RFE Investment Partners

Dick: When we first started looking for a partner to help us grow the business, we set up a meeting with RFE in New Canaan. Our first meeting ended up being scheduled on a snowy night in the middle of the winter. My CFO and I had been traveling all day and we showed up at New York’s LaGuardia late because of the snow. Our driver supposedly knew how to get to New Canaan, but, as it turned out, he did not. We drove right on by and only ended up getting to RFE at about 9pm that night. But when we arrived, everyone at RFE was still there – they were waiting for us and had rearranged all their evening plans and were still interested in hearing our presentation. Even though they had been waiting for hours, they were very, very attentive and asked lots of questions as we went through the presentation. The whole thing went on until near midnight. I could tell at that time that the RFE guys fit our company’s culture just based on the first time meeting them. From the start, our interaction with them was illustrative of the way they do business.

Dick: ATS has a very Midwestern culture and a work ethic that is second to none. Around our place a half a day is 6:00 to 6:00. So we work a full half-day every day. And we talk about having a sense of urgency, a spring in our step, a smile on our face, and improving constantly. And it’s about teams and how people can work together. The RFE guys… several of them are transplants to the East. Really they’re from the Midwest. And so you can feel the genuineness about these folks. They are teachers. RFE are not guys that just come in and take charge and go do things. They recognized that we had an appetite to learn. So they created a relationship with us in a way to teach us how to better our business and allow us to learn. And so their culture lined up perfectly with us. They had patience from one perspective. Yet, on the other hand they kept us accountable. But the most important thing was that RFE understood and believed in our business model and its future. They were committed from the start.

Jeff: RFE had a plain-spoken, matter-of-fact, honest approach that was very appealing. We never felt like RFE was the fast-talking, deal-making types. It just felt like they were the kind of partner you’d want to work with.

Dick: At first, we had another equity investor along side RFE. That said, within the first year of RFE’s investment, the efforts of this other investor to roll-up ATS with other companies was falling apart. These guys were starting to want ATS to do things that weren’t good for our business and we began to get crosswise with them. RFE noticed this immediately. After an off-line discussion, we realized that this other investor had to go. And because RFE was committed to ATS and believed in our business model and future, they agreed to buyout the other investor. It was that simple.

Dick: The RFE guys did recommend that we hire a consulting company to take a look at our business, look over my shoulder a bit and just verify that our model was still good. To be honest, we really only brought these guys in on RFE’s suggestion. They dug into our business for three to four months. Among other things, they visited with potential and current clients. At the end of the day, we really got great feedback from them and what it did was focus us more intently on the business. It was another shot in the arm of confidence that our business was still a good business. We were going through a downturn at the time and it gave us all the confidence and focus to get the business through the tough environment.

Jeff: RFE encouraged us to go out and hire consultants, something that for us at the time required a lot of money. With RFE’s support, we did and that really put us on a path of accelerated growth. As a result of the process, we reviewed and tweaked the strategic plan and made a leadership change – quite a bit of stuff that happened as a result of this initiative but it all worked virtually flawlessly.

Dick: It’s not easy for a company like ours to find a financial partner that fits. I’m a farm kid. ATS is a very disciplined organization and that discipline runs from the top all the way down. My father was in the military and he’s an old German who owned his own businesses. We learned how to work hard and take care of customers and I’m cursed with a work ethic that hangs on. At RFE, we had guys who we could trust and they trusted us…good, good Midwestern values… people who would work with you.

Jeff: I think many people can get very impatient and want something to happen because they said so. RFE never took that approach. It was always “let’s talk about it, let’s come to it, let’s agree that it’s the right thing to do, not because I said so.”

Dick: Nevertheless, RFE wasn’t afraid to give us a little kick in the butt. Sometimes management guys want to let things go a little too long. You know, we’ll give folks a second chance, a third chance and a fourth chance. It’s good to have that outsider in there who says, “You know you gave them a second chance already. How many more times are you going to do that?”