It doesn't look like the headquarters for an international power sports company.
Mike Tomberlin is fine with that.
"We've been a very quiet company, a small company," Mr. Tomberlin said. "You don't have to have the huge asset base to accomplish significant things like you did 30 years ago.
"Bricks and mortar doesn't impress the client base or the dealers."
So there is very little of it.
Next to the crowded showroom of Tomberlin Outdoors at 3125 Washington Road is a handful of offices where leaders of the company run separate ventures: youth-size all-terrain vehicles, scooters, go-karts and electric vehicles. They have a network of dealers that number in the hundreds.
"Humility is a big word in our company," said Chris Plummer, a member of the Tomberlin Group leadership team. "He's been successful, but a lot of people never heard of him. That's the way he wants it."
The 49-year-old Augusta entrepreneur has built a career out of what he enjoys, power sports equipment.
He takes little of the credit for building his companies, instead saying his talent is surrounding himself with talented people.
"We believe that bricks and mortar and bureaucracy are our enemies," Mr. Tomberlin said. "There have been some awesomely talented people who have been suppressed by procedures.
"We do our best to free them up to do what they are skilled to do."
Tomberlin has a flat leadership structure that allows everyone to work as a team. Mr. Plummer spends most of his time with operations, sales and branding.
"It frees Mike up from having to do the day-to-day so that he can concentrate on vision," Mr. Plummer said.
He has been with the company for only a year, having met Mr. Tomberlin at a golf industry show two years ago. He was in marketing and business development with Club Car for seven years and ran his own sports marketing company since 2002.
But when Mr. Tomberlin offered him a job over dinner last summer, Mr. Plummer accepted.
"Mike's passion was very obvious. With passion came excitement," Mr. Plummer said. "I heard a lot about his leadership style. Been around a lot of different entrepreneurs over the years. They are similar in some respects --they all have a clear vision. They're all about what's next. They're not afraid to take chances."
The company's chance is electric vehicles. First the E-Merge, which are not golf cars, though they resemble them. These electric cars have wipers and turn signals and are mostly sold to people who live in gated communities throughout the South.
Coming to market in the spring are vehicles called the Anvil and the Vanish. Prototypes are on display at Mr. Tomberlin's company.
"He's an aggressive guy, but at the same time he comes across to me as a Southern gentleman. He's always been courteous with me and my family," said Joe Delmont, a contributing editor for Dealer New s, a magazine that covers the North American power sports industry.
The Tomberlin Group this year acquired the motor sports division of Schwinn. Mr. Delmont said Schwinn didn't have much of a market share in scooters, certainly not like it does in bicycles, "but the brand name is significant to have. I think that's going to give him some good exposure."
What Mr. Tomberlin likes about the deal is the access he gets to Schwinn's dealers, increasing the number of places to sell his products.
Mr. Plummer said the company's focus isn't on trying to grow but on trying to manage the growth that's coming.
There are nine new products in the pipeline, Mr. Plummer said. The Vanish is an electric-powered utility vehicle. It's a draw for hunters who want something quiet. Mr. Plummer said there is a second version of the street-legal Anvil on the drawing board.
In addition to the company's operations center in Augusta, it has one in San Diego and is looking to set up a new facility in Texas.
"It is a lot more difficult to grow in a planned way than to double growth. It is easy, just set up more dealers and say yes to more people," he said. "You can get way ahead of yourself."
Jeff Annis, the owner of Advanced Services for Pest Control, has known Mr. Tomberlin since the early 1980s. Mr. Tomberlin bought Mr. Annis' mother's pest control business and ran Annis Pest Control until it was sold to Waste Management.
When Mr. Tomberlin went to other ventures, Mr. Annis started a pest control company of his own. He said a lot of the business principles he uses today he learned while working for Mr. Tomberlin.
"He predicates what he does on the principles of doing the right thing, doing the honest thing. He prides himself the most with the concept that you can be a good person and be a good businessperson at the same time," Mr. Annis said.
Mr. Annis said Mr. Tomberlin is a fast learner who endears himself to people.
"He is a smart guy. What he does differently than business people that I know, Mike knows what is the important priority of the minute, hour, day. He is careful about where he goes and what he does with his time," Mr. Annis said. "He knows what to measure, when to measure and how to measure what's going on with his businesses."
"Mike's one of the few people that walks the talk," Mr. Plummer said. "A lot of corporate executives will read from the books about quality and about values, but Mike really talks about it and teaches it. He teaches it in his weekly staff meetings."
Testing insures quality
The company has a test facility two hours south of Augusta in Baxley, Ga.
"Everything goes down there," Mr. Plummer said.
He said Mr. Tomberlin has a significant background in product development.
"He is keen on making sure the vehicle lives up to the expectations of the customer," Mr. Plummer said.
Mr. Tomberlin's need for speed extends to powerboat racing . He won a National Outboard Association points championship in 1987 in Formula II boats.
