Fixing a Large Leak

New President Repairs Orange County WinWater Works

Gary Giovino came to California from Colorado two years ago to revive a comatose company. He quickly succeeded in bringing Orange County WinWater Works Co. back to profitability but nearly died accomplishing the goal.

By Paul Napolitano

Things are looking up now with Gary Giovino in charge at Orange County WinWater Works Co. (photo by Paul Napolitano).

Gary Giovino, president of Anaheim-based Orange County Winwater Works Co., smiles a lot these days.

He's 48, lives in sunny Southern California and runs a wholesale waterworks supply company. He's got a golden-brown tan. He eats well and exercises six times a week.

This is the new Gary Giovino. The old one nearly died a year ago.

"I was always tired, always out of breath for about a month," Giovino said last summer on the patio of his Newport Beach apartment as he spread the lapels on an old brown shirt to reveal a long vertical scar in the center of his chest. "When I got the results back from the exam, I told the doctor let's do it as soon as possible."

The exam was an angiogram. "It" was quadruple coronary-artery bypass surgery, performed in Denver on Christmas Eve 2004.

Rocky Mountain Hi

Giovino (pronounced JEE-oh-vee-no) left Long Island, N.Y., for Colorado in 1977. He was 20, had worked for a year after graduating high school and was freshly removed from a single-semester stay at a community college where he rode the bench on the baseball team and seldom studied.

A childhood friend invited Giovino to Denver. Giovino needed a job and was looking for an "adventure."

He wasn't too impressed with his first job as a truck driver delivering plumbing supplies for N.O. Nelson, a sister company of Orange County Winwater.

But Giovino wasn't in the driver's seat for long.

In 1978, the company moved him into the warehouse, where he worked for about eight months. A year later, he was promoted to warehouse foreman. From 1979-86 he was a salesman. And by 1986, the former truck driver, the college dropout from Massapequa, N.Y., had become president.

"Over the 28 years that I've been with this company, there have been two or three influential individuals who I have studied, tried to mimic and who have helped me," Giovino said in September while having lunch at a seafood restaurant in Orange.

Gary Giovino is on a low-fat diet and exercises daily-except Sunday, either lifting weights at the gym or riding his bike at the beach near his home (photo by Matt Meredith).

He said Denver Winnelson (the company's name at the time -- N.O. Nelson -- was changed to eliminate the negative connotation of a company beginning with "N.O.") was a successful company with lots of great people. But a few people stand out in Giovino's mind.

"My first mentor when I was with N.O. Nelson in Denver was the president, Chris German," he said. "More recently-in the past 10 to 15 years-it has been Jack Osenbaugh, the COO of [Dayton, Ohio-based] WinWholesale Inc., and also Steve Ford, vice president of the western region. They're people I consider smart and bounce things off of."

Ford said WinWholesale's fundamental philosophy fosters the idea that employees starting out with the company as truck drivers will become presidents.

"The guy is a hell of a salesperson, and combined with that he has a great common sense approach of how to be successful in the business," Ford said by phone from his Dayton office. "He's extremely self-disciplined to processes and rules, as well as being financially disciplined.

"The other thing is that he is extremely competitive. We encourage competition within our companies, and Gary's a competition junkie. He loves it, and as a result he usually comes out on top."

In 2002, with the Denver business clicking on all cylinders, Giovino was getting antsy for a new challenge--and some warmer weather.

His daughter, Katie, 20, who was married in October and moved to San Antonio, was away from home attending junior college at the time. And his wife, Jan, who was client services manager for the Colorado Rockies baseball team, was open-minded about a move to Southern California.

"The opportunity to become president at Orange County Winwater came up, and after talking it over with my family, I decided that I would do it," he said.

On Feb. 10, 2004, Giovino left Jan behind-she would join him in Southern California four months later-and at 46 years old started another adventure, not as a truck driver, but as a president seeking to turn around the misfortunes of a languishing business.

"At that time, the company was ranked 451 out of 451 Winn companies in the nation in profitability," Giovino said. "We were dead last. Bottom of the page."

While Giovino's sharp mind was enabling him to resurrect the Anaheim operation, his body was letting him down.

"Through the summer of '04 living on the beach, I would exercise for about 30 to 40 minutes and be exhausted or feel drained," he said in October in his Anaheim office. "Or I would go in the ocean and play around for two or three minutes and I couldn't catch my breath.

"That had never really happened before, and I did not equate that to cardiovascular disease, but that's what it was."

Giovino had been getting annual checkups because of his family history of heart problems. His father, Sabino Giovino, who had two heart attacks, died at 64 in 1994.

Even so, Giovino was a bit surprised at what was about to happen.

"I received a clean bill of health from my cardiologist in Denver in January '04, before I came to Southern California," he said. But by November of '04, one of our office managers here told me, 'you know, Gary, you just don't look good at the end of the day. You look exhausted and fatigued. You better get checked out.' And that kind of stuck in my head."

