Lousy jobs?

        Frederic J. Holzberger, a former union electrician, has had lots of lousy jobs.

        He has hauled garbage, delivered newspapers, chopped bowl after bowl of onions for Coney dogs at Jolly's Drive-thru and as an adult spent countless cold winter mornings pulling wire through commercial building shells.

        Long hours?

Frederic Holzberger in the greenhouse of Aveda Frederic's, one of the company's amenities (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

        Sometimes, Mr. Holzberger — who today is the president and chief executive of the growing Aveda Fredric's in Fairfield — still works from dawn to the wee morning hours, usually in one of his 10 stores of natural-beauty products and usually right around the holidays.

        A boss' concern for employees' well-being and an appreciation for the blessings that work can bring?

        Mr. Holzberger says he's never going to lose either.

        It has been about two decades since Mr. Holzberger spun a four-chair salon into a 12-chair salon, then a tanning bed and exercise equipment group and finally into a natural beauty product distribution company.

        His Fredric's Corp. has become one of the region's cutting-edge companies for worker benefits.

        Career paths are almost never straight for a high achiever, but Mr. Holzberger's route to the top has been particularly twisting and challenging. He still takes pride in having installed perimeter wiring at the 280-foot tall Eiffel Tower replica at Paramount's Kings Island.
       

Sensitive to workers

        “I've been very poor. My family had to work to survive,” he said in a conference room at the 29,000-square-foot Aveda Fredric's distribution center in Fairfield.

        “And seeing how employers treated people along the way led me to set some benchmarks. I will never ask an employee to do something that I won't do myself,” he said.

FIRST STEPS

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AVEDA FILE

• Who: Frederic J. Holzberger, president and chief executive.    • What: Aveda Fredric's, an Aveda Concept Distributor of hundreds of hair-care, cosmetic, lifestyle and anti-aging products.    • Motto: Beauty, Wellness, Environment.    • Mission: “To build an environmental awareness through an Aveda lifestyle while continually providing a point of difference.”    • Work force: About 200 are employed    • Business components: Fredric's Corporation Distribution Services, Fredric's Advanced Education Centre and Spa Training Centre, Fredric's Institute, Lifestyle Development Centre, Fredric's Family Nurturing Centre, the Brown House Cafe and 10 Aveda Environmental Lifestyle Stores in shopping malls in Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

Entrepreneur Frederic Holzberger has learned some business lessons in his career, but few were as important as one of the first:     “If anyone is going to be successful, they should take the advice of banker Bill Hartford, an executive at Second National Bank. I went for my first loan of $20,000, and he turned me away. He wanted to see the downside and the upside and not just blue sky.     “He gave me a piece of advice that I needed three people if my business was going to be successful.     “Have a great accountant, a great attorney and a great bank. I've always made major investments in those three areas. Make sure you have the right support system all the way through.”     If your business is going to prosper, catch a trend, ride the wave and at all costs, avoid commodity pricing:     “I learned early on that if you have two people selling the same product, and I don't care what it is, it becomes a commodity. If you want to sell education, if you want a premium, you need to have an exclusive.     “Look at Wal-Mart, the Kmarts and Targets of the world. You either have class or you have mass.     “It is more defined than ever today. Mass is on the low end, and class is on the high end. I do believe today that if you're going to be successful, you must have exceptional value.     Want to know how to refine your business practices? Ask your employees:     “We push the envelope as far as we possibly can so our employees can excel. We try to do an annual review and ask what equipment employees need to make their jobs easier and more efficient for themselves and the customer.

        “People don't join a company, they buy into it. If you create an environment that is friendly to your No.1 customer, your employees, it will make them want to come to work. If you take care of your employees, they'll take care of your customers.”

        Throughout his career, Mr. Holzberger has kept his eyes focused on the moving target that is the future because, well, what else is there to look at for a working man earning journeyman wages?

        Fredric's Corp. has numerous initiatives to help make work a more rewarding experience for people who punch the time clock each day:

        • The company campus has an organic restaurant, the Brown House Cafe, Organic Teas and Eats that serves organic lunches to workers and the public.

        • Weekly employee focus groups to redefine company direction, share best practices and empower workers.

        • An air-conditioned warehouse and distribution center.

        • Free trips to tony resorts like Atlantis in the Bahamas for those employed for 10 years or more.

        • Rejuvenating facials and cosmetic treatments given to employees who have worked for the company for more than a year after each Christmas holiday.
       

Corporate citizen

        “I had a job at another company before I came here,” said 22-year-old Eric Parr, an order processor from Hamilton. “I was just another number there. Nobody cared much about me.”

