The 2008 Business Leaders of the Year | Our picks for Maine's best executives and entrepreneurs

What makes a good leader?

Since 2001, Mainebiz has asked our state's great executives and entrepreneurs that very question. For our annual Business Leader of the Year issue, we've made it our mission to scour the state's business landscape in search of the leader who stands head and shoulders above his or her peers. We rely on readers to tell us who's doing a bang-up job in the corner office. And we use our reporters' experience covering Maine's vibrant business community to unearth names that, for one reason or another, haven't gotten their just due.

We've celebrated hospital administrators and newspaper publishers, construction pros and banking executives. We've cheered on coffee merchants and nonprofit directors. And with each Business Leader of the Year, Mainebiz has offered readers inside access to some of the most successful and intriguing executives and entrepreneurs in Maine.

This year, to better represent Maine's diverse business community, we're separating the field, recognizing leaders from large companies with 50 or more employees, small companies with fewer than 50 employees and nonprofit organizations. Mainebiz is pleased to introduce the recipients of the 2008 Business Leaders of the Year award: In the large-company category, Ford Reiche, president of Safe Handling in Auburn; in the small-company category, Kent Peterson, CEO of Fluid Imaging Technologies in Yarmouth; and in the nonprofit category, Chip Morrison, president of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce in Lewiston.

Large Company Business Leader:

FORD REICHE
President, Safe Handling

A new solution

Safe Handling founder Ford Reiche has built his business by finding new ways to tackle old problems

"Old mouse traps," Ford Reiche says of a dozen miniature prison cells displayed on a rack in his office at Safe Handling's Auburn headquarters. Some of the traps, Reiche admits, look horrible. Between meetings one recent afternoon, he picks up a trap that is little more than a screw and a metal loop. Reiche, a 54-year-old former lawyer known for his sometimes coarse candor, puts the trap down and fiddles with a cage shaped like a butter dish. He says he's not really sure how it works, but after some quick inspection decides it must function like a lobster trap, where the mouse goes in for cheese and trips a lever to lock it inside the cage. He lifts a pin whittled by age that releases the cage door, pointing out that the mouse could be let free in the woods somewhere — not so horrible.

Like much at Reiche's company, this mousetrap eye-catcher is no accident. Reiche displays the dirty dozen to remind him about what's important to his business, which he started in 1989 with his former partners: his father, Howard, and environmental consultant Paul Turina. Beside the trap rack, Reiche tacked a poster picturing an unsuspecting mouse and a modern trap above Safe Handling's unofficial motto, from a quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "If a man can make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, the world will make a beaten path to his door." Safe Handling's used those pearls of wisdom in its advertising, taking a cue from Reiche's father, a former manager at the S.D. Warren Paper Mill in Westbrook, who used it to advertise the mill.

"In the marketplace, if you can find a new way to solve an old problem, you'll make a buck," Reiche explains. He shrugs. "Everyone has problems with pests."

Safe Handling deals with two breeds of pests, and Reiche's ability to find new ways to exterminate them is the reason 2007 was a banner year for the 100-employee outfit. The first pest, global competition, means Safe Handling has had to find cheaper ways for clients to stay competitive transporting the same goods. The second, global warming, means those clients also want to reduce their carbon emissions.

To handle the first, Safe Handling in recent years expanded to three locations — its 55-acre headquarters and rail and truck transportation facility on Rodman Road, a 60-acre loading and warehouse terminal near Pittsburgh, Pa., and the $10 million Port of Auburn Intermodal Transportation Facility completed in Auburn in 2006 — and established itself as a dominant New England player in the growing dry-to-wet processing and transportation market.

Safe Handling, one of only a handful of transportation companies in the country and the only in Maine with the equipment to transport dry goods by rail or truck and mix them into wet product at its plant, has added a dozen manufacturing clients since it spent more than $15 million in 1997 establishing mixing capacity. Safe Handling can mix up to 100,000 gallons a day, adding water or other liquid to turn powders like talc into a gummy mixture used to smooth paper. "It's like Nestl�'s Quick and milk equals chocolate milk, we'll work with Nestl�'s Quick," Reiche says.

Safe Handling ships products that arrive at its facility from all over the country and the world to companies in Maine and the Northeast. Shipping mostly dry, light material the longest distances, and then mixing the final product in-state for Maine companies, cuts delivery costs by at least half and curbs emissions by as much as 90%. In 2007 alone, the company made 40% of its total $18 million revenue from clients eager to hire a dry-to-wet processor, and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by almost 50,000 tons — the equivalent of taking about 8,300 cars off the road. The innovation has helped revenues grow six-fold since Safe Handling started dry-to-wet processing. Reiche says processing will only become more popular if energy prices and global warming continue to worsen, as he suspects they will. In 2008, Reiche expects a 20% growth in revenue thanks in large part to processing, and says he could well double the size of the company by 2013 if Safe Handling becomes a co-investor in a local renewable energy manufacturer, which Reiche says he is currently in talks to establish.

