Former soldiers use the lessons learned at West Point to battle the baby bedding business

When NaVOBA members Jonathan Hartley and Allan Sicat graduated from West Point in 1998, they didn’t think that baby-blue highchair pads and pink baby blankets would dominate their professional lives. But, just more than a decade later, these two vetrepreneurs are co-owners of Carousel Designs, a trend-setting, online specialty retailer battling retail giants like Babies “R” Us and JC Penney in the baby bedding industry.

Carousel Designs was founded by Hartley’s parents in 1988 and basically operated as a wholesale operation. A knee injury cut Hartley’s Army career short and in 2000, he went to work for the family business. Hartley, 34, left Carousel Designs in 2002 to found his own company (with two other West Point grads coincidentally) called Rent Clicks. This company specialized in online classified advertisements for rental properties and was purchased by PRIMEDIA in 2005 and was transformed into rentals.com. Hartley continued to work with PRIMEDIA for a year-and a half but wanted to get back into business ownership.

“They wanted us to stay and run the rental division of the company, but there was an opportunity here [at Carousel Designs] with my parents wanting to retire,” Hartley said. In 2007, Hartley bought the company from his parents and invested about $1 million he’d earned from the sale of Rent Clicks.
 

A Powerful Partnership

Hartley saw an opportunity to build on the 21 years of success the company had already enjoyed by moving into the online marketplace.  He’d already had a positive experience with his fellow West Point graduates with Rent Clicks, so he decided to seek out another West Point graduate as a partner.  

When Sicat, 33, left the Army in 2004, he went to work for General Electric in its Junior Officer Leadership Program.

“The program allows you to dabble into different areas of the business and I focused most of my rotations in finance as well as commercial operations,” Sicat said.

Sicat specialized in financial planning and analysis and foreign currency hedging with GE Energy. He eventually moved on to a role as a Lean Six Sigma black belt for GE Capital. Sicat left GE in 2006 to and moved to a consulting role with Booz Allen Hamilton and worked with the Department of Defense when it rolled out its Lean Six Sigma program. 

In 2007, Hartley approached Sicat about the business opportunity with Carousel Designs.  He said he was intrigued about the prospect of calling the shots for his own company. 

“In the corporate world, you feel like a small fish in a big pond,” Sicat said. “We touched on some of the strategic growth initiatives that we thought we could implement to grow the business, so I took the leap out of the corporate world into business ownership.”

Sicat provided the extra manpower Hartley needed and the company moved away from its traditional role of manufacturer and wholesaler to that of a national online retailer of specialty baby bedding. Recently, the company began to offer a customizing feature that allows customers to create their own unique patterns and monogram the merchandise to create their own personalized merchandise.

A Fine Looking Future              

Presently, Carousel Designs employs 24 people in its facility just outside of Atlanta. The company had a record month in January 2008 with sales exceeding $149,000 with and doubled its revenues to $1.1 million for 2008. The partners also recently implemented a gift registry feature on its Web site.  It’s attracting four new customers per day, and these customers spend $400 each on average – twice that of non-registered shoppers.

Sicat cites the discipline instilled in both men’s military training as the catalyst for the company’s fiscal restraint and Carousel Designs is virtually free of debt. Hartley attributes much of the company’s success to the sage advice instilled in him by his parents.

“Bootstrap everything,” Hartley said. “Always take a conservative approach to your spending, but don’t sacrifice for quality. My parents took it to the extreme, but it’s really great advice.”
                  

Vetrepreneur Info

 Name:  Allan Sicat

 Branch of Service:  U.S. Army

 Years of Service:  1998-2004

 Highest Rank Attained:  Captain (O-3)

Vetrepreneur Info

 Name:  Jonathan Hartley

 Branch of Service : U.S. Army 

Years of Service: 1998-2000

Highest Rank Attained: 1^st Lieutenant (O-2)

Company Info

 Name:  Carousel Designs

 Web site:  www.carouseldesigns.com

 Headquarters:  Atlanta

 2008 Revenues:  $1.1 Million

B est Business Advic e: 

“Bootstrap everything but don’t sacrifice for quality. Always take a conservative approach to your spending.”

-  Jonathan  Hartley

 “Overcome and adapt. You may set a strategic direction for your company and halfway through, you may have to change directions. Small businesses have the ability to adapt quickly.”

-          Allan Sicat

Did you know?

Jonathan Hartley played for the U.S Olympic handball team.

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