Case Studies Category

NCI was a small private equity research firm that developed commercial applications utilizing agricultural waste as a replacement for petrochemicals in injection-molded and non-woven materials. Facility was awarded two government grants and was building production facilities. Company was closed due to illness and untimely death of the owner.

Vice-President July 2012 – January 2013
• Designed commercial extrusion thermoplastic pelletizing systems for our overseas plants that reduced shipping cost by 40% by increasing the blend of agriculture to plastic ratio to 4-1. This had never previously been accomplished.
• Designed and built a PHP & CSS5 website while changing our marketing materials to attract consumers and effectively portray our brand to potential investors.
• Utilized SEO, SEM and email marketing to generate brand and product awareness in the composite thermoplastic materials community.

NRS is a collection agency with three primary lines of revenue: Consumer, Commercial and Medical debt recovery. Staff consisted of 220+ with primary offices in Dallas and Tyler, Texas and gross revenues in excess of $ 15 million. Company lost ~ $1.5 million each year from 2008 through 2010 and became insolvent in 2011 with several states demanding the company file Chapter 7 or face legal fines and sanctions.

President July 2011 – January 2012
• Achieved a 90 day turnaround with a run rate of $1 million EBITDA for 2012 posting approximately $250K in EBIDTA for Q4 2011.
• Negotiated settlements with states to waive fines and Chapter 7 demands.
• Rebuilt our in/outbound lead generation systems utilizing both direct mail coupled with a pull email system.
• Refocused outbound call center to focus on profitable revenue metrics that rewarded profitable business. Reduced overhead 40% while increasing average employees compensation by 15%.
• Regulator Praises Turnaround at Collection Agency it Targeted Press Release that also helped manage our brand and industry perspective.

Press Release

“Minnesota state collection industry regulators played a key role in helping bring in new management and ownership that has successfully turned around a venerable Dallas-based agency.

Nationwide Recovery Systems, Ltd, an agency founded over 30 years ago, grew rapidly under the original founding leadership. The company added a healthcare collection division through an acquisition in Tyler, Texas, and by 2005 was one of the largest commercial, healthcare, and consumer debt collection agencies in the country. When the founder left the company in 2005, the company began to struggle.

By 2010, the company was losing money and the former owners were tiring of putting capital into the business. The company also encountered compliance issues when it failed to get an injection of cash from its former owners to cover a shortfall in its client trust account. Minnesota, like many states, requires a separate client trust account. After the trust fund shortfall was corrected, an independent auditor verified that all amounts due and collected by the agency were paid to customers according to terms.

In July of this year, Nationwide Recovery Holdings, LLC and Recovery Investments, LLC purchased the partnership units of Nationwide Recovery Systems, Ltd. The new owners injected capital into the company and quickly rebuilt the top management team.

“The Minnesota Department of Commerce is pleased with the work this new management team has done in recent months to turn NRS around,” said Department spokesman Matt Swenson. “The Department of Commerce will continue working with management to closely monitor their progress and ensure the company’s viability into the future.”

Earlier this month, the Minnesota Department of Commerce named NRS as one of eight ARM companies it had targeted for enforcement action over hiring and accounting practices.

Swenson emphasizes that the previous regulatory action against NRS “was brought against NRS because of the actions of former management, not because of the actions of the new owners.”

Prior to the purchase of NRS, the new management group met with the Minnesota state regulators and outlined a plan to improve the agency’s operations. After getting full support from the Minnesota team, the new owners proceeded to close the purchase and execute the turnaround. In less than 90 days, the new management group was able to return the agency to profitability.

“Our turnaround strategy focuses on three key areas: people, people, and people,” says Brian Gulledge, the new President of NRS. “Getting the right people in the right place on the bus is the single most important thing we have done to improve our operations,” says Gulledge.

Taking a page from Jim Collins’ Good to Great, Gulledge notes that the old management had a hard time getting people in the right place on the bus – and making tough decisions on performance. “If you fail to act when you know someone is underperforming in this business, you won’t make it,” says Gulledge.

The new performance-based culture at NRS showed up on the bottom line almost immediately. Underperforming collectors were terminated and the top collectors produced more. “A players don’t want to work beside C players,” says Gulledge. This is another principle straight from Good to Great: if you allow C players to stay on the bus too long, they will demotivate the A players, and the A players will leave.

Collection agency culture can go one of two ways: either the A players take over and the culture becomes in inhospitable to C players, or the C players take over and the A players leave.

