Robert Vogl Email & Phone Number

Northern California

When the private equity group Salt Creek Capital approached me, the offer was twofold: Become an investor and become CEO of the company they were about to acquire.Four Wheel Campers was an intriguing business — a widely respected pioneer in the production of pop-up campers for the “overlanding” industry. But much was unknown about the privately held company. On top of that, I had never led a B2C business.I said yes, jumped in, and quickly discovered a range of issues:► A sparsely populated management team, high turnover, and a culture of distrust.► Inefficient inventory management and lack of automation in the production process.► Minimal marketing — and virtually zero in digital spaces.One by one, we tackled the problems and came up with solutions that helped us improve performance across the board. Most notably, we tripled our revenue and increased EBITDA 10-fold.Best of all, we created a new culture of respect and accountability and were able to retain our best people. Employee turnover on the production line dropped from a high of 10% to less than .02% monthly.Bottom line — we built the best-performing company in the history of Salt Creek Capital (40+ portfolio companies).

Vail, Colorado, United States

I was recruited by an M&A/investment banker with whom I had previously worked on the sale of McCoy Packaging. He had started his own firm and needed advisors and consultants to help business owners sell their companies.I took on this part-time role while concurrently managing my own consulting business, RV & Associates.It was satisfying to provide my insight and expertise to help business owners realize the greatest value from the sale of their business. I helped them prepare, package, and market their companies … then worked to identify strategic and financial buyers and orchestrated the acquisition discussions and purchase negotiations.

I intended a short break after selling my prior company (McCoy Packaging). But I took on a few consulting assignments and quickly developed a reputation for results. As I examined more companies (mostly lower-middle-market firms in diverse industries), I quickly found that my “engineering” approach applied no matter the industry or the specific problem: Find the root cause, develop a solution, implement to get results, and monitor to see what adjustments were needed.An interesting outgrowth of the consulting work was that I was sometimes requested to serve as part-time CEO. In these roles, I honed my leadership and influencing skills and had the satisfaction of seeing my consulting recommendations produce results.

Petaluma, Ca

When I was asked to take the helm of this family-owned business, the situation was not good.► Their primary market was rapidly shrinking.► Operational and structural issues were hampering performance.► Family members were in conflict.► The company was battling a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for wrongful termination.►The company had fallen from being profitable to breakeven and headed in the wrong direction. ►Legal fees were going to be a challenge to pay.I set to work on multiple fronts.► On the production floor, we brought in new equipment and adopted Total Quality Management principles (Lean, Six Sigma, etc).► We built a name for ourselves as an industry innovator, won numerous awards, and were able to enter new markets because of our reputation and proprietary technologies.► A culture shift increased worker satisfaction, and as a result we were able to take the company non-union without incurring a strike.► We acquired a competitor, allowing us to gain market share at higher margins. The results were 6-fold growth in revenue and 10-fold in EBITDA that put us in a great position to sell the company and return substantial value to the owners.

San Francisco Bay Area

Eager to scratch my entrepreneurial itch, I scraped together enough resources to buy a small printing company and set about trying to “engineer” it to better performance.I concentrated my efforts in 3 key areas:► Expanding marketing.► Adding new production capabilities that allowed us to serve larger and more sophisticated customers.► Earning recognition (and industry awards) for innovation and excellence.Within a year we had doubled our revenues and retired all the acquisition debt while maintaining a healthy cash position

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Business Administration, Marketing

Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), Economics