Turning 50 -- Three World-Class Seattle Companies Enter Their Second Half-Century Stronger Than Ever

Many baby boomers are turning 50 this year, and so too, it seems, are companies.

Turns out that the parents of the boomers were busy: Not only were they having a lot of children, but they also were giving birth to new companies, partnerships and other enterprises. Dozens of companies in the Puget Sound area this year are marking 50 years of doing business.

In a way, it is not surprising.

From the dark days of the Depression in the 1930s through the uncertain days of war in the 1940s, the world had seen almost two decades of fear, strife and turmoil. By 1947, many had had enough.

Two years earlier, the big bombs had ended World War II. By fall, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were streaming home, the war behind them, their lives ahead of them.

It was time to get on with life. Some went to school. Some went back to old jobs. Some just kicked back for a while. In 1946, the economy went through a severe downturn as war production ceased. Boeing went from producing several planes a day to producing none.

But many felt they had not survived the Depression or risked their lives in some far-off place to return to an economy going nowhere. By 1947, things were beginning to pick up as the economy righted itself and began to grow.

The Seattle area was no different. The population had surged during the war with workers coming to build airplanes at Boeing, make ships at Lockheed and other shipyards, or work for the Navy at

Bremerton.

Returning soldiers provided a willing work force, ready to work and work hard to get ahead. Young soldiers, nurses, fliers, riveters, grown to men and women quickly in war, were ready to take their place in the world.

It was time to cash in.

A number of companies have turned 50 this year. Here is a look at three of them in various kinds of work:

-------- Sparling --------

When the Fox Network decided to install a modern, digital television station as part of its expansion in the Northwest, it turned to a local company to do the complex wiring needed for the station.

When Microsoft began expanding its Redmond campus to meet the growing needs of its business and the software industry, it turned to a local company that would wire its buildings, making them easy to plug into the information superhighway.

Bagley Wright Theater, the new Benroya Hall, the Starwood Hotel going up in downtown Seattle, the Experience Music Project at the Seattle Center: All have turned to a local company for electrical work, lighting, communications and audio-video hookups.

The local company is Sparling. It is one of those world-class Seattle companies you probably have never heard of unless you are in the construction industry or an architectural firm. But if you are, you know the company is one of the industry leaders.

When it formed 50 years ago, Tom Sparling was an electrical engineer. For a number of years, the company stayed in that comfortable niche, becoming well-known in the industry but virtually unknown outside it.

It grew at the rate of about one employee a year. But beginning in 1990, the company has quadrupled its revenue to about $10 million and doubled its work force, expanding from its core electrical engineering services to telecommunications, architectural lighting design, audio-visual design and broadcast system design.

A company such as Sparling had to "reinvent itself" to grow and survive, said Jim Duncan, its president.

"We now can do it all," he said. "We're the only company that can do that now."

Duncan said the company did a survey before the 1990 shift. It found the company was well-respected for its engineering but was "down quite a bit" in terms of image and marketing. Time for change.

One change was to run the company like a business. That sounds simple enough, but many professional businesses - engineers, lawyers, accountants, architects - have found that running a business can be quite different.

"What sets us apart is an integrated approach to services," Duncan said, plus "a bunch of amazing people."

Duncan said Sparling has assembled a team of experts from a wide range of disciplines capable of handling any technical challenge presented by clients. And the company stresses communication - talking to the client to find out exactly what's needed.

That collaborative approach of working with clients and other professionals - especially architects - has helped the company build its reputation. It is now Seattle's largest designer of electrical and technology infrastructure for buildings.

Its offices in downtown Seattle reflect its vision. No doors for managers, many spots for quick meetings or conversations, many of the meeting places near the view windows. The management structure is flat with little hierarchy.

"When I become president in 1991," Duncan said, "I wanted to create a company where people enjoyed coming to work every day, where they enjoyed the work, had the tools to do it well and in pleasing surroundings."

A 50th anniversary behind it, Sparling is looking to the future.

It wants to further its integrated systems for buildings. It is moving into international projects, following architectural firms with whom it has built a strong relationship.

The key to the company's success?

Innovation and attention to the needs of the client.

Those corporate values were there from the beginning.

Thomas Sparling, retired founder of the company, is still winning awards. He was the 1997 winner of the one of the top awards in the industry presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

The Institute cited Sparling for his innovative design of industrial, commercial and institutional electrical systems.

-------------------- Williman & Robertson --------------------

The story goes like this: The head of a local company heads off to the East Coast to search for an actuarial firm to help it work out the details on a new pension plan.

After several conversations with top experts, the name Milliman & Robertson kept coming up. It seemed to be the right choice, so the chief executive officer asked where the company was.

Seattle, he was told.

The CEO returned home, looked up Milliman & Robertson in the phone book and found the company was located a half block away. He had traveled thousands of miles to learn that one of the best companies of its kind was right here in town.