In NRS’ case, the agency was lucky to find new owners who could recognize A-level talent and put A players in the right place on the bus. The agency was also lucky to have regulators who recognized the talent of the new management/ownership group and encourage them to invest in the turnaround of NRS. Not all agencies who find themselves in trouble with state regulators are so lucky.”

Beckett Media LLC employed 260+ employees globally with primary offices in Faridabad, India, Cebu, Philippines, California, Texas, and New York with gross revenues in excess of $36 million. Company became insolvent in 2009 with ownership reverting the bank debtors. Tasked with turnaround and transformation of multiple retail products including 58 newsstand publications and the online ecommerce marketplace with over 260 million individual products. 2010 was estimated to lose $2.5 million in EBITDA without drastic changes.

President March 2010 – January 2012
• Increased EBITDA by nearly $4 million while writing off over $600K in AR dating back to 2002.
• Reduced vendor notes by $2 million in 2011, while shortening our average payable aging from 70 days to 50 days.
• Negotiated multiple settlements with vendors and partners that had filed lawsuits due to the companies insolvency.
• Rebuilt our online ecommerce/subscription website including 260 million products and grew online revenues by 244%, nearly tripling subscription revenue.
• Directly managed 31 Indian and US developers to implement advanced online marketing and social media strategies to triple our paid subscription user based.
• Implemented outbound call center with 70 telemarketers to increase subscription and product services sales through existing customer base.
• Reduced magazine product lines from 58 to 29, maintaining only our positive contribution lines.
• Implemented new online strategy for Motortopia.com and added 6 print publications online. Strategy is expected to generate in excess of $6 million new revenue over the next 3 years.
• Grew sales staff from approximately 15 to 50 and utilized telemarketing and online sales techniques to grow dealer channel revenue by 200%.

SuperMedia Inc. (Formerly Verizon) – Dallas, TX June 2005 – March 2010
Promoted and successfully assumed role as Director of Search Marketing and related technology activities for SuperMedia (NASDAQ: SPMD, 6,000+ Employees, $2.8 Billion Annual Revenue). that included two new internet products coupled with several acquisition candidates.

Director – Internet Marketing August 2008 – March 2010
• Responsibilities included P&L for $73 million, strategic planning, traffic, lead generation, online acquisition analysis and planning, client services, sales, affiliate marketing, technology and marketing for SuperMedia.com, Superpages.com, Switchboard.com, LocalSearch.com, EveryCarListed.com and Inceptor.com.
• Created $1 Billion Internet Vision for our online marketing department including a monthly subscription product that was presold for $5 million in 60 days.
• Led EveryCarListed.com online efforts increasing unique visitors from 15,000 to over 1 million per month and to achieve a top 10 Auto Vertical site in 13 months. Supported growth of several million to $20 million in auto sales leads.
• Increased site traffic to Superpages.com that grew revenues from $27 million to $58 million.

General Sales Manager – Division Operations March 2007 – August 2008
Promoted to manage Inceptor.com acquisition and all strategic and tactical planning for this full service online marketing agency and SEM software provider.
• Created first business to business sales team for C-level accounts. Responsibilities include P&L for $20 million in revenue, marketing, client services, sales staff, technology, legal, contract negotiations and finance.
• Customers included: CVS.com, HSN.com, Footlocker.com & Chase.com.
• Increased Gross Revenue by 23% and increased Net Revenue by 43%.
• Created a managed outbound call center coupled with a focused online content strategy to increase sales 27%.
• “Top 10 Agency of the Year” award from Goldline Media featured in Inc. Magazine.

Internet Marketing Manager – SEO April 2006 – March 2007
Promoted as the first SEO manager for Superpages.com. Led tactical plan to increase site traffic, lead generation and revenue growth for Superpages.com.
• Wrote code requirements and linking structures for Superpages.com site redesign.
• Led layout testing, increasing our CTR yield by 70%.
• Increased monthly performance based product revenue from $320K to $1.2 million per month.
• Received an Verizon Excellence Award.

Direct Sales – Major Direct Sales September 2005 – April 2006
First national direct sales position. Responsibilities included meeting sales quota, creating national level online advertising campaigns, and managing customer results.
• Wrote $861,780 in annual online advertising budgets in the fourth quarter at 369% to quota.
• Created business development partnerships with Weather.com.
• Was the number one internet sales consultant. Awarded two sales trips, an Excellence Award and 8 Six-Figure Awards.