Part of the plan
Which leads us to Safe Handling's second pest pursuit: See, 2007 wasn't all about powder. Reiche, who readily admits he's never been much of an environmentalist, is lately warming to the idea of capitalizing on, well, warming.

In December of last year, Safe Handling opened Maine's first ethanol terminal because Reiche believes companies will not only ship more dry materials, but consumers will also continue to head for green fuel. Already the state's primary importer of biodiesel, the company's new 148-acre Port of Auburn ethanol terminal allows Safe Handling to be the middle-man between corn-based fuel from suppliers in Canada and the Midwest and fuel wholesalers in Maine. In addition, Reiche decided energy efficiency and environmental sustainability were so important to the bottom line, he last year hired the company's first vice president of sustainability, Andy Meyer. The company has been certified by an international, independent audit as an environmentally sound business and in 2007 reduced its carbon dioxide emissions more than any other business in Maine by shaving its carbon footprint by a whopping 72% over its baseline 2005 emissions. "They say none are so zealous as the reformed," Reiche says. "I just saw the need."

Safe Handling's green fuel and dry transport initiatives are part of Reiche's bet that the old way of transporting — carting heavy wet products by diesel-guzzling truck — is fading away for good. The fast-forward restlessness he half-jokingly credits to attention deficit disorder is anchored by an obsession with planning. Reiche spent six months planning and studying sustainable energy markets before committing to the ethanol facility, and always makes sure his risks are grounded by careful financial planning — Safe Handling, he says, never adds a new service without a long-term customer signed on and enough revenue to justify the upfront expense. In March, Reiche was recognized for his business savvy as the small-business person of the year by the Maine office of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

But Ford's unique brand of risk-taking and research transcends his business. In August, when he and lifelong friend Jonathan Knowles broke the speedboat record from Portland to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, racing 408 miles in 11 hours and 44 minutes, Reiche obsessively organized almost everything — the supplies, when to depart, and exactly what to do in any number of worst-case scenarios.

"He doesn't shoot from the hip and he's been consistent with that his whole life," says Knowles, who owns East Coast Yacht Sales in Yarmouth, Maine. "When he gets into a project he's really focused on it, he gets really wrapped up in it. He's very meticulous and methodical. And it has paid off in spades for him."

Sara Donnelly, Mainebiz managing editor, can be reached at sdonnelly@mainebiz.biz.

Nonprofit Business Leader:

CHIP MORRISON
President, Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce

Leader of the pack

Chip Morrison has brought energy, innovation and big growth to the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce

By now, Charles "Chip" Morrison's performances at the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce's monthly breakfast meetings are legendary. While some of the several hundred early risers who regularly attend the events may still be rubbing sleep from their eyes, Morrison, president of the chamber, bounces onto the stage as a bundle of energy at 7:15 a.m., cracking jokes to welcome the crowd. "He gets on that podium and if anyone is thinking of falling asleep, it's not going to happen," says Donna Steckino, president and CEO of Community Credit Union in Lewiston. "Chip will wake them up."

Energy and enthusiasm for the job are two qualities successful chief executives often are required to possess, and ones Chip Morrison holds in spades. "Sometimes he makes us feel like we're running at a snail's pace," says Steckino, who was on the chamber's board in the late 1990s. "I don't know how he does it."

Morrison is five feet eight inches tall and moves with purpose. His mane of gray hair lends him a likeness to Albert Einstein, and his short staccato laugh and friendly smile are well known on the business networking circuit. He counts his kinetic personality as a distinct asset. "It's the defining quality," he says, sitting on a recent afternoon in the organization's newly renovated Lisbon Street office. "I'm the Energizer bunny."

It's these qualities, and his indefatigable and enthusiastic approach to his job, that have helped grow the nonprofit chamber's membership from the roughly 623 members when he took the helm of the organization in 1995 to 1,302 in 2007 — a 108% increase over his 13-year tenure. Last year, a record 174 new dues-paying members joined the chamber.

Morrison, 62, is quick to share credit for the chamber's successes with his staff, the chamber's board and its members. "That's what CEOs do. They create environments for positive things to happen," he says. "You don't do it all yourself."

But most people return the spotlight to Morrison. "Chip is the chamber," says Steckino. "His influence and leadership has probably been the most influential factor in the growth of the chamber, there's no question in my mind about that."

His energy is contagious, says Janet Barrett, owner of the Ware Street Inn in Lewiston and another former chair of the chamber board. "When you're with Chip, you feel like you could do anything," she says.

