a very bad day at Meacham Airport.
The flight school operated a retail pilot shop which had also closed. Two days later on Wednesday, I approached the City of Fort Worth and offered to lease the vacated retail space and reopen the pilot shop. The City’s position was they were going to consider all inquiries. Rather than waiting, on Thursday, I took a calculated risk, called a wholesaler, ordered $10,000 in inventory and on Friday I began selling pilot supplies from suite that was selling PC based flight training software. The risk paid off. The City approved my request to lease the retail space. After all, I was an existing tenant in good standing and now suddenly in the pilot supply business simply wanting to relocate into a larger space within the terminal!
$10,000 does not buy much inventory. When I moved into the retail location, I had to spread the inventory around and displayed empty boxes to make it look like I was well stocked and in business. Fortunately, I had made good inventory choices and quickly began turning it over. I aggressively replenished buying larger quantities of the items that were selling. It did not take a genius to figure this out.
In the early 90’s, this little known marvel called the Internet came to my attention. I attended a seminar in Dallas where the facilitator’s intent was to sign new customers for Internet access. During the seminar, I recognized the significance of having a website to market Air Source One. Merging my advertising photography background with this new Internet thing was an epiphany. I bought a book on HTML programming and spent the next five months learning how write and publish my first website. This was before Dreamweaver or any of the current design applications, I simply wrote hard code.
What a boon! When I published in September, I was immediately contacted by the US Air Force Academy who were searching for headsets. AirSource One sold David Clark aviation headsets (the Air Force’s Gold Standard Headset) which is how they found us. However, the Academy wanted to replace their entire football stadium communications system. I knew nothing about football stadium com systems but one of my vendors Telex Communications did; I simply brokered the sale. After it was installed, I was invited to a game and was escorted through out the football facility. While in the press box before the game, I entered a room full of very intense, blue suited Air Force Officers. While at the game, I recognized one of the officer’s photo in the program book. He was being honored as the Commander for the first strike in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. I quickly realized how out of out of place I was.
Being the first pilot supply store on the Web had some obvious advantages! Our Internet sales quickly grew and generated one third of our business. Over the years, I kept redesigning the site so pricing and products photos were easily updatable. With the help of a programmer, I created dynamic templates that loaded page information from text dumps. By integrating my Point of Sale software with Microsoft Access, I was able to export to the Web price, copy, photo and a host of other parameters enabling me to always have an updated site.
By the end of 2000, our sales were approaching a million dollars. (not bad for a ten thousand dollar startup). Everything changed on September 11, 2001. This national tragedy had a direct impact on our business. Over next 12-18 months, seven of the eight flight schools closed at Meacham Airport. General aviation hit a very low spot. I aggressively downsized both rental space and personnel. With sales down by fifty percent, it was very difficult to generate enough income to remain open. Because I had for all these years exercised my good vendor credit to grow my inventory, when that inventory did not sell, paying back my creditors was damn near impossible. Downsizing is much harder than growing! Bankruptcy was not even a consideration.
In 2004, my father-in-law, founder of Perrone Pharmacy, passed away. The family elected not to sell the Pharmacy that had open since 1952. For the next year, I would go into the Pharmacy in the morning, get to Air Source One by 10:00, work the day and then return to the Pharmacy at night. In the Spring of 2005, my last Air Source One employee resigned forcing me to open, close, work Saturdays, manage all the web and retail sales, answer the phones etc. The reduced payroll allowed me to payoff all vendors and debt. When I sold the business in August of 2005, the business was completely debt free.