Beth Slifer: designs on prospering in lean times.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Executive Edge - Editorial

Beth Slifer, president and owner of Slifer Designs in Edwards, worries that her executive prowess might not match up with the legends of Colorado business.

Yet she has managed Slifer Designs, the nation's third largest residential interior design company, through one of the worst recessions such companies have felt, and still plans to come out of it this year with about $14 million in sales.

Slifer's company has shrunk over the past five years, from peak of about 100 employees and $20 million in revenues when it was rated the nation's leading residential interior design company by her industry's trade magazines, to about 60 employees now, and $16 million in sales in 2002.

She recalls the boom days, when million-dollar homes were sprouting like wildflowers on the slopes of the Vail and Roaring Fork valleys in Eagle and Pitkin counties near Vail and the Aspen.

But she realizes her management discipline may have been a bit too loose for those times. And that realization becomes a measure of her executive skills.

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"The sad reality is, up through 2000, we were so busy and growing so fast that we were pretty sloppy," she said.

"We made money, but we should've made a higher percentage than we made. We were just trying to get the work done, and often that meant some carelessness in our own internal management of processes and systems.

"All of the 90s were steady growth, and profits growing with that. Then, in 2001, we had an abrupt decline in revenue. It was before Sept. 11, but in retrospect it was completely tied to the economy and real estate sales.

"Of course, 9/11 just compounded the issues of people starting to hold back on their extravagant spending."

By that time, however, Slifer had already laid off 13 people, and moved to new, larger space in Edwards despite the slowdown in sales. She closed an Aspen store and subleased some of her space in Edwards to a coffee store and to a rug merchant, both of which helped drive traffic to her own retail store, which she decided could no longer be operated as a break-even service but had to become a profit center in itself.

"So...