SMALL BUSINESS
            SOLUTIONS  

LOOPING       THE LOOP      By Michael P. Grim

For every company that has found a way to make money on some aspect of aviation, many others have crashed and burned. One of the fortunate few survivors is Sequoia Aircraft Corp. of Richmond. The founder, Alfred Scott, sells airplanes. But not just any airplanes. He sells complete kits for Falcos – high-performance, two-seat, single-engine airplanes with sliding-bubble canopies reminiscent of World War II fighters. Scott says it is the “most gorgeous aircraft ever built ... with handling so perfect that owners like to tantalize spectators by kicking the turf and saying in a down-trodden way, ‘It flies better ‘n it looks.’”

The Italian-designed Falco was not Scott’s first home-built airplane project. His first attempt barely broke the solvency barrier, but as a scion of the Scott family of Richmond – founders of Scott & Stringfellow Financial Inc. – the former stockbroker and developer was able to fly through the cash-flow turbulence.

Customer orders come in spurts. “One month we are standing on our heads filling orders and another month you are sitting there thinking the world has forgotten about us,” he says.

The kit costs $75,000 plus $20,000 for an engine, instruments and propeller. And if you hire someone to help assemble the airplane, the total cost could climb to $130,000. Like many entrepreneurs, Scott initially priced his product on the theory that there would be a brighter future. He figured he’d sell the airplane kit for a set amount, then build up enough volume to make it worthwhile. Then he got smart and pushed his prices up 30 percent – enough to ensure a profit on each kit.

The business finally got off the ground, but that’s only half the story.

In the some-assembly-required world, the devil is often in the detailed instructions, and that’s how it was with Sequoia Aircraft. For the construction manuals that come with his kits, Scott wanted dynamite diagrams, so he spent 10,000 man-hours creating crisp ink-on-Mylar drawings. But he discovered that he couldn’t import his high-resolution computer-aided drawings into the digital files that contained the construction manuals.

“What I had to do was literally print [the drawings], copy them, scale them down ... and paste them on with rubber cement.” That’s when it occurred to Scott that his small-business problem might represent an opportunity to develop a new product.

Scott began writing software to bridge the compatibility gap. He ended up with a program called “WildTools” that runs on Macintosh computers. WildTools is a palette of 120 user-friendly tools with capabilities that exceed the best CAD and illustration programs, Scott claims. Integrating high-resolution drawings with text is now a snap, and the price is right at $189. Now royalties from the sale of WildTools generate $3,000 to $5,000 a month, he says.

Scott attributes his software success to his obsession with solving a mundane problem. The ability to focus on operational details is an advantage that many small-business owners overlook, but aviators are trained to keep an eye on everything. If they don’t, they could crash and burn.

Mike Grim, a flight instructor who has never flown a Falco, is a former small-business owner.