October 25, 2005
Erin Rucker Drives Firm in Time of Need
By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News
Sunday, October 23, 2005 - Erin Rucker never imagined she'd be running her father's custom motorcycle and car shop.
But when a motorcycle accident left Bill Rucker, 48, in a coma and, eventually, without his left leg, she didn't have much choice.
"The accident happened on a Thursday," she said. "So Monday I had a meeting with everyone that was here, and I told them that we were going to continue on, business as usual. We're going to move forward, and that any decisions that needed to be made, I would make them."
While her father has recovered and returned to the helm of Rucker Performance Motorcycle Co., Ms. Rucker, 24, has gone from part-time employee to full-time operations officer.
As her father was convalescing between August 2004 and last January, Ms. Rucker took charge of nearly every aspect of the high-end Fort Worth bike maker.
Ira Bryck, director of the UMass Family Business Center (www .umass.edu/fambiz) in Amherst, Mass., said children who step in to run their parents' businesses can be successful under the right conditions.
"It helps if the child has business talent and interest in the business," he said. "If the business was well run professionally beforehand, there might be enough of a paper trail, enough professional managers and well-trained employees, so that the thing has some momentum."
Ms. Rucker had some experience working at her father's previous company, American IronHorse Motorcycle Co., but still had a lot to learn.
"I had worked in the marketing department," she said. "So I was familiar with marketing plans and advertising and some of those things.
"But I had never had any understanding with the manufacturing side, parts issues, any problems with suppliers getting things here," she said. "There are 10,000 pieces that make up one motorcycle, and if you're missing 15, it can set you back a week or two weeks, depending how long it takes to get those parts."
She had to master everything from payroll to accounts receivable to customer service.
"There was a graphic designer that worked here, but we didn't have a receptionist," Ms. Rucker said. "So she and I took turns answering the phones, running downstairs if anyone came in. In addition, I called the dealers, I got the orders, I went through the orders with everyone here, made sure it got finished.
"Then I had to invoice, collect the money, pay our bills with the money, handle any kind of warranty issue that came up with the motorcycles. Pretty much, I was handling it all."
Rucker Performance had not yet celebrated its first birthday when Mr. Rucker was hurt.
"From that point, we had just been in an R&D stage," she said. "We weren't producing anything. So I had to go from not producing anything to producing motorcycles to sell to dealers to make money."
The company's bikes are about as far as you can get from mass-produced.
They're screaming machines that sell for $50,000 to more than $80,000, and they require exacting attention to detail.
The company also customizes cars, such as a searing yellow 1932 Ford Highboy roadster on display outside the shop last week.
But Ms. Rucker made the transition from start-up to established business. Now the company is selling about one bike a week, and it has a six-month backlog of orders for custom cars.
She credits employees for much of the firm's success.
"There was a lot of the staff that really kind of rallied up and said, 'Anything you need. However late we have to work. Whatever we have to do. Let's just keep going.' "
There were plenty of challenges, though.
Ms. Rucker said she had to fire one worker who assumed she didn't know what she was doing, and the company's accountant quit a week after her father's accident.
"I spent nights up here till 10 or 11 sometimes going through all of our payables and spreading them out on the floor to see what invoices had been paid and what hadn't been, what was outstanding," she said. "And that was one of the biggest things that really stressed me out, was the financial end."
Gradually, as the staff grew and her father recovered, Ms. Rucker shared more of the responsibility. But she still oversees just about every aspect of the company except making the bikes.
And the English major has discovered what she wants to do with her career.
"This is definitely a business that I'm passionate about," she said. "Before, I never really felt as connected to it. Now I feel like it's our vision, our goals, it's what we want the company to do."
In a family-owned company, it's critical for family members to have a good relationship, Mr. Bryck said.
"If you had terrible fights about allowance, you're going to have terrible fights about salary," he said. "If your parents did a decent job of teaching you how to drive a car or ride a bike, you do have some examples of looking at how you can teach and learn together."
Having identical business philosophies is less important, though, said Mr. Bryck, whose father raised him in the retail business.
"My father was a very hard sell, hard charging," he said. "Not a bull in a china shop, but if he wanted to sell a suit, he would sell a suit to whoever walked in the door. I was a good salesman, but I was a soft sell."
But the two got along and the company prospered.
Mr. Rucker, who calls his daughter's CEO stint a "trial by fire," said his transition back to the company has been seamless.
"It's a tremendous point of pride to know that she stepped in and ran it as well as I did," he said. "And that in turn has made it very, very easy for me, coming back, to specialize in the areas that I need to specialize in and know that she can handle the areas that she needs to handle."
Dallas Morning News e-mail: smallbiz@dallasnews.com
October 25, 2005 12:47 PM | send page | Rucker In The News