Indeed, the local community has benefitted from Morrison's leadership. In the past 10 years, the Lewiston-Auburn area has become a beacon of positivism in the state, and Morrison is a central figure in that movement. "The only thing he's missing are the pom-poms," says restaurateur Paul Landry, who owns Fish Bones American Grill in Lewiston and Mac's Grill in Auburn and plays in the community band with Morrison, who plays the trombone. "He's the area's biggest cheerleader."

And those positive vibes sent out by Morrison and the rest of the community aren't just for show: Between 2001 and 2005, the Lewiston-Auburn region's gross domestic product grew 10.7% to roughly $2.9 billion, a larger increase than in either Portland or Bangor during the same time period, according to a report released last September by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Ups and downs
Last year was a milestone in terms of membership, but 2007 also marked the chamber's move into a newly renovated headquarters, the Business Service Center at KeyBank Plaza on Lisbon Street, which also is home to the Lewiston Auburn Economic Growth Council, as well as the local offices for the Maine International Trade Center, Coastal Enterprises Inc. and SCORE. Morrison was one of the driving forces behind the $2.5 million renovation and transformation of this historic yet abandoned property into a one-stop shop for business services.

An Illinois native, Morrison says he inherited a commitment to community from his parents. His father, who owned a department store, was on the boards of the local chamber of commerce and a local hospital. His mother was on the local school board, and as a member of Community Chest, the forerunner to the United Way, would always encourage a young Chip to give a nickel whenever he could.

Morrison, a graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota, has been in the public sector for the majority of his professional career, beginning in 1969 with a job as assistant city manager of Des Moines, Iowa. In 1978, after a short stint in the private sector as a consultant on organizational efficiency, he became the city manager of Auburn, and then commissioner of the Maine departments of administration (which later became the department of administrative and financial services) and labor in 1987 under former Gov. John McKernan.

Morrison has no plans for retirement in the near future — "I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't work," he says — and in the meantime plans on doing what he's always done. "Every day, peddle as hard as you can," he says. "Then you can say, 'Boy, that was a hard day.' Yeah, but it was fun."

But while 2007 had its bright spots, it wasn't all fun. In August, Morrison weathered one of the most challenging experiences of his professional career when it was discovered that a long-time employee of the chamber, whom Morrison described as a "workhorse" and "a damn valuable employee," was writing unauthorized checks to herself. Over the course of eight months, the woman siphoned roughly $17,000 from the chamber's bank account. While Morrison says the ordeal was extraordinarily difficult, he acted decisively, gathering the chamber's board to make two fast decisions: to issue an immediate full disclosure to the community and press, and to press charges. Morrison handled the whole affair with "finesse," says Barrett, who was board chair at the time.

Morrison says the full disclosure created goodwill within the community, but also brought out confessions from chamber members. "I know over 100 members who said they had the same thing happen to them. It is much more common than anyone would believe," Morrison says. "I had no idea."

Morrison is making sure the misfortune is turned into a learning opportunity. This fall, the chamber will convene a series of seminars on employee fraud, with panel discussions populated with local business folks who have experienced it. "The panel is going to have 100 people on it," Morrison jokes, bursting out with his signature laugh.

One thing he learned from the whole affair: "I still have to trust people. I can't run an organization if I don't trust people."

Whit Richardson, Mainebiz staff writer, can be reached at wrichardson@mainebiz.biz.

Small Company Business Leader:

KENT PETERSON
CEO, Fluid Imaging Technologies

Back in the black

Kent Peterson has guided Yarmouth high-tech firm Fluid Imaging Technologies to sharp growth and, best of all, back to profitability

Ballast water is decidedly unsexy. The water used to stabilize empty cruise ship, tankers and cargo ships is often murky and sometimes tainted with microorganisms. But Kent Peterson, CEO of Yarmouth-based Fluid Imaging Technologies, sees opportunity in ballast water.

The company builds and sells a specialized piece of equipment called the FlowCAM that fuses flow cytometer and microscope technology to analyze particles in fluid, automatically counting, assessing and digitally imaging particles and cells. Peterson recently traveled to the Netherlands for a conference on ship ballast as part of his mission to introduce the FlowCAM to the maritime trade. Peterson says the FlowCAM reduces lengthy inspections of slides to just seconds and can handle relatively large particles and sample volumes.

The opportunity? An increasing number of ports are requiring vessels to test for aquatic organisms in ballast water to ensure boats do not bring invasive species to shore. And Peterson says officials who need to quickly analyze multiple water samples to verify ships' shore worthiness could be aided by the FlowCAM. "There's 75,000 ocean-going ships. There are several thousand ports," Peterson muses while sitting in his Yarmouth office. By 2011, Peterson hopes, all sea ports will have adopted international ballast water regulations. "That'll come quickly," he adds. "We're going with the opportunity."