Today, Milliman & Robertson is a leading international expert on actuarial questions. It is frequently quoted in the national press on issues ranging from hospital stays to pension plans.

What does an actuarial company do? In essence, it provides answers today to some complicated questions about tomorrow.

How long are you likely to live after you retire? How much money would a start-up company need to set aside today to create a pension fund for its employees in 20 years? What's the average stay in a hospital after childbirth? What are executives in the Northwest paid and how much more they expect to earn next year.

In recent years, the company's reputation for excellence has thrust it into the limelight, sometimes uncomfortably. It has been described as the Supreme Court of medical insurance because it can answer a question such as why insurance should not cover cataract removal in more than one eye unless the patient is fairly young and needs both eyes for work.

Milliman & Robertson is another example of the quiet industry leader that exists in the Seattle area.

Wendell Milliman started the company here when he was lured back from New York - even then, the draw here was that it was a better place to raise a family. He started with a few clients, including Washington state.

But soon the reputation of the firm grew, and Milliman had plans for its expansion.

"He had a vision of a company where the professionals would have what he called responsible freedom to pursue their goals," said Bob Collette, the company's current president. Professionals in the company had a responsibility to clients and to ethics but the freedom to move into new areas.

Even today, that freedom drives the company. Compensation, for example, is largely incentive-based, with Milliman & Robertson professionals paid for how well they do within their own specialty and regional office. There are shareholders in the company, but salaries are based not on what you own but what you do.

The company has four main consulting divisions: pensions, health care, life insurance and casualty insurance.

Those businesses put it at the forefront of some tricky issues, ranging from Social Security to hospital stays for new mothers. Along the way, it has had a number of interesting assignments. It was involved in the Major League Baseball players' pension plans, for example, and it helped National Basketball Association referees make the right call on their pension.

The company has expanded from its Seattle base over the years. New York is now the largest of its many branches.

"We probably have more meetings in the O'Hare airport area than Seattle," said Collette.

It is expanding rapidly overseas through alliances with other consulting groups. In 1990, Milliman & Robertson played a major role in the founding of Woodrow Milliman, an international network of actuarial firms that are tops in their respective countries. It has more than 100 offices operating in 27 countries.

Service, a tradition of excellence and an entrepreneurial spirit have been the keys to the company's success. When it comes to counting assets in the company, the assets ride down the elevators every night.

--------------------- Ikon Office Solutions ---------------------

Getting more used to the name change - that's the way the commercials for Ikon Office Solutions are ending these days as Peter Dierickx signs off.

The company his father started used the family name, William Dierickx Co., for years as it built its reputation in the region for office products, copiers and, perhaps above all, good service.

It was later acquired by Ikon, a large New York Stock Exchange-listed company, but continued to operate under the Dierickx name. Last year, the decision was made to shift over to the corporate name as the industry became more competitive.

A strong regional reputation and the increasingly corporate nature of the business has meant rapid growth in the past few years. The company expects to hit $102 million in revenue next year, up from $88 million this year. And it is branching off in new directions, competing head on with the likes of Xerox in the emerging business of providing office solutions.

That's a long way from the time 50 years ago when William Dierickx - a typewriter-ribbon and carbon-paper salesman for International Business Machines - started his own company.

The company began on its present path when Dierickx borrowed $12,000 from friends and bought a little company that was doing duplications, using the then state-of-the-art mimeo process. Anyone from that era remembers the purple type and the smell of the process. But it made copies.

In the late 1950s, the first photocopy machines started to appear and the Dierickx company was among the first to start selling them. The rest is history as the company became one of the best-known in the industry in the Northwest.

But a company does not survive 50 years by standing still. And Peter Dierickx has pushed the company in recent years into the business of providing solutions to office needs, not just the equipment and the service to make them work.

For example, Weyerhaeuser was looking for a company to help it with copying and printing. Like many companies, it was restructuring, trying to focus on its core business. Dierickx went to Weyerhaeuser with a proposal to do it all.

Soon Dierickx was handling all of Weyerhaeuser's "paper" business for a fee. Now Dierickx is "managing documents" for companies, not just doing copying.

Dierickx said the shift in business thinking has helped the company move ahead. "We're not a copier company or a fax company," he said, "but a company that provides solutions."

About 11 years ago, Dierickx sold the company to Ikon, a large company that was putting together a national network of companies similar to Dierickx. He liked the deal because Ikon tended to leave local management in place.

Dierickx has been president of the company for 14 years, 11 of them under Ikon. It has still allowed him to grow the company.

What has been the key to growth and success? Service.

"We don't want to get so big that we think we have it cold," Dierickx said. "There is a difference between what we think is good service and what the customer thinks is good service."

Equipment-sales personnel ride with technical, service and delivery people so they can get a sense of what the customer is saying to all parts of the operation.

"Our customers have taught us what we need to do," Dierickx said.

Stephen Dunphy's phone message number is 206-464-2365. His e-mail address is: sdun-new@seatimes.com