MAHONING VALLEY Entrepreneurial spirit drives 2 success stories

By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Barbara Slaven took what she'd learned as a retail clothing store manager and used it to launch her own construction company.
Now, less than three years later, her Lowellville-based Cricket Construction Ltd. is expanding at a healthy pace, with a bottom line to match.
For George Ogletree, an after-school restaurant job he had as a teen-ager growing up in Dover, Ohio, sparked a lifelong desire to have his own business.
He's president of Treemen Industries, Inc., a manufacturing company in Boardman that's quadrupled both sales and employment since it was founded in 1998.
Cricket Construction and Treemen Industries are the two companies singled out as emerging businesses last week at the Fabulous 20 Awards, a yearly event recognizing some of the fastest-growing businesses in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.
How it works: The sponsors, the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce and Youngstown State University, traditionally select two successful businesses, four years old or younger, for the emerging business awards. Winners are chosen from among applications submitted by the participating businesses.
Slaven said she was satisfied staying at home when her three children were young, but when they went off to school, she joined the work force and began a career in retail management.
Starting out at Fashion Bug and later switching to One Price Clothing & amp; More, she liked the work but hated the evening and weekend hours that kept her away from her family.
"My husband kept telling me, 'You're so busy making money for other people. Why don't you make some money for us?,'" she said, adding that her husband, William, urged her to start her own business.
"I loved being the manager, calling the shots. He said I could do the same thing I was doing at the store, only in construction."
Finally, in July 1999, they founded Cricket Construction, setting up shop on East Water Street in downtown Lowellville, her husband's hometown. The plan was to draw on her management expertise and her husband's construction experience as a carpenter. The combination has worked.
"I run the office; he runs the field," she explained. "We have a lot of confidence in each other."
Starting out with a full-time staff of five, the commercial and production building contracting firm had sales of $300,000 in its first year.
The company has grown to 30 full-time employees, and its second-year sales hit $1.5 million.
Cricket Construction is prime contractor on its biggest project so far, Slaven said, the 96-unit, $1.2 million Maple Heights apartment complex on Winter Road in New Castle, and a smaller, 13-unit, phase will follow.
Other projects include the new Fazoli's restaurant and the Longhorn SteakhHouse, both on Boardman-Poland Road, and its first single-family home under construction in Poland.
"There's work out there, but you have to be aggressive," she said. "If you are very conscientious about the work you do and you take care of your employees, work will come to you. It takes a little bit of luck, too."
Restaurant business: Ogletree can trace his interest in entrepreneurship to his teen years, when he worked for Dover restaurant owner Larry Dinolfo, a man he still thinks of as a mentor.
He studied psychology at Kent State University, then moved to Youngstown to look for work in 1979 around the time when the Valley's steel industry was crumbling.
"People in my hometown thought I was crazy coming to Youngstown then, but I told them I just needed one job," he recalled. "Twenty years later, I'm creating more jobs and helping the Youngstown economy."
Ogletree landed a position at Worthington Industries, a Salem manufacturing company, where he gained experience in a variety of production and supervisory positions.
He left to start the research and development phase of Treemen Industries in the Youngstown Business Incubator and, in 1998, became the first incubator project to "leave the nest."
"We owe a lot to James Cossler [director] at the incubator," he said. "He helped us get off to a good start."
He also credits officials at North American Lighting, an Illinois-based leader in the automotive lighting industry, for contributing to his success.
Based on McClurg Road in Boardman, Treemen Industries operates out of a 40,000-square-foot plant, manufacturing and assembling vehicular lighting.
The company began with 10 employees and has grown since then to employ 40 full- and part-time employees who this year produced more than 2 million lighting products. He declined to reveal profit figures but said sales also have quadrupled.
Treemen specializes in applying a reflective coating to vehicle lighting in a highly technical process called vacuum metalization, but the plant also provides injection molding, painting, base-coating and assembly services.
Ogletree said his strong Christian faith has been a major factor in his business success, coupled with good old-fashioned persistence.
Car contracts: The company has contracts to provide lights for 2002 models of Toyota Camry, Ford Thunderbird, Toyota Tundra, Acura MDX and the Chevrolet Silverado pickup.
Ogletree called his wife, Violet, "the straw who stirs the drink." She is vice president and a co-owner and is closely involved in every phase of the business, he said, from manufacturing to accounting, from quality control to shipping and receiving.
Ogletree, who is black, said Treemen Industries doesn't want to be known as a minority business. "We just want to be known as a totally world-class manufacturing facility," he added.
vinarsky@vindy.com