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Donna Grucci |
Donna
Grucci Butler was the black sheep. As a small child, her
parents, the current generation of the famous Grucci Fireworks
family, brought her to all their fireworks programs. Her
two siblings loved it, but Donna was terrified. “I’d
hold my ears and hide under my mom’s skirt and cry.”
So began the ascension to the presidency of what has been
dubbed America’s First Family of Fireworks.
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Fireworks by Grucci Inc., has been in her family for over
a century and helped produce the sky shows for six consecutive
Presidential inaugurations as well as for the nation’s
1976 bicentennial celebration with fireworks on the Charles
River for Arthur Fielder’s Boston Pops. In 1983, she
helped display the firework spectacular for the Brooklyn Bridge
and the 1986 centennial celebration of the Statue of Liberty
involving 33 firing locations around lower Manhattan.
Although the business is highly profitable, it’s also
highly vulnerable. Firework entertainment is usually the first
cut in all corporate and special event budgets, says Grucci
Butler.
Over the course of a year her company will stage 200 to 250
shows nationwide, including 60 or so over the July 4th weekend.
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That entails arranging the music and choreography, getting all
the permits, meeting with the fire department and local officials,
preparing a site drawing, arranging the insurance, trucking the
fireworks themselves and deploying them, now by computer. The average
show costs $15,000 to $20,000. Beginning around April Grucci’s
work-day stretches to 14 hours or so and then downsizes to a more
manageable 8 hour schedule after October.
Year-round the company employs 120 people in its Virginia factory,
making the fireworks and designing and developing government inserts
for the military. In addition there are 30 full-timers at its New
York headquarters. On May 1 the company adds 200 to 300 pyro-technicians
who light up the skies.
Grucci Butler did not learn to love the business until she was
an adult. She loathed the factory, near the family’s two-story
home in Bellport, NY, in which her mom still lives today. “My
parents (Felix and Concetta) worked there all day; we kids would
go to my aunt’s house then. As I got older after school I
had to take care of my younger brother Felix, and cook for the family.”
Things only worsened as she got older and went to work at the factory
after school, helping her mom make American Flags “set pieces.”
“It was hard work and very hot. I’d get headaches and
beg my mom to let me hang out with my friends.”she says. Alas,
in a small family-owned business, especially an Italian one, everyone
worked and you ALWAYS ate together.
After graduating from Bellport High School, Grucci-Butler went
to work for the WT Grant department store where she met her husband,
Philip Butler. He was a VP there. After their marriage (and the
arrival of her two children, Jeffrey in construction and Danielle,
a maritime lawyer, now 35 and 30) both joined the family firm where
Philip is known as “Chief-Operating-Brother-in-Law.”
Although her mother chastised her for hating fireworks—“This
is your life, your family your business,” she’d tell
her daughter, Donna only came to see that when she stepped in for
her parents so they could take a long-awaited vacation. “I
enjoyed this part of the business, answering phones and doing paperwork
but more than that I enjoyed giving my mom this gift of love.”
From then on, Butler stayed and has come to love fireworks because
of “the joy it brings to audiences and the self satisfaction
that we created that.”.
 In
the 1980s she was a spokesperson for “Wisk Bright Nights”
and Merit cigarettes “Harbor Lights” firework tours.
Things were going swimmingly until 1983 when her brother Jimmy and
cousin died in a company accident that also depleted their life
savings and destroyed the factory. He was 42 and had five children.
The family was devastated. They gathered around her parents’
dining room table to discuss whether they should continue or close.
Ultimately, her younger brother’s conviction that continuing
both honored Jimmy’s memory and preserved a tradition to pass
on to future generations convinced her to keep the business alive.
The family, working together, went on—in 1989, to become
the first American family to win the Gold Medal for the United States
at the annual Monte Carlo International Fireworks Competition. They’ve
also participated in the International Firework Exhibition in Taejon,
Korea and the Concert of the Americas with Frank Sinatra in Santo
Domingo. They also produced fireworks for Sheik Hazza Bin Zayed’s
son’s wedding—the Prince of Abu Dhabi in the United
Arab Emirates.
In a traditional family like hers, the presidency passed to her
younger brother Felix Jr. When he was elected a United States Congressman
in 2001, she moved from EVP to president. Two years later Felix
rejoined the company. Jim’s son Phil is now the EVP and Donna’s
husband Philip is SVP of sales and event marketing. Her 86-year-old
mother also comes in daily to handle the mail, interviews and cook
for her family there. “Having the family work with you means
that you take home all the day’s discussion to the dining
table. On the other hand, our lives revolve around our business
and it is always the topic of conversation,” says Grucci Butler.
Working with a family member, especially a husband, is tough. “The
tension and disagreements can tear you apart if you’re not
consciously patient, understanding and respectful of each other’s
opinion and keep the lines of communication open,” she says.
Those traits have been drummed into her by her mother, a role model.
“Every day I pray I can be like her,” Grucci Butler
admits. In one important way, she was—working all the time.
