Mayfield Evans: E & S Diversified Services.

• Author: Richardson, Jeffrey
• Position: Company Profile

While stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage in 1978, Mayfield Evans hit on a way to serve his country and his financial future as well. He and partner Willis Sims decided to bid on a state janitorial contract.

They put up an $8,000 bond between them and won the bid to clean the Alaska State Troopers headquarters on Tudor Road. The two men and their sons started waxing floors, and E & S Diversified Services Inc. was born.

"We pressed on. That went well. We decided there might be a future here," Evans remembers.

By December 1978, the fledgling firm was realizing $3,100 in monthly revenues. Like many entrepreneurs, Evans began with skills acquired in the military. He built a successful enterprise with 200 full-time and part-time employees and substantial contracts throughout Alaska and in the Lower 48, many of them servicing military installations.

The company's current job list reads like an atlas: a contract to perform janitorial, mess attendant (food service), shelf stocking and warehousing services in Spokane, Wash.; a mess attendant contract for the U.S. Coast Guard in Ketchikan; U.S. Air Force janitorial contracts at Shemya and Elmendorf; a contract to operate laundry and dry-cleaning services for Elmendorf, Fort Wainwright and Alaska's forward Air Force stations; and janitorial contracts for the Federal Aviation Administration in King Salmon and Anchorage and for the municipality of Anchorage and state of Alaska in Anchorage.

Such success was a distant dream when E & S Diversified began. Evans, his partner and family have struggled against red tape, shifting bid procedures, economic recession and racial discrimination.

That first job taught Evans and his partner a lot, but the lessons were just beginning. After several years of success, E & S Diversified lost a major contract. The owners responded by diversifying -- adding construction site cleanup and painting to their services. By 1985, the firm again was riding high, and Evans bought out his partner.

"At that time, I decided we needed to expand Outside because it was so competitive in Alaska. I guess I did hundreds of bids and didn't get one, but I learned a lot about bidding procedures Outside," Evans says. He used savings and sold off personal stocks to travel, research bids and buy equipment.

In 1986, disaster struck again. The municipality consolidated several of its janitorial jobs into a single contract, and E & S Diversified again lost a major portion of its...