It's become Peterson's practice to peer into the microscopic world of cellular life to find the next big opportunity. So far, so good: After spending heavily in 2006 to grow the company, Fluid Imaging last year returned to profitability thanks to a 65% jump in sales, which moved north of $2 million. What's more, the company doubled its employee rolls and moved from a small house in Lincoln County to a state-of-the-art facility in Yarmouth.

The FlowCAM, developed a decade ago by Fluid Imaging President Dr. Christian Sieracki at the Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Sciences in West Boothbay Harbor, is a high-tech cell counter that sells for between $40,000 and $85,000 apiece.

Though initially developed at an oceanographic research institute, the FlowCAM can be customized and applied to a range of products, like petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, food, cosmetics and photocopier toner. A dishwasher manufacturer, for example, can use the FlowCAM to measure how clean the wastewater is from its newest dishwasher model. "There's no limit to the practical applications," Peterson says.

Peterson, who has been Fluid Imaging's CEO since 2002 and is also an avid sailor, has applied the seafaring necessities of flow and balance to his business philosophy. A patient, precise man with impeccable manners, he partly credits the company's substantial 2007 growth to maintaining balance. For instance, he habitually funnels company profits back in equal part to each department. "We focus on sales, administration and production to produce a balanced organization for growth," he explains.

But the business did surge ahead last year. After operating Fluid Imaging in a "nice little cedar home," in Edgecomb, as Sieracki puts it, Peterson decided it was time to expand. The company left its rootsy origins and moved into a newly built office in a Yarmouth business park with three times as much space. In 2007, Fluid Imaging grew its staff to 12 full-timers and sold a total of 35 FlowCAMs. This year, Peterson forecasts Fluid Imaging will sell 60 FlowCAMs.

Last year was also the second year the company reached profitability; the first year was 2005. Peterson says the company took a plunge in 2006, investing heavily in new hires, new product development, and sales and marketing to accelerate growth. "The investment provided rocket fuel to an already successful business model," he explains in an e-mail.

Spreading the word
The company reached a milestone last fall when it sold its 100th FlowCAM to ICO Polymers, an international company that produces custom-made powders for products like paint and ink additives, composites and adhesives. Craig Davis, a spokesman for ICO, says the company is testing the FlowCAM in its quality control department, using it to ascertain, for instance, whether particles are spherical, which helps them flow better in fluid and attain a higher bulk density.

Sieracki, who invented the FlowCAM while working at Bigelow in collaboration with Dr. Charles Yentsch and his cousin, Dr. Michael Sieracki, also acknowledges Peterson's equilibrium. "He's a real person of balance," Sieracki observes. Besides admiring Peterson's ability to juggle family and work, Sieracki says Peterson deftly manages revenue and expenditure streams, "so the flow of money is very wise."

When Sieracki left the nonprofit laboratory to commercialize his product in 1999, he met with several potential business partners. Peterson emerged as his clear preference. "I had talked to people who were just too harsh," Sieracki says. "[Peterson's] got a sparkling personality. He's Mr. Clean. He's a balanced, positive person."

Victoria Kurtz, the company's office manager, says Peterson reminded her before he left for one of his long trips to send off Valentine's Day cards he had set aside for his wife and daughters. "Two weeks before he left, he had specific dates he wanted them mailed," she recalls.

Peterson, 55, grew up in Connecticut, received his MBA from Boston University and started his career at corporate manufacturers, including W.R Grace & Company and Emhart Corp., both in Massachusetts. He migrated to start-ups, he says, because mature businesses lack the day-to-day diversity and hurdles of a fresh company. "It's not the same old, same old," he explains.

Peterson met Sieracki while he was still with Kady International, a Scarborough manufacturing firm he joined as president in 1992. "As it really turns out, when I learned of this technology, I realized it has a big place in manufacturing research," Peterson says. "Because I had experience in manufacturing and knew the tools available, I realized there were no tools like this."

The executive was ready to take a chance and help an engineer with a Ph.D. in optical physics bring his invention to the big-time profits of industry. In 2003, the company sold FlowCAMs exclusively to oceanographic institutes and universities. By last year, three out of every 10 FlowCAMs were sold to industrial customers.

But there are challenges in marketing a new and complex tool. The company's biggest task, Peterson says, is raising awareness of the FlowCAM. This means almost constant travel by the company's sales team to trade shows and technology conferences around the world. Peterson estimates he's on the road for 20% of each month, going everywhere from Australia and Spain to Oman and India. Despite all the jet setting, Peterson says he worries he's not doing enough. "It is incumbent upon us to get the word out," he says. "We just can't talk enough to people."

Rebecca Goldfine, Mainebiz staff writer, can be reached at rgoldfine@mainebiz.biz.

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