Kitsap Business and Economy

By Rachel Pritchett
rpritchett@kitsapsun.com
SILVERDALE
Anyone who’s been to a corporate trade show in Las Vegas, Chicago or Orlando’s seen them.
They’re the slick exhibit spaces, those irresistible 3-D advertising rooms dangling the latest high-tech gadgets outside to draw new clients inside.
The president of a Silverdale-based company that makes trade-show exhibits for corporations all over the nation — Sean Combs of Steelhead Productions — has just received the “40 Under 40″ award from the Puget Sound Business Journal.
No, not that Sean Combs.
The prestigious award is given to the Northwest’s most promising and dynamic young business leaders.
“During these tough economic times, I am honored to be included among some of Puget Sound’s most talented and innovative business leaders,” he said.
Dynamic mean change, and Combs has had to get good at that.
After years of surfing the crest of the dot.com wave, he helped steer Steelhead through the trough of the dot-com crash, September 11, and the recession, even expanding to Las Vegas during the toughest of times.
Today, when so many companies are slashing costs to survive, he’s spending money on a new Web site to draw new business.
“You just can’t cut your way to prosperity,” said the 35-year-old while sitting at his desk in Old Town Silverdale.
Not that he’s maneuvered past all the pain.
He expects 2009 gross sales for Steelhead to be down 25 percent from the $3.9 million it made last year.
“The recession has affected everyone,” he said.
Steelhead has about 35 active clients and does more than 150 exhibit spaces a year. Corporate clients include technology companies, health-care companies and manufacturers.
At his core, Combs is a salesman.
At age 15 in Bellingham, be began selling shoes for Foot Locker. In 1994, Foot Locker sent him to its Kitsap Mall store to improve sales. At age 20, he became that company’s youngest manager anywhere, he said.
Forgoing college, he instead went where Foot Locker sent him in Washington and Oregon, repeatedly boosting store sales and gaining new responsibility.
Watching him along the way was Jim Andersen, father of a young woman named Rhiannon whom Combs had met while at Kitsap Mall.
Andersen had built a career with another trade-show exhibit maker, Exhibit Emporium Inc., and spun off in 1996 to start Steelhead in Poulsbo. He choose Poulsbo because he loved the Northwest lifestyle, Combs said.

In 1998, he asked Combs to join Steelhead to build its stable of clients.
That he did, and in the years that followed, Combs married the boss’ daughter and became the company’s president in 2005.

Two years later, the company moved to Silverdale, and Combs decided to expand Las Vegas. He would keep the design and sales force here, but have a warehouse and production arm there, closer to the trade shows.
The formula has worked. Steelhead keeps its $1 million exhibit-space inventory in a large warehouse just a stone’s throw from the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The economic downturn has cause Combs to trim staff from 25 to 16, and he’s not ruling out someday moving Steelhead to Las Vegas. His wife and 9-your-old son live there now, and she helps with the business.
It’s difficult for Combs to commute between the two places, but wants any decision to be what’s best for business, and not for him.
“Growth is in the valleys. This is where we learn,” he said.
“I’m incredibly grateful.”

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 8:28 am by Rachel Pritchett and is filed under Uncatagorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.