In the late 1960s and early 1970s another industry was emerging in the area — the computer industry. And as that grew it spawned other businesses such as the chip, drives and the memory disks. McGuire said, "In those days it was the removable media cartridges — 14-1/4-inch cartridges. I saw that as a real opportunity so I started to manufacture components. I actually manufactured 14 different components for the disks and the drives which we sold world-wide."

By the middle 1970s that business had outstripped the RV accessory manufacturing business and the construction business, so McGuire either sold those products or discontinued manufacturing them. McGuire explained, "I concentrated solely on the computer industry — the memory disk industry. But we kept our sales team that were calling on RV dealers. So by 1976, we had a small distribution business with a warehouse in San Jose. We had gone through the energy crises in 1973, of course. That was a difficult time, but since the RV business was just part of our business, it wasn’t as devastating to us as it was to others. I can tell you that I still remember December 1973. We had negative sales in the RV business; we took more product back than we sold."

McGuire did not pay much attention to the RV distribution business. He was concentrating on manufacturing product and selling to the computer industry. He said, "I tried to sell distribution in other parts of the country, but I wasn’t real successful at it. But my mind was to be a manufacturer, not to be a distributor.

"The only reason I stayed in the RV distribution business was that I had a team of people who had been with me from the early days and we built this business together, had gone through the energy crisis together, and we had learned together - so I decided to keep the distribution business. Then in 1978, the RV industry took a real slide and a lot of competitors went broke.

"When the business started growing again, I needed someone to run it and was real fortunate to hire Bob Jacobson who had been the president of Valley Industries and prior to that president of Chancellor & Lion which was a large auto distribution business. Bob took the distribution business over in 1977. I was running the manufacturing operation, making components for the computer industry. Bob grew the business to $10 million in 1982. I spent only about a day a month there."

By 1983 the computer memory industry was changing from what was called the "Winchester technology" to the smaller, faster memory products. If McGuire was going to remain in the computer industry he would have to make a huge investment in new technology for his products to remain competitive. Instead, when an opportunity came to sell this business he did. Then he decided to sell the distribution business too and return to college to earn his degree.

McGuire said, "At that time Coach Lite, owned by Coachmen Industries, was the largest distributor in the country. I called Phil Lux, president, and Tom Corson, chairman, at Coachmen and told them I had this distribution business and would sell it to them. At the time Bob Jacobson was 65 and he was ready to retire; he wanted to work a couple more years, so this was the perfect deal. Gene Stout and Phil Lux from Coachmen came out in February 1983, looked at the business, and said they would like to buy it. They asked if I was willing to take the Coachmen stock for it and they offered me "so many" shares. I said: No, it’s worth this many shares. In 1983 the RV business really took off. When I first started talking to Coach-men, the stock was somewhere in the $20 per share range and it got all the way to $60 by the time we stopped talking. Anyway, we could never come to terms. During the negotiations, I went back to Elkhart, IN, and toured their facilities. I thought there is an opportunity here to build a national distribution network and so I said: What the heck — I will try to do it. That’s when I decided to run Coast Distribu-tion; and I came to work full-time on January 1, 1984."

To accomplish the national distribution network, McGuire went on a buying rampage, acquiring major distributors such as Coach Lite and Rogers Distributing; as well as medium sized and small regional distributors such as Mohawk, United Sales and SunWest to name a few. He also penetrated Canada buying W. Buchanan Products. Subsequently, Coast acquired interests in several European warehouse distribution companies. When the dust settled, McGuire had put Coast Distribu-tion on the map and controlled a significant portion of the RV parts and accessory distribution in North America and had a significant foothold in Europe.

Reflecting on that period, McGuire said, "We just wanted to consolidate as quickly as we could. The timing was right because a lot of the owners were retiring. It’s not easy to grow a business from the size it was to the size it ended up. It was a very fragmented business, and we felt that the first guy who could set up a national network would have the advantages of the economies that were available; there was computerization and buying, and distribution’s logistics is what it is. Then Bob Jacobson retired in 1987. I learned a lot from him and he stayed on through that transition because he had been there already — with Chancellor & Lion. He was a great guy and worked hard.

"Our goal was to build a national distribution company — and certainly we did that. In 1995 our North American sales were $170 million and we had 19 distribution centers. We did that in about 10 years. But it’s important to remember it wasn’t just Tim McGuire. We accomplished that because of a lot of competent and dedicated people."

In the 1980s Coast established a dealer counsel and would get together with them quarterly to learn what the dealers’ expectations were of Coast. McGuire said, "When I first started having these dealer counsel meetings, the dealers were looking for value-added stuff from their distributor and their supplier. They wanted the product marked and priced out for them and somebody to help them set-up to computerize their businesses.

"There were a lot of new products coming to the market during that period. They said: Bring us new products and train our people to sell them. When we would get together, that was what they talked about."

But by the late 1980s and early 1990s, McGuire started noticing a dramatic change in the tenor of those dealer counsel meetings. He said, "Now what the guys were telling us was: We need to be competitive; we’re losing business to other channels. The first time that I ever heard of a WalMart was at a dealer counsel meeting. Dealers were talking about WalMart and Camping World. Our customers who had been saying, do more, do more for us, all of sudden started saying: Hey, we’re losing market share because we’re not competitive. I can remember distinctly the dealers telling us: If you can’t make us competitive, then find us an alternate product that we can be competitive with."

Since that time Tim McGuire and Coast Distribution have been on a crusade to deliver what Coast’s customers were asking for. And it was at this time that the potential for controversy developed. No one questions his motivation; however, his methods have been suspect. And since McGuire chose not to respond to critics, his reasons have been left to speculation and imagination and provided a valuable weapon for adversaries and competitors.

McGuire said, "The first thing we did was go to supplier-manufacturers and say: Look, we have to reduce the cost of bringing your products to our customer base. Coast has the logistics, the computer power and we are willing to work with you to reduce those costs. If you will work with us, then we can pass those savings on to our customers and they can compete with the other channels.Continued