Tire Treads Inc.
Jackson, Tennessee
Mike Crews was sleeping soundly
one spring evening two years ago.
Then the telephone rang and his
nightmare began.
“My brother, Mark, called and told me
he had been awakened by a loud storm,”
Crews recalls. “We had no idea a tornado was
headed in our direction.”
Tireless workers: Mike (left) and Mark
Crews kept Tire Treads running—even
through the rubble.
figuring out a way to salvage the business.
By the time the Crews brothers made their
way through the rubble of downtown Jackson,
Tennessee, very little was left of the two buildings that housed Tire Treads Inc., a commercial tire sales and retreading business their
father, Jimmy, had started 20 years earlier.
“The first thought of many that crossed
my mind when I first saw the damage was,
‘Did we mail out our monthly insurance
check?’” says Crews, the company president.
“There was no electricity, gas or telephone
service available in that section of town for
two weeks. Our insurance company told us
we’d be out of business for at least three
months,” Crews says. “But we’re a service business. We knew if we waited that long, we’d
lose all of our customers. To be honest, I was
very scared about the future of our company.”
BOB SCHATZ
When the initial shock wore off, the brothers moved swiftly to salvage what remained.
They spent the night in the two buildings to
prevent looting. The biggest challenge was
The extensive damage made it impossible to produce any commercial retread tire
orders in-house for a few weeks. Still, the
brothers managed to keep their business
doors open in their 13,000-square-foot sales
shop—even though most of the roof had been
blown off. They also farmed out their services
to some other companies until shop repairs
were completed a few months later.
Crews says. “We couldn’t pass along the cost
of our misfortune onto our customers.”
Crews says the tornado cost the business
tens of thousands of dollars. But they made
the best of it. “We never laid off any of our
17 employees,” he says. “We always found
something for them to do.”—Mark E. Stroder
Tire Treads Inc. can be contacted at:
tiretrds@aeneas.net or 1-800-748-9315
“We kept our pricing the same, even
though it was costing us a lot more money,”
HONORABLE MEN TIONS ☛
On December 19, 2002, Kelly Bockoven
was thinking about the hectic day
she faced at Agoura Flowers Etc., the
bustling floral shop she’d nurtured over the
previous year and a half. When she saw plumes
of smoke while waiting at a stoplight, she assumed it was coming
from one of the many wildfires
she had seen on the local news.
But as she drove toward her shop
in Agoura Hills, California, she
began to panic. Fire trucks were in
front of her store.
The shop, Bockoven’s dream
business, was going up in flames. As she surveyed the surreal scene before her, she felt a
part of her was dying. “I had worked so hard
to build the business, I couldn’t imagine doing
it all over again,” says Bockoven. “They had
to peel me off the pavement.”
She and her husband, Bud, purchased the
shop in October 2001. Kelly had put all of the
expertise she’d gained during 30 years in the
floral industry into the shop. But she brought
something more to the business. She met cus-
Kelly and Fred “Bud” Bockoven
Reasons to Remember
Flowers and Gifts
Agoura Hills, California
tomers at their homes to help with arrangements for special events. She even built a 60-
square-foot floating arrangement for a
surprise birthday party that looked like a Rose
Bowl float.
Then the Bockovens, in true Phoenix
fashion, rose from the ashes of their burnt
dream. Kelly informed her clients of the
“I had worked so
hard to build
the business,
I couldn’t
imagine doing it
all over again.”
“setback” and set up shop in
their garage. She bought flowers
early in the morning and delivered them the same day.
STUDIO 1501 PHOTOGRAPHY/TOM HINCKLEY
“We knew we’d lose money
while the shop was being rebuilt,
because, without our equipment,
we couldn’t hold stock. And therefore, we couldn’t control our cost
of goods,” explains Bud. “But Kelly wanted to
keep her customers happy, because, in the long
run, she felt they would drive the business.”
Things are blossoming again in Kelly
Bockoven’s flower and gift shop after a
fire destroyed the business in 2002.
The flower shop reopened in the same location on May 19, 2003, exactly five months to
the day of the fire, with a new name: Reasons
to Remember Flowers and Gifts. This has been
the shop’s best year. Business is up 21 percent
and is still growing.—Will Fifield
Contact Reasons to Remember Gifts and Flowers at:
www.reasonstoremember.com or 1-800-764-5470
