HUDSON WINS SMALL BUSINESS AWARD
The president and founder of RL Hudson & Co. was named the 2003 Small Business Person of the Year.
By Debbie Blossom
World Staff Writer
Rick Hudson, president of RL Hudson,
receives the Small
Business
Person of the Year award from Lt. Gov
Mary Fallin at the Tulsa
Metro Chamber’s
Small Business Awards luncheon.
In 1980, Tulsa engineer Rick Hudson let his entrepreneural spirit take flight. He started an O-ring distributorship business from his home, serving what was then a thriving Oklahoma oil industry.
The dream, he said, was to create a good environment for people to work and to provide the best customer service possible.
Hudson seems to have reached those goals.
On Wednesday, the president and founder of RL Hudson was honored by the Tulsa Metro Chamber as the 2003 Small Business Person of the Year for his dedication to growing his company and for his belief in the city where he lives and works.
“Tulsa is a great place to have a business, it’s a wonderful place to live, with people with good family values who make good employees,” Hudson said. “That’s why I wanted to stay here.”
The chamber each year salutes small business owners for their companies' growth, positive economic impact and their support of Tulsa’s small business community.
Companies with 100 or fewer employees make up 99 percent of the area's businesses, and firms with 10 or fewer employees comprise 80 percent of the business community, said Ken Klein, this year's keynote speaker.
Klein, president of Kleinco Construction Services, is a former chamber award recipient and the 2001 Oklahoma Small Business Person of the Year. The native Tulsan and second generation businessman spoke about the city’s last two economic downturns – how Tulsa went through the oil bust and bank fraud of the 1980s and most recently the collapse of the energy trading and telecommunications industries.
“In the 1980s, we were shell-shocked,” Klein said, “but we survived.”
And in 2001, Tulsa’s business community is surviving again by getting “mean and lean,” he said. “We learned from the past.” This time around, Klein said, low interest rates and a pool of more sophisticated business professionals will keep Tulsa on the road to economic recovery.
Rick hudson was one of many local business owners who felt the impact of the oil bust just a few short years after starting his company. But RL Hudson survived because the owner diversified his product line and expanded outside of Oklahoma into a national company.
The 23-year-old business supplies seals and custom-molded products to manufacturers across the country. RL Hudson parts are now contained in products made by such nationally known companies as Rubbermaid, John Deere, Craftsman, Kawasaki and Coleman. Chrysler is a big client, Hudson said, and Mercury Marine is the company’s biggest customer.
Today, RL Hudson has sales and distribution centers in Arkansas, Ohio and South Carolina, employs almost 60 people and is projecting $19 million in sales this year.
Hudson said his company remained viable by assembling an experienced staff of engineers and filling a void created when many big companies cut back on their engineering departments.
“I have great people,” Hudson said of the staff that nominated him for the award. “I’m just on air – what an honor.”
© 2002 World Publishing Company
Note: This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the May 22, 2003 edition of the Tulsa World.