Regional Direct Sales June 2005 – September 2005
Responsible for achieving sales quota and managing customers online advertising account.
• Wrote $140,210 in annual online advertising budgets in the third quarter at 257% to quota.
• Internet Sales Rookie of the year.

Chase.com was another company that we enjoyed working with at Inceptor. They had some very cool internet marketers and designers that were throttled back by banking and finance executives. In the end, we took on several of there finance divisions to implement SEO strategies that drove more online revenue. The campaigns were in highly sought after financial niches, and we were able to achieve first page rankings on all of their keywords within 6 months.

This increase in targeted traffic and conversions brought them a 10-1 ROI for the SEO budget.

This was a fun company to work with. Privately owned and operating with a “whatever it takes” attitude. At Inceptor, the teams that ran these campaigns were the best in the business, and I only got involved after Google began implementing the “Quality” Score which led to an increase in Cost Per Click cost for many of their items. After creating several test pages to show them the code structure that Google was looking for as part of the Quality Algorithm, we were able implement site changes to reduce CPC cost back down to previous levels, and sometimes achieve higher PPC ranks with lower cost. This in turn led to a higher ROI per advertising spend.

It has been a long time since I have talked with any of the Allergy Buyers Team, but if you come across this page – it was great working with you.

As the General Manager of Incepter.com, we ran the individual website campaigns for LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell to drive online traffic legal products, as well as creating individual traffic campaigns for their Premium Lawyer members and websites. Overall the program ran fantastic and the staff working on these campaigns did a fantastic job. At one point we were able to offer SEO and Adwords quality score code changes that allowed for a lowering in Legal Case Acquisition.

2003-2006 I consider the “Golden Age” of Pay-Per-Click advertising. For Mortgage101 I built the online Pay-Per-Click campaign to drive online local mortgage leads. At the time, their business model was that of a super affiliate or aggregator – that is they drove online traffic to capture the data of consumers needing a mortgage and then they sold these mortgage leads to lenders.

Compared to a Google, Yahoo or MSN the traffic of a local business website, like Superpages.com, was small. However, by optimizing landing pages that matched local keyword targets, and creating custom local advertising text we were able to keep a very high conversion rate on that traffic. That conversion rate made my leads cheaper than leads they were purchasing anywhere else.

My team and I had the pleasure of working on Switchboard in the late 2000’s.  The first press release I found stated: Switchboard

Versailles Group has an exclusive mandate from SuperMedia LLC to sell Switchboard.com.

• Exclusive Mandate
• Principals Only
• No Fee Sharing

Switchboard.com is the original pioneer in the online Yellow Pages industry and is a leading provider of local online advertising and Internet-based Yellow Pages. Launched in 1996, Switchboard.com was an innovator in introducing the Internet’s first interactive Yellow Page display ads. Today, Switchboard.com helps consumers find local businesses quickly and easily, while creating revenue opportunities for merchants.

Switchboard.com currently receives over one million unique visitors per month and in 2010 generated over $2 million in revenues. These numbers represent only a fraction of its true capabilities, as Switchboard.com has been in maintenance-mode for several years. Switchboard.com is highly optimized for search engines with over two million total backlinks, and has over nine thousand .edu and .gov backlinks.

At this time, SuperMedia LLC is highly motivated to complete a sale. As such, we are encouraging all interested parties to make bids for Switchboard.com promptly. For more information about this sale, please e-mail me at dgrava@versaillesgroup.com.

Our client is responsible for our fees and expenses.</em>

Our team created the directory structure for the SEO traffic component.  The consumer team that was handling the overall revenue development and consumer use had some very interesting ideas on building an online community to increase the value of this site.  In the end, corporate bureaucracy prevented the potential for the gem of every being reached.

Owner with full strategic planning and P&L for $8 million domestic and international engineering and manufacturing company.  Primary focus in new product design, tooling for injection and blow molding, metal stamping transfer dies, fixtures, as well as injection molding, automated assembly, coating, printing, automated labeling and blister packaging for Fortune 500 accounts.

• Increased sales 1000% over a 3-year period.
• Created first online platform for internet data delivery for rapid prototype tooling.
• Designed automation and internet controllers, directed production and software wiring to run 17 injection molding presses 14 hours a day ‘lights out’ reducing 2000 man hours per week.
• Gross Profit Margin of 57% with EBITDA of 32%.
• Received ISO-9001 Award for 99.5% on-time delivery and 0 rejects.