Right Tools for Success
The Palm beach Post, Inside local Business, Monday April
5, 2004, by Linda Rawls.
Beverly Raphael shows
she has what it takes to run a thriving construction firm.
RCC Associates,
run by a woman in a male-dominated field, prospers.
BOCA RATON - Five and a half years ago, Beverly Raphael didn't know the difference
between drywall and designer duds. She didn't need to. Her husband, Richard,
owned a thriving commercial construction company, RCC Associates of Deerfield
Beach. She owned a successful fashion firm BRA Inc, which had showrooms at the
Miami Merchanise Mart and Atlanta Apparel Center. They talked about slowing down
and spending more time together.
Then, Richard died suddenly
of a brain turmor, and the mother of two - still in her 40's -
faced the most difficult decision of her life. Friends urged her
to sell the construction company - what did a woman know about
running such a business in a highly competitive, male-dominated
field? And she had steep financial commitments. Why risk everything? "Here's
a woman who just moved into a new house in a new community," said
family friend Richard Finkelstein, president of Kenco Communities,
a Boca Raton-based home builder. "She has two children, both
in college. That's tremendous overhead." "Then, her husband
dies. It's an awful lot to swallow, from both an emotional and
a financial point of view."
Raphael admits she nearly
took one of the lucrative offers to buy the business her husband
founded in Chicago in the 1970's. But RCC employees begged her
to step in and run the company. They would teach her what she needed
to know, they said."I was confident in my managerial skills
and my business skills," Raphael, a Boca Raton resident, recalls.
But could l learn as much as l needed to know about construction?"
Cheesecake Factory chain one of firm's main clients
Today,
the answer is clear. As president and chief executive of RCC Associates, Raphael
has tripled sales, from $16 million in 1999 to a projected $50
million this year. "
That's an incredible amount for a buildout contractor," Raphael
said, referring to her niche in the construction field; building
interiors for
high-end commercial clients. Her customers today include hundreds
of tony stores in South Florida, and the profitable restaurant division
she started
now accounts for 50 percent of RCC's business.
'RCC delivers quality work'
If you've dined on Wiener schnitzel at Cafe L' Europe in Palm Beach,
relaxed with a massage at the newly remodeled Cosmo salon in West
Palm Beach or
bought a purse at the Coach shop in the Mall at Wellington Green,
you've experienced RCC's often subtle but distinctive stamp: marble
floors, fancy
finishes, decorative columns and custom millwork.
Working with expensive materials that often call for handfinishing
or labor-intensive installation requires specialized expertise. It's
one
thing to drop an 89 cent vinyl tile, quite another to crack a
glass stairway costing thousands of dollars. "
We have marble of the highest quality, high-end finishes for the
floor and wall coverings, and hand-troweled stucco,"said Steven
Rich, vice president of real estate for Advanced Aesthetics Institute,
a West Palm
Beach spa and salon. "RCC delivers quality workin a timely fashion,
which is important in this business. Beverly is known throughout
the industry for her exemplary employees."
Many of the company's 60 employees worked for Raphael's late husband,
and some have been with RCC for nearly 20 years - almost unheard
of in the
construction industry. "
We have almost no turn-over," Raphael said. "And all our
key management was with the company before l came on. Some of their
children
now work for us."
The company's narrow focus also in unusual in the construction industry. "We specialize in restaurants, retail and spas," Raphael said. "This
allows us to develop a subcontractor base with project managers who
interact as a highly specialized team."
That team has completed thousands of projects for a client list that
reads like the Social Register of restaurants and retail: Chanel,
Gucci, Tiffany,
Van Cleef & Arpels, Louis Vuitton, Polo/Ralph Lauren and Herme's.
In fact, it's impossible to shop or dine at any major mall in South
Florida - or at City Place in West Palm Beach, Worth Avenue in Palm
Beach and
the
Bal Harbour Shops in Miami-Dade County - without encountering RCC's
handiwork.
The company's City Place clients, for instance, include three popular
restaurants: Bellagio, Mark's and The Cheesecake Factory. The California
badsed Cheesecake chain is just one of many repeat clients
that call on RCC - which is licensed in 17 states and has a satellite
office in Dallas - to open new units.
RCC has built two dozen Cheesecake Factories throughout the country,
and is working on seven more.
Unfair treatment in
beginning
But business wasn't always booming."Getting the acceptance
of people in the industry was a challenge," Raphael
said of the early days after closing BRA Inc. to run RCC. "Frankly,
(competitors) used the fact that l was a woman unfairly in the beginning.
If a contract was close, between me and another company, they would
say, "Well
you know, she's a woman and she doesn't know construction." Being
taken seriously is an issue female business owners often face, said
Julie Weeds, executive director of the National Women's Business
Council,
a Washington-based group that advised the Small Business Administration.
"
That's a challenge for women, especially in nontraditional industries
like construction," Weeks said. "They face an even steeper
hill to climb." Raphael credits "wonderful teachers" within
her company, as well as a loyal customer base, with helping her to
win the confidence
of customers. "
Anyone who thought a woman couldn't run a construction company now takes
their hat off," she said. "And we've opened the door for other
women."
Though only one in 10 workers in the U.S. construction industry is
female, more than a third of RCC's employees are women. So are three
of its key executives - the heads of project management, estimating
and finance. "
Women no longer allow the glass ceiling to be there," Raphael
said. Indeed, according to the U.S. Census, the number of female-owned
firms with $1 million or more in annual revenue grew by 32 percent
between
1997 and 2000 - nearly twice the rate of male-owned firms. Despite their
increasing econonic clout, however, Raphael and other women business
owners face challenges their male counterparts don't.
In 2002, for example, six in 10 Fortune 500 companies that spend $1
billion or more a year with outside suppliers reported that the median
share going
to companies owned by women was only 3 percent, according to the National
Women's Business Council. But Raphael says that rewards make the challenges
worthwhile. "I'm
fortunate that out of a horrible tragedy, instead of disappearing into
a black hole, l was given the opportunity to reinvent myself," she
said. "To
be a complete person, you need to be passionate about what you do.
I'm very lucky."
Female-run firms growing
Firms owned by women in Palm Beach County employ nearly 36,000 people
and generate sales of $6 billion a year. In Broward County, they employ
nearly
41,000 people and generate annual sales of $6.3 billion.
| |
1997 |
2002 |
Number
of firms owned by women:
|
|
| Palm Beach County |
29,178 |
35,801 |
| Broward County |
37,416 |
45,909 |
| |
|
|
| Of
those firms, the number of firms that employ one or more people: |
| Palm Beach |
5,877 |
8,216 |
| Broward County |
6,379 |
8,918 |
| |
|
|
| Number of people
employed by firms owned by women: |
| Palm Beach |
28,249 |
35,771 |
| Broward County |
32,156 |
40,718 |
| |
|
|
| Annual sales for
firms owned by women in billions of dollars: |
| Palm Beach County |
$3.9 |
$6.0 |
| Broward County |
$4.0 |
$6.3 |
