The best break for Roger O'Shaughnessy, majority owner and president of the $1.1 billion Cardinal Glass Industries, might have been a football injury suffered while on a Big Ten scholarship at the University of Minnesota in the mid-1960s.
O'Shaughnessy said the football injury led to unsuccessful surgery, followed by a "bad attitude" and failing grades. He dropped out of college and went to work at a small glass factory called Cardinal in Minneapolis. That was in 1967. At the time the company had 12 workers, including O'Shaughnessy, with yearly sales of $250,000.
Today Cardinal holds assets of $1.1 billion in 22 plants across the United States, employs 4,500 workers and has yearly sales of $1.1 billion. O'Shaughnessy owns 60 percent of the private business, with the rest owned by about 50 employees. In the center of the operation sits O'Shaughnessy.
"The reason Cardinal is unique and respected by friend and foe is Roger," said Steve Nelson, plant manager for Cardinal's coated glass plant in Tumwater. "He's such a humble guy. One of his best traits — he will treat the president of a company or someone from the shop floor the same."
O'Shaughnessy, 61, wants to add to his business a fifth float glass plant that would supply raw glass material to several West Coast finishing plants owned by Cardinal. The location of the proposed 500,000-square-foot plant is on 90 acres between Winlock and Napavine in the small community of Evaline.
O'Shaughnessy, true to his Midwest upbringing, shuns the spotlight.
In agreeing to an exclusive interview with The Chronicle, O'Shaughnessy said, "I have spent my entire business life attempting to be anonymous, as I believe that the real story lies in our ability to create and deliver products and services which our customers ultimately need. Personal stories draw attention and place emphasis on all the wrong things."
At the end of his interview, O'Shaughnessy said, "(This) is well beyond anything I have ever done before, but I sense that the importance of the Evaline project and the concern of citizens and neighbors deserve something more than I might normally share."
Alan Slavich is the plant manager of Cardinal's float glass plant in Menomonie, Wis. If all goes as planned, Slavich, a Tacoma native, will manage the Evaline plant when it opens.
"Roger is a very different type of leader, believe me," Slavich said. "I've worked for big companies. Roger's one of the guys. He shakes hands and that's the deal. … He's very up front and he lets you do your job."
When Cardinal first came to Menomonie in the early 1990s, Charles Stokke was mayor of the town. Stokke also brings up O'Shaughnessy's "handshake" way of doing business.
"Roger is a man of integrity, and it permeates throughout the employees," Stokke said. "He's old school. … When Roger says he's gonna do something, it's done. And he stands by it and he goes beyond it."
Bill Lotto is director of the Lewis County Economic Development Council, and has closely worked with O'Shaughnessy in bringing the project to Evaline. Lotto, who has been in the business of economic development since 1969, said Cardinal tops the list of high-quality companies he has ever dealt with.
"He does business in person and not through attorneys," Lotto said of O'Shaughnessy. "They don't filter through a public relations department. It is refreshing. It's an old school mentality that I think fits well in Lewis County."
O'Shaughnessy was reared in northeastern South Dakota. His first job was in second grade, delivering morning and evening newspapers. He pulled good grades and enjoyed playing sports. Then came his time at the University of Minnesota, which led to his job at Cardinal.
The owner of Cardinal fell ill, and told his wife to make O'Shaughnessy president of Cardinal, along with selling a 10 percent share of Cardinal to O'Shaughnessy. The owner died two months later. With O'Shaughnessy now in charge, the company lost money the next two years.
An early barrier, which led to a key lesson for O'Shaughnessy, was the low quality of glass Cardinal had been producing. That business model was not working.
O'Shaughnessy put his mark on the company when he formed a business strategy in those early years: "Take care of the customer, make only the best products, treat people well, and motivate them to work hard."
"You must like and respect the people with whom you work," O'Shaughnessy said. "Be honest with them with good news, and with bad. In the end we all prosper only if our customers want our products and that we can deliver them on time."
O'Shaughnessy decentralized the business toward areas that made profits, allowing managers the "freedom to succeed or fail" through a system of responsibility and accountability. Profit sharing and health care went to the workers; major process improvement for the business led to greater performance and a positive image within the glass manufacturing industry.
It worked. The company rapidly expanded. Yearly sales neared $5 million by 1975, and jumped to $12 million by 1982.
Luck, or a good break, was once again about to visit O'Shaughnessy and Cardinal. The Arab oil embargo brought energy conservation to the minds of the American people. At the same time that Cardinal's industry reputation was beginning to shine, its research and development wing introduced the new technology of low emissivity glass, a high-tech solution to the energy crisis. The glass brought lightweight, energy-efficient windows to market for the first time in the world. Yearly sales rocketed to $100 million by 1987.
Cardinal then underwent a dramatic change. A group of about 20 employees led by O'Shaughnessy, with the support of the original owner's family, was offered a private, leveraged buyout of Cardinal. The new ownership pushed for more productivity improvements and product reliability. Yearly sales doubled to $200 million by 1990.
Cardinal's business plan remains simple. O'Shaughnessy focuses on high-quality manufacturing. He doesn't push for positive newspaper headlines or the spotlight. Cardinal does not have a public relations department or a company spokesperson. It doesn't advertise to build a positive image.
Cardinal also is low on administrative management personnel. There is O'Shaughnessy, and then there are the plant managers. O'Shaughnessy spends much of his time flying to his various plants, very much a hands-on owner.
"He is in the airplane covering the company," said Tumwater manager Nelson of O'Shaughnessy. "He's all over the place. He's absolutely the No. 1 salesman."
O'Shaughnessy believes success also comes from treating the community surrounding his manufacturing plants with respect.
"The company's success at Menomonie (the float glass plant in rural Wisconsin which is a duplicate of the planned Evaline plant) and at every other Cardinal factory is owed in a large part to treating our neighbors the same way we do our employees: listen, respond and be honest. Always do your best realizing that we are all humans and as such, we ultimately measure ourselves by how we conduct our lives."
Barbara Thompson is a neighbor of the Menomonie plant and an early opponent of the project when it was proposed. In response to Cardinal attempting to build its plant one mile from her rural home, she joined the Sierra Club and is currently the Menomonie area chapter president of that group.
Today she supports Cardinal for the way it responded to neighbors' concerns (see Tuesday's third installment in this series on Cardinal for a detailed report on neighbor comments). She described how O'Shaughnessy worked behind the scene to help restore an area park.
"It was a huge undertaking," Thompson said. "He told me to keep it an anonymous gift. He just likes to not be up front about all that stuff. … I think he's done everything he said he would do to make it as good as possible for the neighborhood. He certainly was good on his word."
O'Shaughnessy understands a factory of the magnitude planned for Evaline won't be accepted by everyone. He is, however, willing to listen to fears, to attempt to ease any disruptions his float glass plant will have on neighbors.
"Those people against it, they at least have a right to know," O'Shaughnessy said. "The last thing I want is to run roughshod over people."
Michael Wagar is executive editor of The Chronicle. He may be reached at 807-8224, or by e-mail at mwagar@chronline.com.
