By Don Magary, Editor, RV News

Leaders have a variety of qualities that set them apart from the rest of us, not the least of which is a passion for their vision of how things ought to be rather than being satisfied with the way things are. Leaders challenge the status quo and provoke change. Given our resistance to change, change is inherently controversial. And so as leaders who dare to look toward a further horizon and struggle toward propagating their vision, they themselves become controversial.

Whether you admire him or despise him, you must admit that Thomas R. "Tim" McGuire, CEO, The Coast Distribution System, Inc., qualifies as such a leader. While in pursuit of his vision, he has found himself the center of a controversial fire-storm more than once. But in the meantime, McGuire and his management team at Coast built the first national and international RV aftermarket parts and accessories distribution network and became the largest RV warehouse distributorship in the world with sales peaking in 1995 above $170 million.

McGuire’s critics, RV News among them, have not only questioned his vision, but also his methodology. Until now, McGuire has not responded to his critics and declined to speak publically about what his vision is and why he pursues the methodology he does. Most of that controversy surrounds Coast Distribution’s decision to develop its own proprietary line of aftermarket parts and accessories and distribute those products along side of other supplier-manufacturers’ products, the so-called name brand products. The controversy stemmed from a few suppliers believing that Coast had copied, or "knocked-off," their product or else became a competitor. As a result several suppliers such as Thetford, Bar-ker Manufacturing and Reese Products announced that they would no longer work with Coast to distribute their products.

After several years of declining our invitations to be interviewed, McGuire recently agreed. so RV News sat down with McGuire in a "no-holds-barred" interview to get his side of the story. Speaking about the fire-storms that seem to surround him, McGuire said, "Any company that I have ever run, I always wanted to be the leader. I wanted that company to be innovative and always ahead of the curve. It can be lonesome out there sometimes and just being the leader and an innovator obviously creates controversy.

"The first time that there was any controversy we should have responded with the reasons why we were doing what we were doing. As I look back, our decision not to speak out was a mistake."

To understand where Coast is today, it’s important to understand a little of its history and who Tim McGuire is and where he came from. McGuire is originally from Shawano, a farming community in Wisconsin be-tween Green Bay and Wausau.

He recalled, "Pat, my wife, and I went to high school to-gether and after graduating we attended a state college in Wisconsin. Her parents were dairy farmers and my mom was a school teacher; my dad passed away when I was young. Pat and I got married at the end of our first year of college and decided to move to California. Neither one of us had ever been there. That was in 1962; we were 18 years old, scared to death and pretty naive."

So it was off to California with $307 they received as wedding presents, plus a few hundred dollars they had saved. Their destination? San Jose.

McGuire laughed and said, "We picked San Jose because we thought it was a small town. We didn’t want to live in the city; and San Jose looked like a small town on the map. We got here — and to show you how naive we were — I’ll never forget the sign as we drove into town — Population — 152,000 people. To us Green Bay was a big city and it had only 35,000 people at the time."

The McGuire’s plan was to get jobs and go to school. "We did that," McGuire said. "Pat got a job working for a doctor, and I went to work in a bank. I went to San Jose State for a year and a half and she went for a half year. Then, I went to work for Coast Fabrication in January of 1964. Coast at that time was a sheet metal job-shop and I worked as a drill press operator at night while going to school during the day."

Coast was a family-owned business and besides the owner and his son there were 4 or 5 employees. McGuire, now 20 years old, started making sales calls during the day in his spare time and lined up several new accounts which helped the business grow. The following summer McGuire began selling full-time. "I received some really good commission checks. It was a great job, a lot of fun, and I really liked it. Then when school started, I decided not to go back, but to keep working through the year, and go back to school the following year," McGuire said.

That October the owner died, and his son decided he did not want to run the business and was going to close it. That’s when McGuire suggested that he might be interested in buying the company. McGuire continued, "I said, well why don’t you sell it to me, not really thinking about what that meant. That was a long time ago. People didn’t know what they know today. I mean, you didn’t have CNN focusing in on everything in the world. The flow of information just wasn’t so great.

"So the machinery dealer bought the machines back and turned around and sold them back to me on a note; I had no money — I mean zero! I assumed the receivables and payables because they matched. Then the owner sold me the inventory and took a note for it. By October. 15, 1964, I was in business and in debt. It took a long time for me to learn the business and dig my way out. First, I didn’t know a thing about metal fabrication. Second, I didn’t know about business — accounting or financing. The only thing I knew about was football, basketball, and selling. I liked to sell."

Pat quit her job and came to work for Coast. She worked for seven years until 1971 when their oldest daughter, Elizabeth, was born. Two years later the McGuires’ had a second daughter, Amy. McGuire remembered, "Those were really difficult times, and we lived on nothing. We had one car, that same car we came to California in. We came to work together; went home together; and we worked seven days a week. We made some mistakes but always managed to make a little bit of money which we put back into the business."

Even in those early days, McGuire had a vision for where the business should be going. He continued, "I never wanted Coast to be a job shop; I wanted to make products. Then in 1968 the RV business caught my eye."

During those years, Northern California was a major center of RV manufacturing. I decided that would be a good industry to build products for. Over a period of a few years I developed 15 or 20 RV products, such as stack-jacks, stabilizing jacks and bumpers. I also manufactured and sold products to dealers in Northern California."

The way McGuire researched what products were needed was by visiting RV dealerships. "I talked to the dealers, looked at what was already there and tried to improve on those products. We had a little catalog and one salesman in Northern California. Then we hired Mike Brown, who became our salesman in Southern California. Mike and I went to high school and college together and we’re from the same little town. Then we put another salesman on the road in Oregon and Washington. We manufactured the products and shipped them to Portland and Southern California every day, replenishing whatever they sold. We were peddlers."

That part of the business was going nicely for Coast, but in the meantime McGuire was also developing other markets such as a line of concrete accessories for tilt-up construction such as braces and scaffolding, as well as motorcycle and bicycle accessories. By now, Coast was pretty much out of the job-shop business.

It’s was also during this time that the bud started to blossom into the flower which would become Coast Distribution. Coast started taking on other manufacturers products to offer to the dealers they called on. "The first product lines we took on were Mansfield toilets and Instamatic refrigerators and air conditioners," McGuire said. "Over a period of time, we added more and more products. An interesting sidelight is that we sold our stack-jack tooling to Barker Manufacturing, and for years bought our stack-jacks from them."Continued