Community Service & news
Just when you think we couldn’t possibly get more egocentric, here is yet another page about how great we are, how great everyone else says we are, blah blah blah, we are making ourselves sick…
The Business Journal - Forty Under 40
Mike Campion:
- DOB: March 11, 1974
- Title: Chief shade officer
- Company: Killer Shade
- E-mail: mikec@killer shade.com
Career highlights: In 1996, at age 22, I started my professional career by purchasing a ServiceMaster franchise in Grand Junction, Colo. While I was at the helm, sales increased by more than 300 percent. We started with a handful of employees and expanded to 20 within two years. In 1999, my wife and I moved to Phoenix and I purchased Del Riko, a fabric company. It went from $500,000 in annual sales to $1 million. In 2003, I closed Del Riko to start Killer Shade, a commercial shade manufacturer. In a few years, we’ve grown to 20 employees and doubled in sales.
Community involvement: Board of directors, Young Entrepreneurs Organization; member, Phoenix Chamber of Commerce; product donations to faith-based organizations in the Valley.
Greatest accomplishment: My 8-yearold son is my greatest accomplishment and proudest moment. Professionally, my company has experienced a great deal of growth and success. I am proud of the culture we have created.
Octane: The Entrepreneurs' Organization Magazine
Article: Keeping It Cool
Mike Campion: EO Arizona
Company culture … who cares?
There was a time when a young, strikingly good-looking fellow owned a business. Culture was the last thing on his mind. “Who needs that crap?” he thought. After all, he held meetings, set quarterly goals, introduced marketing plans and had other genius plans.
Three years, a divorce and a new company later, he now believes that culture is the most valuable asset in his company. What’s more, his ability to create and maintain a strong culture is his number one job (perhaps because he isn’t very good at anything else). So, until you get bored and go back to looking at the pretty graphics, here is the story of that guy. If you haven’t guessed, it’s me.
I worked hard in my old company. I read a lot. I tried to do all the right things. We acted professional; the customer was number one and we pretended to be a big, successful company. The only problem? We weren’t. Long story short, I went through a divorce and closed the company.
Being the emotional mess that I was, I didn’t feel like I could do that again. I made a decision that, in our next venture, we would simply be ourselves. Problem was, ourselves is a pretty insane, very politically incorrect bunch of idiots. We figured few people would get our unique personality, but the people who did would love us. And if we couldn’t get rich by being a big company, we could at least have fun and pay our bills.
Here’s how it turned out:
Our first year in business, our customers loved us. Contractors, architects and government types came out of the woodwork to buy our products. The second year, we started attracting top talent. I have been a business owner for 10 years now and have always thought getting talent was a matter of knowing the right people and offering enough money. I can’t tell you the difference between that mindset and where we are now. We have built an amazing place to work, and the best and the brightest seem to come to us. We pay similar to what our competitors pay, but people line up to work with us. Though I’m not the brightest guy on the block, I see the value of attracting people who are much smarter and more intelligent than myself to the team.
The best way I can summarize the magic we’ve created in this new company is through our core values: Be real, be passionate, have fun, make money and help out. That’s pretty much it. It’s who we are, and it’s worked for us.
Scottsdale Republic
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Exec trying to save world with shade
Name: Mike Campion
Title: Chief Shade Officer for Killer Shade
Age: 33
What I do: I build teams of effective and energized people. I make sure the culture is right and everyone is motivated and happy. I have also been known to play Foosball in my spare time.
About my business: We manufacture and install twisty sexy fabric and steel to shade the world. Our shades can be found at schools, airports, restaurants, churches, playgrounds, water parks, pools and government buildings throughout the United States.
What I’ve learned in business: You are only as good as the people you work with. If you are not having fun, it’s time to do something else.
Goals: To create the biggest and best shade company in the United States while maintaining the phenomenal culture that we have created. Our mission is “work hard, play hard-Killer Shade, saving the world one shade at a time.”
What community I live in: North Scottsdale.
Affiliations and volunteer work: I am currently the membership chair for the Arizona Entrepreneurs Organization, a premier global organization for entrepreneurs with 140 members locally and more than 6,000 globally. I also am the membership chair for a local Toastmasters group.
Where I grew up: Born and raised in Phoenix.
Family: I am divorced with the coolest 8-year-old boy ever.
Favorite film: Forest Gump
Favorite book: Atlas Shrugged
First concert: Amy Grant
Company Web site: www.killershade.com
Killer Shade hopes to strike it rich with Vegas shop
Phoenix firm to continue custom shade in Valley
Patricia Bathurst
Special for the ABG
Feb. 7, 2008 12:00 AM
Mike Campion, owner and chief shade officer for Killer Shade in Phoenix, calls himself a late bloomer.
"I didn't invest in a company until I was like 23, even though I knew at 21 I wanted to own my own company."
His friends, he said, thought he was crazy. "I was making good money selling cars."
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But he wanted to run his own show.
That show turned out to have a relatively short run when personal issues forced him to sell his first company. That sale also inspired Campion to rethink his business approach entirely.
"I found a tiny shop doing canvas work. But I also knew I didn't want to fake it anymore. I didn't want to wear a suit to work . . . I wanted to work with talented people I like and I wanted to do good work."
He collected a small team - four people including Campion - and began creating custom shade pieces for commercial buildings. Why shade? Very simple, Campion said. "I was really broke and it's what people were buying."
More than that, he had made a decision to focus on large-scale, architecturally driven projects.
That was in January 2006. Since then, Killer Shade has grown from four to 25 employees and has created custom shade for retail spaces at Desert Ridge, luxury condos in Scottsdale, ASU's Manzanita Hall and more.
They work with a roster of architectural firms and contractors doing a wide range of commercial building and development across the region, and recently moved into a new 10,000-square-foot space on the west side of Phoenix.
With an established reputation among architects and contractors in Phoenix, Killer Shade plans to open an office in Las Vegas this spring.
"We'll open an office with four sales people," Campion said, "and depending on how well it goes and how well we like it, move into Texas in another year. If it's a pain in the (butt), or the shade and canopies are too hard to ship, we'll rethink. But Vegas is like another Phoenix, and you gotta go where the people and money are."
Campion plans to keep his shade manufacturing in Phoenix. All of the shade pieces the company makes are custom-designed and crafted to meet specifications of different projects. Killer Shade guarantees their fabric for 10 years.
For Campion, though, Killer Shade isn't so much about the work. "The important thing for us was to identify the culture. And my main job is making sure that everything follows from that."
He built Killer Shade on a simple platform: Be real, be passionate, have fun, make money, help out.
"The hardest thing has really been building a space where you are who you are, and getting people who fit. I really like building the team and finding the right people," Campion said.
"The first year we opened, there were customers who wanted to work with us. By our second year, we had talented people who wanted to come and work with us."
"I think," Campion said, "we can grow to $10 million or more in sales in another few years." The company's already grown from zero to just over $2 million in sales in about two years. Growing to be a bigger company, he said, is just "like a competition. It all depends on the people. And we do really well at getting people who fit."
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