“My biggest mistake was never taking time away from my work
which I could have done to participate in any school events such
as field trips or being a classroom mother. My children remind me
of this to this day. It is easy to devote yourself so much to work
when you love what you are doing,” she says.
Grucci Butler says she hates the word NO and will always try to
figure a way to make things happen. “In our business it’s
easy for authorities and municipalities to say no—too much
work, cleaning up and crowd control and legal exposure. I figure
out how to get them to say yes.” Other characteristics that
have worked for her include being a good listener and working hard.
During a recent illness, however, Grucci Butler, 55, decided she
wanted to work less hard, to slow down gradually over the next five
years, to garden more, read more and enjoy fireworks as a spectator.
Grucci Butler has come to love fireworks because of “the
joy it brings to audiences and the self satisfaction that we created
that.”
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Judy George |
Long
before Judy George founded and became CEO of Domain Home
Fashions she was concocting schemes to ring the cash register.
Itching to go with her playground group on a cruise to Provincetown,
MA, but unable to wrest the funds from her cash-strapped
parents, entrepreneurs at a plating company in Everett,
MA, the seven-year old George corralled the neighborhood
kids to sell lemonade around town to pay her way.
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It worked so well that three years later the middle of three girls
organized her friends to raid their parents’ closets and sell
used clothing—everything went for $1—to fund her ski
trip. She raised the necessary $90—and a ruckus. Among the
confiscated items sold was a woman’s brand new cocktail dress.
George had to do weeks of house cleaning to pay back enough to replace
it.
 “I
loved making money. It was the initial force that drove me to become
an entrepreneur,” says George, now 63. When she was 12 and
the family moved to Wollaston, MA, George applied this zeal to the
National March of Dimes. A young cousin had died of polio and her
own mother’s anxiety so traumatized her that she became a
regional spokesperson and fundraiser. She hauled in over $100 million
for the organization in the next few years.
At the Chandler Finishing School, where her parents dispatched
her to prepare for “an appropriate marriage,” George
learned legal secretarial skills—and that she never wanted
to work for anybody. She satisfied both goals. Her husband of 43
years, with whom she has four children and ten grandchildren, was
a blind date picked out by her mom! “Mom told me if I didn’t
go she’d never let me out of the house again!” laughs
George.
Her husband has been a trooper, supporting her on some wild adventures.
Early on, she wanted to work at Hamilton’s, a big furniture
store. The manager wouldn’t hire her because she had no experience.
So George “borrowed” her husband’s bankbook as
collateral, hired a plane, and buzzed his office for a week with
the message to ‘hire her and she’ll make you millions.’
Finally he relented and she came on board. Although her husband
wouldn’t talk to her for few days, it was a great investment.
“That first year I sold $1 million of merchandise myself and
was catapulted in a high visibility company,” she says. Two
years later Scandinavian Design acquired Hamilton—and George
with it. She rose to VP, EVP and in 1984, president of what was
then a $100 million company.
Then, on July 1, 1985, she was fired. She was expecting him to
approve funding a new business and had 50 friends coming that evening
to celebrate. Her boss told her he was doing her a favor, pushing
her out to follow her dreams, but George felt shame and horror.
That lasted 24 hours after which she called a press conference to
announce that she’d be following her dreams after all.
The following April 1st she raised $5 million in venture capital.
In September 1986, she opened her first Domain store. What was new
was its guarantee of a specific delivery time and presentation of
roomscapes in constantly changing high fashion vignettes.
Eighteen years and 27 stores later, in April 2002, AGA Foodservice
Group, a U.K. based consumer and commercial kitchen products company,
bought the whole company and signed George on as CEO of Aga/Domain.
“It’s like starting all over again,” beams George,
who has remained friends with the guy who fired her. She will be
opening new stores throughout the U.S. for several years before
she concentrates fully on the screenplay in her drawer.
The new partner will help ease the cramps induced by 9/11—and
her own mistakes. “After the attack, consumers were reluctant
to buy big ticket items,” she says. “And I spent way
too much trying to build the brand and disappointed venture capital
who wanted an exit strategy. I also hired people in the same mold
as myself who aren’t good at operations and details and went
into NYC before we had the necessary infrastructure, the right size
warehouse to make good on my promises to the customer.” Now,
says George, she doesn’t have to swing for the fences and
can just do “a single a day.”
Being a big hitter at work meant she often overlooked the small
nuances in the lives of her three sons and one daughter (all entrepreneurs).
She’s determined that won’t happen with her grandchildren.
“Spending time with them feeds me,” she says. “I
can be the heroine rather than disciplinarian.”
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Linda Rabbitt |
For
a while in her youth Linda Rabbitt seemed to have the perfect
life. She met a doctor and married him, had two “near
perfect” children and left her teaching job to stay
home with them. When her husband left—with all their
money—she initially thought it was a calamity. It
turned out to be the kick in the pants that propelled her
to launch what’s now the second largest woman-owned
construction company in the nation.
