VALLEY FORUM: What Helped Your Business This Year? It may have been a bad year for the economy, but business goes on and, with that in mind, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal wants to know: What did you do in 2002 to limit the impact of an economic downturn on your business? Ryan Addis Vice President Western Pacific Mortgage Inc. Woodland Hills For us, it’s great to have an economic downturn because of the lowered interest rates, so we had a lot of business. One of the things we’ve done in the meantime is to improve our relationships with other companies that refer people to us. We’ve also been able to improve on our efforts to work with employers who want to offer their employees a low-cost mortgage program through us. John Palmer Principal/Co-Partner WonderWorks Inc. Canoga Park We’ve had to cut staff because there was so little work in (special) effects, so it’s been a difficult year. But we have a lot of young people working here who know the business is up and down and they know that nothing is steady. And we’ve been lucky to get business when we needed it. Kirk Waldrun Chief Financial Officer SMTEK International Inc. Moorpark We’ve had to really focus internally and look to our cash management and our balance sheet to cut costs, which is difficult to do. We also had to look at our suppliers and we restructured relationships where we can be more competitive by improving our cost structure. It’s something that I think companies always have to do, even in the best climate so you stay competitive. Examining how you do business is a constant thing because you always have to keep improving. Brian Levine President/CEO Data Products and Solutions Canoga Park To complement our supply business, we’re now offering courier service that picks up information and stores it in a secure vault in the event of a major disaster at the customer’s site so they can have a backup. It was something that we started to do because we could see IT slowing down. We needed to do something and we’ve been fortunate that it’s helped improve the business. Now, offsite data storage of critical backup media is something that could become a big part of our business. Garrick D. Matheson Chief Operating Officer Optics 1 Inc. Westlake Village Our work has historically been 20-percent government and 80-percent commercial, and the government work has picked up significantly. So, as this economic downturn developed, we started getting these government contracts and that really helped us. Right now, we’re 50-50 with government and commercial, but government work is continuing to grow, though we’ve started picking up a lot of medical and laboratory equipment companies. But we don’t have any telecom companies anymore, which isn’t surprising.
