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RL Hudson founder receives honor

By Debbie Blossom
World Staff Writer

Oklahoma SBA director Dorothy Overal
presents Rick Hudson with a certificate
recognizing him as Oklahoma's Small
Business Person of the Year.

TULSA, OK — Owning a small business is paying off big for a Tulsa entreprenuer.

Rick Hudson, founder and chief executive of RL Hudson, was named Oklahoma Small Business Person of the Year by the United States Small Business Administration on Wednesday.

Hudson was recognized during a press conference at the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce after comments from Lynda Wingo, vice chairman of the chamber’s Board for Small Business, and Mayor Bill LaFortune. Dorothy Overal, director of Oklahoma’s SBA’s division, presented the award.

“This is a great honor for me,” Hudson said, adding that it is even more heartfelt because his nomination came from the company’s loyal work force.

“A man cannot build a business without great employees,” Hudson said.

Last year, he was selected to be Tulsa Small Business Person of the Year.

A determined Hudson started the business from his home in 1980, turning his ambitions into a global operation supplying manufacturing companies with custom-molded components and sealing products.
“We’re a national company — we could be located anywhere,” he said.

But after relocating to Tulsa in 1969, Hudson quickly found where he wanted to be.

“This is my home,” he said. “I’m not going to leave.”

RL Hudson has more than 60 employees and locations in Arkansas, Ohio, South Carolina and Taiwan. The company has grown by about 15 percent in each of the last 23 years and is pojecting sales of $25 million in 2004 — a 30 percent gain over last year.

Employment growth is estimated at 5 percent to 10 percent each year. That’s good news for the metro area, which during the past two years has relied on the strength of smaller companies like RL Hudson while its larger, more well-known firms faced big cutbacks.

“Small business sustain our economy,” LaFortune said. “They deserve our sincere gratitude ... for how much they have done in carrying our economy through tough times.”

According to the chamber, the Tulsa Metropolitan Statistical Area has 33,420 businesses — 98.5 percent employing fewer than 100 people, 96.4 percent with fewer than 50 and almost 81 percent with fewer than 10 workers.

The Small Business Administration defines a small business as a company with 500 or fewer employees.

While labeled as small businesses, the impact of just those companies with fewer than 10 workers is huge. The 27,027 businesses that fall into that category in the Tulsa area employ nearly 85,000 people, have a payroll estimated at $1.4 billion and support additional income in the economy of $1.3 billion.

Note: This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the May 6, 2004 edition of the Tulsa World.

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