EXECUTIVE SPECIALTIES Year Founded: 1984 Core Business: Manufacturer of Lucite corporate mementos Revenue in 1984: $300,000 Revenue in 2000: $1 million Employees in 1984: 2 Employees in 2000: 6 Goal: To expand beyond the financial industry Driving Force: To fill a market need with businesses based on integrity A company that helps others find ways to honor clients and employees overcomes obstacles to achieve its own success Back in 1984, Valerie Red-Horse, then a film student at UCLA, took a day job at the now-defunct financial services firm of Drexel, Burnham & Lambert in Beverly Hills. Long before the company went belly up though, Red-Horse was an office assistant at the firm. Her top priority: pound the pavement until she came up with an affordable and reliable supplier of corporate mementos or Lucite plaques, which the firm handed out to its employees and customers to commemorate special achievements, such as good stock buys. In the meantime, Red-Horse’s husband, Kurt Mohl, then a member of the UCLA football team who was eventually drafted by an NFL team, blew out his knee, essentially wiping out his career in sports. He took a job in office product sales as Red-Horse climbed the corporate ladder far enough to know she was born to be an entrepreneur, not somebody else’s girl Friday. One day Mohl started helping Red-Horse design the mementos for Drexel and the two found an out-of-state manufacturer who was willing to go the extra mile, as she puts it. Eventually, Red-Horse left Drexel and the couple started their own business, Executive Specialties, from their first home in Encino. Drexel continued to work with Red-Horse after she left the company, essentially serving as her company’s first and largest client. However, the firm’s demise came just as Red-Horse learned she was pregnant with her second child and shortly after the couple had purchased land in Van Nuys where construction of their current home and home office was already underway. “We were terrified,” said Red-Horse. “We had no idea what was going to happen to our business. Drexel was our number one client, they represented the bulk of our orders.” But there was a silver lining. “We started getting all these calls from (Drexel) former employees who had gone to other firms and still wanted the Lucite plaques for their new clients,” said Red-Horse. “So, all of a sudden we had like 15 or 20 new clients, just like that, and we eventually were not able to just survive, but we were able to triple our business.” The company has grown from a two-employee, $300,000 business over the last decade to a six-employee company with annual revenues topping the $1 million mark for the last few years and a place on the Business Journal’s list of the Valley’s top minority-owned businesses. (Red-Horse is part Cherokee.) Executive Specialties’ customers are primarily in the financial services industry, one of the largest consumers of corporate memento products, Red-Horse said. Product samples in the company catalogue include awards in the shape of everything from bottles of champagne to yellow chainsaws, all at a cost of between $30 and $100. Paul Woo with Howe Barnes Investments in Los Angeles said his company has been doing business with Executive Specialties for the last four years. Each time his staff completes a deal it calls for a commemorative piece. Consequently, he said, he spends as much as $3,000 a quarter with Executive Specialties. “We’ve obviously been approached by other Lucite award companies, but we do business with this company because they are able to provide such a wide variety of products for us,” said Woo. “They were a very good referral to us from another investment firm.” Red-Horse said her client base is well into the hundreds. Growth, she said, is part of the long-term game plan, and includes adding more sales staff, but the company has managed to benefit from one of the oldest sales tricks in the book: word of mouth. “We have become known around the world for getting products out quickly, but also getting our manufacturer to do something out of the ordinary for a client,” said Red-Horse. “Word of mouth has worked very well for us because of what we can and will do for our customers. So, what we tell our clients is, if they don’t want something special, our competitors would be fine. But we’ve been known to charter planes to get an order out on time.”
