Stepping into the picture.

• Author: Thompson, Deanna
• Position: Alderman Studios - Company profile

STEPPING INTO THE PICTURE

Just four years separate brothers Sidney and Robert Gayle -- four years and a decade of conflict. Their differences were so intense they nearly brought down a family business that, by the early 1980s, had become the largest commercial-photography operation in the country.

The Alderman Co., based in High Point, is known nationally -- such industry giants as Sears and Penney's use its cavernous studios to shoot product displays, as do most of North Carolina's furniture manufacturers. The four-acre studio features a collection of props that rivals Hollywood's best.

So did the drama in the company's executive suite.

Sidney, an engineer, and Robert Gayle, a Juilliard-trained musician who once was a concert pianist and music teacher, were opposites both in style and philosophy. Their clashes intensified to the point that, in the mid-1980s, they plotted against each other to control the company and later sued each other. In the end, the only way they could restore the company's profitability was to turn it over to an outsider.

"It was about this far from falling into [Chapter] 11," says W. Eugene Johnston III, a Greensboro businessman who made a seven-figure investment -- he won't say how much -- in the company and became its president and CEO about a year ago. "Unless some big money went into this company fast, it wasn't going to make it to payroll."

A High Point institution since the early 1900s, Alderman Co. grew to become the largest commercial-photography business in the country in the early 1980s. It built a reputation for service and quality at a premium price, using the latest camera and lighting techniques and an elaborate collection of more than 300,000 props, everything from silverware and swords to paintings and plants from its own greenhouse, to create photographs for advertisements, catalogs, brochures and the like.

Early on, Alderman tied its fortunes to the growth of the furniture industry and the semiannual Southern Furniture Market in High Point. For years, it counted virtually every furniture manufacturer in the country among its clients. More recently, it began shooting home furnishings and other products for Rose's, Wal-Mart and other discount retailers, often for inclusion in the circulars that fatten up Sunday newspapers.

At its peak in 1985, Alderman generated revenues of $34 million and employed more than 500 people at offices in High Point, Lenoir, Dallas and New York. At one time, it could handle everything from photography to printing for clients.

Today, Alderman is a mere transparency of its former self with 250 employees, revenues of $11 million last year and studios in just High Point and Lenoir. Gone with the satellite locations and expanded operations is the man many credit with building Alderman, Sidney Gayle. Still one of Alderman's biggest stockholders, he also is one of its largest competitors. Just a few hundred feet from Alderman's offices near Business Interstate 85 -- on land the company sold to raise money -- he operates Omega Studios.

By March 1987, court documents show, Omega had won away more than $3 million of Alderman accounts, including its largest, Bassett Furniture Industries, as well as Macy's, a prestigious retail account, Eckerd Drugs and nine others. The losses, another competitor says, "drastically hurt Alderman."

That was just one of the problems when Johnston took over. The company counted its delinquent accounts at nearly $1 million and had lost $4 million in the past two years. Morale was at a low ebb.

"People never knew what was going to happen from day to day," says Lavon Drummond, who came to the company in 1982 as manager of corporate accounting and is now vice president and treasurer.

Johnston quickly moved to stabilize the company, cutting overhead, giving managers more decision-making authority and continuing a retrenchment from early 1970s expansions. By last fall, he says, the company was back in the black with a profit of $92,000 over six months.

"We've deconglomeratized and gone back to basics," says Johnston. "We take pictures. Lots of them."

How Alderman fell from its peak to near bankruptcy is a story of brotherly differences dating back decades, observers say, and a case study of how a clash in management styles, changing market conditions and indecision can cripple a company. Neither Robert Gayle, 64, who has retired to Hilton Head, S.C., nor Sidney Gayle, 68, will talk publicly about the company's problems.

But others close to the situation give a snapshot of a company in turmoil: Top management, they say, was crippled by...