|
By Elizabeth
Zwerling
Staff Writer
When her husband died seven years ago, Anne Acebo-Houlihan
didn't know what the future would hold for the business in Rancho Cucamonga they
had run together.
"He died on a Friday, I came in Monday and called a
meeting with all the employees and told them not to worry, that the company
would continue," Acebo-Houlihan, president of Satori Seal, said of her late
husband, Alex Acebo.
But the loss so shook her, she said, that she wasn't sure
whether she would keep running the company, which manufactures and distributes
O-rings, seals and other rubber products.
A year later, Acebo-Houlihan had increased the company's
profits by more than 70 percent. Three years later, profits had increased by
more than 140 percent.
Acebo-Houlihan would not reveal the company's annual revenues,
but she said profits continue to grow. This year, she expects to see a 20
percent increase over last year.
Now 43 and recently remarried to Jesse Houlihan,
Acebo-Houlihan attributes part of her success to making some difficult, but
necessary, decisions along the way.
The biggest change came in 1994, just after her husband's
death, when she conducted an in-depth review of the company's finances and found
that the manufacturing arm of the company was actually draining resources.
Closing the manufacturing plant to focus solely on
distribution of imported products was a difficult decision, Acebo-Houlihan said,
because it meant laying off 12 of her 20 employees.
"But it was like I had a tree and some of the branches
were dying and if I didn't take them off the whole tree could go down," she
said.
Other difficult decisions have involved turning down
high-priced contracts with companies whose integrity Acebo-Houlihan found
questionable.
Though she is clearly detail-oriented and driven,
Acebo-Houlihan runs a low-key firm. Two cats live full-time at the combined
office-warehouse space and there is an almost family-like feeling among the
small staff of seven.
Acebo-Houlihan brings this sense of caring about the work and
the people she works with to her dealings with customers, said Barbara Collins,
purchasing agent for Brea-based West Coast Gasket, which has done business with
Satori Seals for five years.
"They are an excellent vendor, with very friendly people
and fast service," Collins said. "They've never gotten an order wrong.
I can't say enough about them."
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Acebo-Houlihan came to the United
States on what was supposed to be a short vacation in 1979. It was then that she
met her first husband, whom she married the same year.
She attributes her success on a combination of luck, skill and
timing. As for being a woman in a male-dominated field, she said that things
have gotten better.
That may understate some of the challenges Acebo-Houlihan and
other women business owners often face, said Teri Ooms, president of the Inland
Empire Economic Partnership.
"I admire entrepreneurs, male or female. They all have to
deal with the same types of risks - financial and social," Ooms said. She
added, however, that women in business often face greater obstacles.
Though things have gotten better during the past 10 years, it
is still harder for women to be taken seriously when it comes to things like
obtaining business financing, Ooms said.
So women like Acebo-Houlihan have had to work "harder and
smarter," Ooms said, adding that women-owned businesses are on the rise
both locally and nationwide.
Elizabeth
Zwerling can be reached by e-mail at e_zwerling@dailybulletin.com or by
phone at (909) 483-8546.
|