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The 55-year-old mother of a lawyer and an opera singer has been
married to her second husband John Whalen for 18 years (his firm
was a client and they met on a blind date), Linda Rabbitt was also
Washingtonian Magazine’s Washingtonian of the year in 2003.
Her first post-trauma job was at KPMG (then called Peat Marwick)
earning $16,000 as a secretary. Nine months later she was the company’s
director of marketing. (What a pregnancy that was!) Five years later
she asked the managing partner how far she could go at the firm:
he replied she needed a CPA to advance further. With no child support
for seven years she decided she needed to earn more than her $55,000
salary.
A woman she knew through the local Chamber of Commerce confided
plans to start the first woman-owned commercial construction company
in DC. Rabbitt joined her. Three years later, in 1988, although
Hart Construction was flourishing, the partners split acrimoniously.
“She made two big mistakes,” Rabbitt muses. “She
fired her rainmaker, me, and did it without a non-compete clause.”
A year later, she was out of business.
But Rand was just gearing up in July 1989. Rabbitt was the sole
support of her two girls and scared so she cut in a male partner
for a 30% share. (He left in 1995 and is now a client.) “I’m
a high achiever but not very confident,” she says. “It
took me a long time to get my sea legs and feel worthy of success.”
Nothing in her childhood made her feel unworthy. Raised in Grosse
Pointe and Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Rabbitt’s father was
an ambitious automotive engineer with 19 US patents for automotive
design. He taught her the value of hard work and integrity. Her
mom was a homemaker and “incredible people person” who
taught her the value of relationships. After graduating from Bloomfield
Hills High School, she headed to the University of Michigan and
then on to a masters degree at George Washington University in DC.
 At
Rand, the 3rd largest woman-owned business in the Washington Metro
area and 8th largest interior construction company there, no day
is typical. Rabbitt spends a third of her time on internal affairs—dealing
with finances, recruiting, performance evaluation and other elements
of infrastructure, a third on business development (she is the lead
rainmaker and gives lots of speeches,) and a third of her time on
community activities. The firm employs 80 people, two thirds of
whom are men.
One key to her success is impeccable organization. Even as a single
parent of a two and three year old she had survival systems. Every
Sunday she’d cook a week’s worth of meals and assemble
five outfits at the foot of each bed so every morning the girls
could pick one of the outfits. At the time she thought her ex-husband’s
absenteeism a negative; now she recognizes it as a gift. “The
hard part was always being on call, exhausting with young children,”
she says.
Such organizational skill has contributed to Rand racking up $85
million in sales last year and having made money every year since
its launch. She’s expecting sales to hit $100 million within
the next three years, despite the fact that some men still “think
there’s a gene for construction.” Competitors would
derive deride her as “a marketing bimbo” who was good
at selling but didn’t know how to build anything. And while
times have changed and there are many more women clients, many male
clients still prefer to work with men.
In 2000, Rabbitt was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent
a mastectomy and chemotherapy. The illness cost her some business
but it was also cathartic. “I weeded out of my life people
who were not real friends and reminded those who I loved how important
they were to me.” A week after surgery she was back in the
office. “It was very important to me to maintain the sense
of a normal life,” says Rabbit who is a 3.5-year survivor.
She also was forced to delegate work she’d closely guarded
before. “Some soared like eagles and out of this ordeal came
a succession plan,” she says.
But Rabbitt has no plans to abandon ship just yet—although
she admits “it won’t get any better than what happened
a few weeks ago.” Then the chairman of $17 billion General
Dynamics Co. put his arm around her to let her know she could always
use him personally as a reference. Her company had built GD’s
headquarters, a $21 million project and the largest Rand had ever
built.
That’s right up there in her “proudest of” column,
along with being chair of the Greater Washington Board Of Trade,
one of only three women in its 116-year history and knowing that
her senior staff is making the most money they’ve ever made
in their careers. “I love to mold and mentor people and pull
the best out of them,” she says. “Once a teacher, always
a teacher,” she laughs. (Rabbitt taught history in middle
school for three years in Fairfax County.)
Although she doesn’t enjoy asking for the order and closing
the sale (“it’s stressful and there’s a lot of
rejection”), she says that she’s good at it. (“Nobody
can clean a bathroom like I can but that doesn’t mean I love
it, she says.) That tenaciousness and focus along with building
a network of valuable relationships and staying strategic and trustworthy
have helped her succeed.
So have female friends, “a peer group to turn to with your
frustrations and get advice from because it can be isolating as
the only woman in a non-traditional role.” Rabbitt says the
most important advice she can offer other women is to understand
the sacrifice they’ll make to be successful. She’s now
at the point where she can work hard and play hard—she still
rises at 6:30 and is out for work on average four nights a week,
but enjoys collecting antiques, gardening, cooking and traveling
to hear her daughter sing—but cautions that “if you
have a burning love of golf and reading novels, you probably shouldn’t
try to own your own business.”
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