Giovino scheduled a stress test when he went back to Denver for Christmas.

"I had the treadmill Dec. 21 and the doctor did not like the results."

For the first time, Giovino had a "slight discomfort" in his chest after only 11 minutes on the treadmill. An angiogram was prescribed on the 23rd. The results were alarming.

"When they were done, they told me that my upper-left ventricle was 95 percent blocked, and blocked in a place where they couldn't put stents," Giovino said. "That area supplies 45 percent of blood to the heart. They call that blockage the 'widow maker' because when that finally closes, most people don't survive that heart attack. I had a couple of other minor blockages of 50 percent that they would address at the same time.

Jan and Gary Giovino met in 1987 at a Bob Seger Concert in Denver and were married in 1990. Jan, a native of Nebraska, was the client services manager for the Colorado Rockies baseball team before the couple moved to California in 2004. (photo by Matt Meredith).

"So the doctor said 'your choices are get surgery or within six months you most likely will have a major heart attack and you probably won't survive.'

"My immediate reaction was, 'Oh, sh-t,' and then relief that they found it before I had the massive heart attack. [The doctor] said, 'we can [operate] next week.' But I said no you won't, you'll do it tomorrow."

And with that executive order, the president was set for open-heart surgery the following day.

Turning It Around

"We were all concerned for the reasons why he came [to Orange County Winwater]" Scott Williams, Giovino's' 35-year old sales manager, said in November in his boss's office. "This particular store was in trouble, we were dead last.

"Bringing in a new guy from a relative industry, but not the same industry, was a concern to all of us."

Williams said he and his associates were concerned because Giovino previously sold "10-cent" copper fittings and toilets, not large pipes, and did not know Orange County Winwater's product line.

Giovino started the process of turning the business around slowly.

"He didn't make any moves before learning who each individual was," said Williams, who joined the company five years ago as a truck driver.

"He did a lot of listening. And then he made changes."

WinWholesale's Ford added: "Gary didn't go in with guns blazing. For the first six months, he was two ears, two eyes and one mouth."

Giovino, armed with the ability to run a tight fiscal ship, started introducing the "Winn Way" of doing business--the cost-effective process of moving each product from purchase order to receiving to delivery to payment, Williams said. Evaluating the staff Giovino inherited and making changes were other major steps.

"We turned over 25 percent of the personnel and brought in those who we felt were quality people," Giovino said. "If you put smart people who work hard in place, you can succeed. And that's what we have here."

Life After Major Surgery

Giovino, who never smoked, came out of open-heart surgery in Denver in good shape.

Sales Manager Scott Williams said Gary Giovino "didn't make any moves before learning who each individual was." (photo courtesy of Orange County Winwater Works Co.).

"The [surgeon] came out and told my wife that it was a routine surgery and that my heart muscle looks fine."

He recuperated in Denver until Jan. 15, where he began his recovery by working on a treadmill.

But he longed to be back home. "I was looking at the back window at the snow and ice in Colorado and said, what the hell am I doing here?" he added. "I have a place in Newport Beach. So three days later, I was on a plane and resumed my exercise regime back in Newport Beach.

Even with Giovino's heart slowly on the mend, the revived business did not miss a beat.

New systems and people were in place and more productive. And Giovino's hands-on approach before the surgery had influenced the Anaheim staff.

"Gary's not afraid to do anything," Ford said. "If he has to go out and see a customer, he does it. If he has to do office work, he does it. If he has to go out in the warehouse and move material around, he'll do that, too."

Giovino went back to work about three months after surgery, but said that he didn't start feeling normal until about mid-April. It wasn't until June when he started feeling better than he did prior to surgery.

"Just a couple of times he got a little depressed, but he's such a positive and happy-go-lucky person that it didn't last," Jan Giovino said.

Nowadays, he's on a strict no-fat diet and exercises daily-except Sunday, either lifting weights at the gym or riding his bike at the beach.

"My doctors told me it's not what you eat once in a while that hurts you, it's what you consistently do bad that hurts you," Giovino said. "If you eat junk food two, three times a week, that's gonna hurt you. If you have ice cream twice a year, it doesn't even matter."

Jan, who nursed her husband around the clock for the first week after surgery, said, "I'll go buy some ice cream and he won't have a drop of it, and that was his favorite thing in the world. I'm so proud of him."

Giovino went six months after surgery without tasting beer, but he let loose in late July when a few friends from Long Island visited him for a weekend of reminiscing and attending Angel baseball games in Anaheim.

Just before Thanksgiving, Giovino received more good news. His company was ranked first in terms of profitability. The climb from the bottom to the top was faster than expected.

"I thought it was a three- to five-year turnaround," Ford said. "I told him [before Giovino decided to accept the Anaheim assignment] in three years you could have this company as a top performer. And in five years, I think it could be number one.

"Well, that goes to show you what I know. He blew it away."