Family Business: Entrepreneurship in the Blood

Rachel Wimberly -- Tradeshow Week, 3/26/2007

Among members of several of the industry's independent show management firms, there's an obvious connection: the same last name.

People become part of a family business in different ways: they're born or marry into it, inherit it, or simply start it with the people they know best. No matter how it happened, though, the tradeshow industry's family businesses have some of the best stories to tell.

Tradeshow Week Associate Editor Rachel Wimberly asked a few of them to share theirs.

Call the office of show management firm William T. Glasgow, ask for Bill Glasgow, and you'll get this question back: "Junior or senior?"

That's because Bill Glasgow Sr. works with not one, but two of his sons: Brian and, yes, Bill Jr.

"When I told my wife I was bringing the boys in, she said, 'What! You are working with your sons?'" Bill Sr. said, "To me, it was natural."

After all, the boys had watched their father's career as it passed through a number of phases of the exhibition industry over the years. Bill Sr. started out with Hilton Hotels before becoming general manager of Greyhound Foods at Chicago's McCormick Place. He went on to manage Intl. CES for the Consumer Electronics Assn. for 10 years before starting the show management company named after himself in 1985.

He began with Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo.

"They (AAPEX) came to me, said they were looking for show management and asked me to take a look at the deal," Bill Sr. said. "It was a no-brainer, really."

Three years later, Bill Sr. brought in his eldest son, Bill Jr.

"You never know what you need or don't need when you start your own business," he added.

By that time, Bill Jr. was in a position to help too. He'd already held jobs at McCormick Place, Marriott Hotels and Hall-Erickson.

Eventually, in the late '90s, Bill Sr. hired Brian as well, but only after he'd spent 14 years as second-in-command at the Natl. Hardware Assn.

Today, Bill Jr. focuses on AAPEX — one edition held in Las Vegas and another in Mexico City — and Brian focuses on a collection of shows in the arcade game, billiards and heavy-duty truck parts sectors.

The boys, and their sister Karen, who isn't involved with the family business, are tight-knit, all living within a mile of each other in suburban Chicago. Bill Sr. and his wife live a few more miles away. They all get together frequently, especially on holidays. There's just one rule they have to abide by outside the office, unless they want a talking to from their father.

"We are not allowed to talk shop, and I am strict about that," Bill Sr. said.

Jill Eckhaus was only 10 when she first started to take an interest in her father's work. Len Eckhaus was a data center operations manager all through the '60s and '70s, a problematic time to be in that line of work.

"There was nowhere to turn when he ran into problems," Jill said. "He thought there needed to be an organization out there that provided education."

And voila — AFCOM, the Assn. for Computer Operations Management, and its tradeshow, AFCOM's Data Center World, came to be.

"In 1980, during two months, my father bought a car, bought a home, quit his job and started a company," Jill said. "I would say he's a risk-taker."

In the early days, the company's world headquarters was the Eckhaus' living room. "I was 10, and I didn't know what the data industry was, but I helped stuff the mailers and put on the labels," she added.

Len eventually moved the company to rented offices and even hired some employees. By then, Jill was in college. But in her senior year the part-time job she had couldn't accommodate her class schedule. So she asked her dad for a job — and did not get an automatic yes.

"He fought me tooth and nail. He didn't want people to think family members were getting special treatment," Jill said. "I begged him to just let me work in the accounting department for one semester."

Len relented, and Jill went to work in 1992. Before long, a full-time position came up in accounting. It took a little work, but she got it. Another full-time position opened in the tradeshow division, and Jill expressed interest in it.

"It was tough love. I had to apply for the job like anyone else," she said, but she got it. Within six months she had replaced her immediate supervisor. "I told the next person up I wanted to try it out, and we decided not to tell anyone for six months," Jill added. "It worked out well."

Within a few years, Jill was responsible for all the company's day-to-day operations. In 2005, she bought the company from her father.

"It really all came full circle," she said.

Len Eckhaus is now retired, but Jill still talks to him when things come up.

"I go to him because he knows the business, and he cares about it as much as I do," she said.

George Jage, owner of World Tea Expo, thought his only reason for attending the Specialty Coffee Assn. Annual Conference in Atlanta in 2004 was to check out the competition. He wasn't planning to meet his future wife. Still ...

"I knew I would marry her the minute I met her," he said.

The soon-to-be Kim Jage was at the show too, minding her own business — literally. "I had just come back from China, had fallen in love with tea and I wanted to open a tea room," she said.

There were fireworks. Within two weeks, Kim visited George in Las Vegas; soon after, she moved there. Their interest in each other coincided with their interest in tea. George was short-handed in the office, so Kim joined him there; eventually they married.

"I couldn't think of anyone better to sell exhibit space than the woman who sold me," George said.

They worked so closely together on every aspect of the business, George added, it was tough when Kim took maternity leave to have their now-4-month-old son, Kadin.

"Our work is not separate from the rest of our lives," Kim added. "It doesn't consume our lives, but there's not a lot of separation. There are no problems, we work well as partners and the team doesn't mind we're married."

George said they treat their employees like extended family, inviting them over for cookouts and other festivities. "Life's too short. You should enjoy your work," he added.

George previously worked with his father on the Off-Price Specialist Show, so the idea of a family business is not exactly foreign to him. However, he said he's seen some, particularly those involving spouses, flounder, a challenge he doesn't expect with Kim. "We're great friends," he added.

Kadin's getting a taste for the business too. "We bring him to the office. He's already introduced to the world of tradeshows," Kim said.

Susan Schwartz has heard it all before. No one can believe she works with her husband, Chuck Schwartz, Chuck's ex-wife, BarbaraSue Barnes, and BarbaraSue's current husband, Lewis Barnes.

That's not all. Chuck and BarbaraSue's daughter and son, Mindy Cherry and Jeff Schwartz, also punch the clock every day at ConvExx, the company behind the SEMA Show, among others.

How does it all work? "Everyone has a lot of respect for each other," Susan said. "Chuck and BarbaraSue did not have an acrimonious divorce. They lived two blocks from each other, and the kids used to go back and forth all the time."

Chuck had worked in one family business or another for years, Susan said, running automotive shops. He started Epic Enterprises in 1979 and worked with BarbaraSue and Susan there until it was sold in the '90s. Before that, in the '80s, Chuck and BarbaraSue were divorced, and he and Susan were married. Then, in 2001, Chuck, Susan and Mindy started ConvExx. BarbaraSue joined in with Lewis and Jeff.

"People looked at us like we had lost our minds, but we didn't even think of it," Susan added. "We would sit in the same row together at the synagogue. Our attitude was, 'This is a family unit.'"

Today, 22 people work for ConvExx. Besides SEMA, the firm also manages SEMA Spring, the Las Vegas Bikefest, and hopes to expand into other markets, according to Susan.

She conceded there are challenges to working with family members. For instance, what do you do when someone isn't pulling his or her weight? "You need to be able to talk to them like their boss, not their dad," she said.

But she wouldn't change any of it, even if she could.

"Nobody works harder for you in the business than family," Susan said. "Families will always dig in when it's needed, because they know that's what puts food on their table."

Employees are told up front that ConvExx is a family-owned business. Susan said they try to be as inclusive as possible by inviting everyone over to their house for social events. Still, it is understood, she added, that non-family employees have their own families and lives outside the office.

"I think it has more benefits than pitfalls," she concluded.