Summary
Nicholas St. George's management of Oakwood Homes Corp. - Cover Story
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Extract
Pump up the volume.
The CEO of the nation's largest manufactured-housing retailer knows only one mode: full blast.
Nicholas St. George never met a macho metaphor he didn't like. "We must have pit-bull tenacity," the CEO of Oakwood Homes Corp. tells employees in a company newsletter. "There are parallels between running a business and coaching a team," he expounds in an interview. And to St. George, Oakwood isn't simply growing toward his goal of $1 billion in revenues by the year 2000, it's "muscle building." It might sound as if the 56-year-old former investment banker is auditioning for a part in a David Mamet play, but St. George's pep talks have paid off. Soft-spoken and self-effacing in person, he has pushed Greensboro-based Oakwood from niche player to national power in the scrappy mobile-home business. Sales have grown from $42 million when St. George came on board in 1979 to $506 million in the fiscal year that ended in September. With 13 manufacturing plants and 176 company-owned sales lots stretching across 22 states, Oakwood is now the largest m...See the full content of this document
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