“Local politicians like to get in bed with local business, and taxpayers are usually the losers. So three cheers for a voter revolt in Wichita, Kansas last week that shows such sweetheart deals can be defeated.”
– The lead of a Wall Street Journal opinion piece today (“A Wichita Shocker: You can beat city hall”) about last week’s Ambassador Hotel guest tax vote
WICHITA — As David Norris restructures his DEN Management, former minority partners Shane and Melissa Dick are preparing to start their next venture.
“Really, it’s kind of an exciting twist for us,” Shane Dick says.
“As we talked to more and more people out there … just talking about problems and issues and the day-to-day trials of running a business, it kind of dawned on us that there’s a need for a CFO for hire, if you will,” he says.
The Dicks both have accounting and CFO backgrounds.
“A lot of companies have a strong accountant, but they can’t necessarily afford to hire a CFO,” Shane Dick says. “We started realizing, hey, there’s a market out there for this. David blessed it and thought it was a great idea.”
They’re calling their firm Atlas Accounting & Consulting.
“We’re Ayn Rand fans,” Shane Dick says.
There’s no website yet, but the Dicks can be reached at sdick@atlas-business.com.
The two are in the beginning stages of getting the company going.
“We’re still helping David wrap up his to-do list,” Shane Dick says.
He says DEN’s restructuring coincided nicely with his and his wife’s plans.
“It seemed like a good time to go out and really do our own thing.”
WICHITA — David Norris has restructured his DEN Management and its subsidiaries. The result is that DEN has ceased operations and Norris’ other companies, along with a newly formed entity, now will have stronger identities.
Norris says he began discussing restructuring in 2007 “because everybody was confused.”“It was all driven by our customers and their confusion on who they were dealing with,” he says.
He still has Dean E. Norris Inc., the mechanical contracting firm his father started in 1971. It specializes in large industrial projects. The company will begin using its original logo, which has been updated.
Norris also still has Professional Mechanical Contractors, which he started in 1976 to offer mechanical contracting, such as plumbing, piping and sheet metal, to commercial markets. The company also has HVAC and energy services.
“We’ve struggled for years to try to get the elevator speech in 20 words or less,” Norris says. “It still evades us.”
He says PMC hasn’t traditionally done much marketing. It now will have its own logo and begin to establish its own identity internally and externally.
PMC Service is a new company Norris created that will handle the service end of commercial and residential mechanical contracting projects.
Part of the restructuring includes the departure of minority owners and co-COOs Shane and Melissa Dick.
“It was totally all of us by mutual agreement,” Norris says.