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Approximately 1,000 words

REB ROD - A NEW WAY TO RETIRE

Written by June Grayson

Photographed by Richard Grayson

Retirement no !onger means the end of the story. For some peop!e# it is only the beginning of a new and exciting chapter in an a!ready successful and productive life.

C!arence Bauer took ear!y retirement so that he would have more time to hunt and fish. Now he is so busy making the fishing rods that he hardly has time to use them.

Bauer and his wife A!ice grew up in Chicago. At the age of 18 he went to work for Genera! Mi!ls. He stayed there 40 years, 30 of them in production #and personne! management.

On vacations, Bauer and a fishing pal, a manufacturer's representative for a fishing rod company, talked of starting their own business.

Bauer wanted to run a business uti!izing the princip!es he deve!oped at General Mil|s and reflecting his own deeply felt re!igious be!iefs as an active Lutheran !ayman.

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In 1976, age 58, Bauer retired from General Mills. Ray Bauer, their son, a too! and die maker, had just returned from service during the Vietnam war. Ray and Clarence became equa! partners in REB ROD, the company named for Ray's initials and the "rebel" country in northwest Arkansas where they both moved with their families. Clarence and Ali#e bought their home on a b!uff over!ooking the White River, known. for its trout fishing.

With the advice of their friend in the fishing rod business and $10,000 initia1 investment, they rented their first bui!ding in Cotter, Arkansas, and began assembling fishing rods under their new brand name.

For the mi!!ions of fishermen in the United States, the market can be divided into two parts. In the low-price range are the wel!-made but modestly-priced rods sold by such retail giants as K-Mart and Wal-Mart and mass-produced in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.

The avid fisherman soon outgrows these rods. He aspires to a rod designed specifica!ly for a particular fish and fishing location. Retai!ers may handle hundreds of variations of fishing rods to supply these needs.

When Reb Rod started, it tried to compete with the !ow prices of the Orient suppliers. #

For the first six years, it was touch and go. Eventual!y, they had to invest almost $70,000 of their own money in the business. "However, we never missed a payroll," Bauer says, "and I only had to ca!l a supp!er once to say his check would be late."

"That person became our biggest booster. He sent us our first private 1abe! customer who is sti!l with us today. He said that no one had ever apologized to him for a late payment before."

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"Our business really took off in 1982 when we decided to concentrate on the private label upscale market. We no !onger had to spend money on sa!esmen or advertising. The customers came to us. Word just gets around in this industry if you can provide qua|ity and service. We have never been busier."

Reb Rod now operates out of its own new meta! bui!dings in F!ippin, Arkansas. There is p!enty of.room for expansion. Ray supervises production and designs and develops the factory equipment. C!arence p!ans operations and orders supp!ies. They both do customer contact and service. Alice he!ps wherever needed. They even hope that Bob Bauer, the e!der son sti!l in I!!inois, wi!! join the business and move with his family to Arkansas someday.

They buy the rod components from American manufacturers. They train their employees to assemble the parts and tie on the thread guides following the specifications given by the customer. They cover the threads with a two-part liquid polymer. The rods vary from four to 12 feet in !ength. and are usually made of graphite, a space-age materia!. So far, they have made 111 different mode!s but they wil! make any design a customer may order.

Last winter they had six additional emp!oyees and wil! expand gradua!!y until they have at !east 15. "Anyone can hire lots of peop!e to get the job done," Bauer says. "Our goa1 is to be efficient with the people we have. We don't like to fire people - that's not fair to them. Moreover, it makes our unemployment insurance go up. We train our employees to do several job# and try to level out production so we can keep them all working."

"We try to hire handicapped workers and one stayed with us for nine years. She said we were the only ones who ever gave ####

a chance. We want to be known as the best place to work in Flippin."

Wages are !ow in Arkansas, star#ng at the minimum of $3.50 an hour. "We want to deve!op programs to share company profits with our emp!oyees," Bauer continues. " We have instituted a bonus program to reduce absenteeism - $300.00 each quarter to every emp!oyee who has perfect attendanc#. We are sti!! too sma!! for some comprehensive benefit programs but they will come."

"One reason for our success may be that we operate on a 10% markup for the profit on the fina! cost figure. One of our bank officers to!d me -you can't succeed with such a low margin# I just said to myse!f, I won't !et this business fai!. I wanted to prove that we cou!d be successfu! doing it our way. I don't care how much our customers mark up our products. I figure that we can be successful if we on!y clear $1.00 on each rod we make. One customer even asked if he could fly down and see our operation. cou|#n't believe that we could make a qau!ity rod so economica!!y."

"We te!! our customers: once you work with us, we become an extension of your company and we wil! always do what is best for you. We're in the process of installing our own computer. In the#eantime, we ask our customers to give us their own computer printout of their inventory position, their history of selling by each month of the year, and their backorder position. That way we can !ook at the figures and say - we better make#x# number of each kind of rod and have it to you by such a date. That way we save them money on inventory and level out our own production."

Reb Rod may soon have one problem. How do you stay smal! enough to keep control.# To Clarence Bauer, also known to c!ose friends as "Tiny" - a!! 76 inches and 230 pounds of him sma!! is beautifu!.

"Some peop!e mistake bigness for greatness," says Bauer. "Smal! businesses with less than 200 emp!oyees make up 90% of our country's economy. We have found a comfortable little market niche. We don't want to get too comfortable. You wi!l never do a good job un!ess you are concerned about doing a good job."

Bauer sums it up. "The mora! of the story is to do the best job you can and keep every one happy so no one !ooks for an opportunity to go someplace else."

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