        The company is clearly a great corporate citizen and in many ways, the company has put Fairfield on the map, particularly with the environmental initiatives.

        “He's self-made, involved, dignified, and he has brought a lot of events into the city for his fashion shows,” Fairfield Mayor Robert Wolpert said.

        “He is as serious as you can get about everything he tackles. He is very, very good to his employees. They love the guy.”

        Some of the initiatives are welcomed by workers but might not necessarily lead to a boost in morale for everybody because not all workers have children, are concerned about corporate largess or see the workplace as a place where they can or should relax.

        Still, efforts are significant, costly and extensive, including

        • An on-site day-care center where employees pay a sliding scale for care that is based on income and they can plan on regular lunches with their children.

        • A rolling salon in a converted 34-foot Winnebago that has three stylist stations, a shampoo bowl, stress relieving massage station and reception area.

        Called Project Daymaker, it has traveled 50,000 miles and with the help of 800 people has touched the lives of more than 4,500 less fortunate Americans.

        • A 2,000-square-foot greenhouse called “the plant a gathering scenter,” which provides herbs and vegetables for the restaurant and a quiet retreat for group meetings and the public.

        • A business model that allows employees to buy stock in the concept stores.
       

Repay with loyalty

        Work-place expert Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, thinks that employees will repay with loyalty companies that seek a higher mission and purpose.

        “While money, skill development and future opportunities are certainly important, feeling part of a caring community is also important,” said Mr. Gardner, co-author of Good Work When Excellence and Ethics Meet (Basic Books; $26).

        “It is especially so at times like this — when we all feel vulnerable. It is very praiseworthy that Frederic's Aveda makes numerous efforts to create a rewarding work environment for employees.”

        Mr. Holzberger says he has emphasized work-place initiatives because of the time he has spent on the front lines of work, learning lessons about motivation, loyalty and ambition.

        After studying four years to be an apprentice electrician, he decided in the early 1970s that he did not want to be an electrician his whole life. There was at least one way out education.

        He worked days as an electrician and enrolled at Miami University for night classes, usually a grueling three nights a week. He moved to Arizona when work dried up in Southwest Ohio and while in the west, he continued to attend classes — this time at Arizona State University.

        When he returned to Southwest Ohio, he went back to college, always working toward a business-administration degree in marketing. It took him 10 years to get the degree. He was 30 when he graduated.

        “Education has always been the foundation of my success,” says Mr. Holzberger, who grew up in a blue-collar home in the north end of Hamilton.

        The sheepskin led to a training job at Thomas & Betts, a multinational electrical supplier based in Memphis, Tenn., and on the side, he and a former wife built a four-chair salon that soon grew into a 12-chair salon named the Head Shed.

        Before long, the company employed 20 and as it moved into spa services, he became a regional distributor of Wolff Products and Exercise Equipment.

Hitting the road

        Mr. Holzberger gutted a recreational vehicle to haul and sell spa equipment to salons in distant Ohio suburbs or Kentucky amlets deep in the hills — usually pulling off the road to sleep in roadside rest areas because his still-fledgling firm could not afford a night in a motel.

        “I would work during the day to show the equipment, and the equipment I sold, I would install in the evenings,” he said. “There were times we were right on the brink of bankruptcy. That first year, we started the company in May, and the following January, I'll never forget, how the business had just died.

        “We didn't know about the seasonality of lifestyle equipment. I was at home, putting together a resume to find a new job, when the phone started ringing off the hook.”

        People wanted tans before they took vacations to North Carolina or Florida. The revenues began to pour into the company. Tanning beds sales were good but would not compare to what came next.

        While on a business trip to a Chicago spa conference, he met Horst Rechelbacher, chief executive of Aveda. At the time, that company had annual revenues of about $250,000 but within two decades, it would be worth $300 million when it was sold to Estee Lauder.

        Mr. Holzberger recognized the value to aging baby boomers of products from natural sources. One result is that environmental awareness drives each product, even down to the corn-starch packaging material, which biodegrades in water in minutes, rather than taking a century to deteriorate in a landfill.

        Bruce Tulgan, founder of Rainmaker Thinking, a New Haven, Conn., research, training and consulting firm and author of Winning the Talent Wars (W.W. Norton; $26.95), praised the company initiatives.

        But he suggested that many of those efforts should probably be tied to performance or goals for the best impact.

        “Any business leader of any size making concrete efforts to invest in morale, employees and retention, has a heart that is in the right place,” he said.

        “What we advise companies to do is not make these incentives available on an open-ended basis. They should be discretionary and up to the managers on the front line, to trade with employees for goals and deadlines met.”
       

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