Rich Harvest Links founder talks business, golf & kids

Rich Harvest Links founder talks business, golf & kids

Business Ledger publisher Jim Elsener and staff writer Jeremy Stoltz recently met with Jerry Rich, founder and owner of Rich Harvest Links in Sugar Grove, the host site of the LPGA’s 2009 Solheim Cup, to discuss his business experience, his golf course and the Solheim Cup. Here are excerpts from that question-and-answer session.

How did your professional career begin?
    I grew up in Villa Park and went to York high school. Upon graduating from NIU, I made the decision to go work for my dad, which I think was the right decision, but I could’ve very easily gone into golf course architecture back then because I always had that interest and that passion.

What line of work was your father’s business?
    We were in application engineering. My dad had an audio business. When I got out of college I went to help him. We covered the whole Chicagoland area. In 1975 we were integrating audio/video data and we called it wideband. Today it’s called broadband. We did two or three major medical centers around the country and did all of their audio/video data distribution.

What was the company’s name and location?
    Rich Incorporated, in Franklin Park. We had about 400,000 square feet of manufacturing facilities in four different locations.

When did the business take off?
    In 1975, I finished a major medical center, 39 buildings, in Brooklyn, New York. A friend of mine worked at the government desk at Chase Manhattan, on Wall Street. He brought me up to the government floor. They had 10 government traders at that time.
    When I walked in I saw all of these huge mounds of electronic equipment in front of each of these traders. Eleven or 12 terminals stacked on top of each other. You know, you work real hard all your life and you very seldom have the opportunity to see something and the old light bulb comes on and hits you right between the eyes. I thought, wow, we can help these guys.
    What they were doing, they were bringing in all of the data lines and they were going through a controller and the controller would bring up composite video. All they needed to implement was some kind of a switch. Well the broadcast industry was using composite video switching for 20 years. So I said, give me 30 days and I’ll build a prototype.

How did you solve the problem?
    We developed our own operating system which we called the R.O.S. system: the Rich Operating System. We used our R.O.S. operating system to communicate with microprocessors to do various applications, various switching and that type of thing. We gave them four, nine-inch screens and all the work was done through a software keypad. We didn’t have to get into the full functionality of the terminal; all we had to do was get into the mainframe. So I brought the prototype back.
    We put the prototype in and they tried it for a day. The head of the government desk called me and said Mr. Rich, I want 10 more systems just like the one you installed. I said, okay, I’ll write you a proposal. He said, forget the proposal, anybody from the cornfields of Illinois has got to be honest (laughs).
    So we went in and basically started with all of their primary dealers. And then as they wanted to branch out to other trading floors in America, we just branched out with them.

How many employees were in the company?
    In the ‘60s, we probably had 30. We grew and when we sold our company in 1984 to Reuters out of London, we had about 1000 employees. So the growth really was from ‘75 to about the mid-80s.

At what point did you know it was right to sell the company?
    When you’re dealing locally in North America, we’ve got ease of transportation, we all speak the same language and we can be anyplace we want to in two to three hours in America. But once you start going overseas, you get involved with all the cultures of those particular countries and you get involved with a whole different environment, and they want the same thing in Tokyo and Singapore and Zurich and Frankfurt Germany, as we have here in Chicago. So that meant creating offices and staffing and everything that required. I told my dad, I think we’d best look for a distributor that is already in all of those countries, that is technically inclined and that is in the trading business. So that’s what we did.
    I looked at Reuters, because they are based out of London and we had done a lot of interfaces of their networks into our system. So they understood the basic technology that we were involved with. We worked with them for a couple of years and we decided that things were going so good that maybe it would be best if we got closer together and that’s when they bought out company.

How many Rich Harvest Links members are there?
    I operate a small membership of 50, which are local. I’m going to grow the national membership to 100. We have about 10 national members now, from all over the country. Most of them have their own airplanes so the airport really is a real convenience for them. They’re a driver and a wedge from the lodge.

Who designed the course?
    I designed it and shaped it and I’m modifying it every year based on how the great amateurs play it. I’m out there watching them and watching where they hit the balls. They won’t outfox old Jerry Rich (laughs). I’m changing it the next time they come back.

Are you involved in any charities?
    Back about 10 years ago I wanted to start a foundation for inner city kids and bring golf into their lives. To teach them all of the life skills that are important. So a good friend of mine and myself started looking for a golf organization for kids and we found this program called Hook a Kid on Golf. It’s a national program. In 10 years we’ve probably touched, in winter and summer programs, about 100,000 kids, teaching them the importance of staying in school, keeping their grades up, and staying off drugs and alcohol.

How did you get involved with the Solheim Cup?
    In 2002, up in Minneapolis, they held the Solheim Cup and I loved that John Solheim was initiating the Junior Solheim. So I called the commissioner of the LPGA. I told him who I was and I told him a little bit about our Kids Golf Foundation and the things we do and our support of the kids. He said he would like to send a senior VP in with their tournament director to take a look.
    I knew they were coming in and I thought it would be important to show a show of force with the proper people. So I put a committee together of the key people in our area, key corporation presidents, CEOs and mayors. We had about 16 people in the board room. My introduction to the LPGA was: this is a committee that I put together to show that if the Solheim Cup came to Chicago that the support would be here. So we did our presentations and they left and a week later they called and said, Mr. Rich, we’d like you to put a proposal together.
    So Ty Volta (then president of the LPGA) called and he said Rich Harvest is going to be the 2009 site for the Solheim Cup. I was so happy I flew right through the ceiling. I told Ty it’s very important that I don’t want the Rich family to benefit from this at all. I don’t want the contract written to Rich Harvest Farms. I want it written to the Kids Golf Foundation of Illinois. After all expenses are paid, I would like to have 50 percent of what’s leftover for our Kids Golf Foundation and the LPGA can have the other 50 percent. He shook my hand and he said you’ve got a deal. That’s the way the contract was written. So we got started four and half years ago.

How will you handle the logistics of accommodating 30,000 spectators each day of the tournament?
    I own all of the fields around the course and they’ve been planted for 10,000 cars, with special parking areas for hospitality. They’ll be able to park right near the hospitality tent. General parking is going to be right across the street from the general entrance.

What are your thoughts each day driving on to the campus of your own golf course?
    This here, building the estate, putting a golf course together, it’s been a labor of love. I never thought I’d ever have an 18-hole golf course. I always wanted a few practice holes when I bought the property. But one thing led to another and I just kept adding to it and improving, and it’s because of my passion for golf.
    I walk around the golf course and facilities we’ve built in the last 22 years and I just marvel at the things that we’ve been able to accomplish. I often think that if I wouldn’t have had the background and growing up in the business I wouldn’t have been able to put this whole project together.

What’s your management philosophy?
    I’m a micromanager. I guess the philosophy I have is involvement more than anything else. I think most of our leaders today, when they get down to the bowels of the organization, they really have no idea what’s happening down there. Until they get out of their ivory towers and down into the organization, they really don’t understand what’s going on. Once you have the involvement, make sure to take on the responsibility to do it right. That’s the way I was brought up. There’s only one way that my father and mother taught me and all my clients taught me: in business, all they expect is the job to be on schedule and to make sure it’s done right… and don’t cause me any grief (laughs).

You look like a guy who is having fun doing what he’s doing.
    I am.

Posted on Friday, August 08, 2008 (Archive on Friday, August 15, 2008)
Posted by jstoltz Contributed by jstoltz

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