"He's all about speed. And he likes to push things to the limit," Mr. Plummer said.
In the office, Mr. Tomberlin is a calm and collected person.
"When you see him on the track or in the woods, he is wide open. It's go, go, go. He'll lead the pack. It is 'See if you can keep up with Mike,' " Mr. Plummer said. "Whether it is an ATV or go-kart or an electric, he is quite the thrill-seeker."
Mr. Annis said his brothers got Mr. Tomberlin involved in power boats.
"My brothers, David and Lon, they traveled long distances to race motor boats. He was close to my brothers in that regard. He was really something," Mr. Annis said.
Mr. Tomberlin said he is just an enthusiast now and enjoys riding off-road vehicles.
"It's good when your hobby can also become your career," Mr. Tomberlin said. "We've enjoyed that industry significantly. We had become more involved than we had ever anticipated."
When Mr. Tomberlin offered some suggestions to Polaris about one of its ATVs in the late 1980s, the Minnesota company listened. It was the catalyst of a relationship that would draw Mr. Tomberlin into consulting and manufacturing.
"It is a great company, a great brand. I really owe them," Mr. Tomberlin said. "We no longer do manufacturing for them like we used to. We no longer have the consulting agreements. Everything we do now is under our own brand, and we've been doing that for 10 years."
Mr. Tomberlin got Polaris into the youth ATV business, all-terrain vehicles engineered for the under-16 rider. Mr. Tomberlin's company managed that segment for the off-road vehicle giant for about five years.
The company once ranked second in the nation in youth ATV sales, Mr. Tomberlin said, and first in go-kart sales.
The Tomberlin Group still sells both, but on a smaller scale.
"There used to be three or four of us doing that nationally. One of the last reports I saw, there are 150 of them" now, Mr. Tomberlin said. "We continue to do it and take care of our dealers, but most of our focus is now in electric vehicles."
Anvil puts hammer down
On the morning of June 29, Mr. Tomberlin was up early to appear on The Early Show on CBS, talking about the company's low-speed electric vehicle, the Anvil. It has been in development for the last four years.
The yellow Jeep-style vehicle can go from zero to 25 quickly. It has seat belts and a radio -- and no business being on a golf course, Mr. Tomberlin said, because it was built to be a commuter car.
He created a new company called Tomberlin Automotive Group in late 2005 to go into the electric vehicle business. What came out first was the E-Merge, which resembles a golf cart.
Mr. Tomberlin said it is more a matter of luck than intellectual ability that the company got into electric vehicles on the front end of a "green" surge that is prompting even the world's largest automakers to develop electric cars.
"But you are a small company like we are, it doesn't take a huge market to allow us a growth opportunity. So, when we got into it, it wasn't real popular, as it is today," Mr. Tomberlin said. "We thought we were entering a red ocean business environment, which has turned out to be a significant blue ocean. We're in the middle of it, if not leading it, now."
Workers at the company's Old Savannah Road operations center will soon be assembling Anvils for shipment to dealers. At the end of this month, representatives will be taking the prototype on the road in a weeklong Midwestern media blitz. The car will be shown on the West Coast at the end of September.
The ability to jump from gas-powered sports equipment to electric vehicles, "wherever the market seems to be," shows how flexible a small company can be, Mr. Delmont said,
"They don't have a lot of structure. They can change direction on a dime. They can take advantage of a new opportunity. Some other companies are very bureaucratic and they can't bring out a new model for three years. Mike could do it much quicker than that," Mr. Delmont said. "It is part of their DNA, if you will."
The company is trying to get the federal government to come out with a new classification of electric vehicles. The current one limits the vehicles' speed to 25 mph, and they cannot be taken on a road that has a speed limit that exceeds 35 mph.
Mr. Tomberlin believes they can get their existing products to do 35 mph in a 45 mph zone, called a close-in commuter electric vehicle.
There are 15 billion miles driven each year by people going no farther than seven miles from home, he said.
"That's where most of our commuting takes place. We believe the new vehicle can accommodate that readily and efficiently. The government needs to support our effort without sacrificing occupant safety," he said.
Opening up more roads to electric vehicles, he said, would have a more significant impact on gasoline consumption.
The company's chief competitor would be the GEM by Chrysler.
"The market is growing so fast, the challenge is communicating the message of availability and exposure rather than buying one product over another," Mr. Tomberlin said.
Private approach
Mr. Tomberlin is a private person. He'd rather talk about his business and his team than himself.
"He wants to put people around him and out front. He wants to be in the background," Mr. Plummer said. "It goes back to his values and beliefs. He is humble and unassuming. It is quite unique. That's why I'm here."
He said Mr. Tomberlin is a philanthropic person, but his giving is not publicly announced.
"Mike is not one to self-promote. He keeps most of those things to himself," Mr. Plummer said.
Mr. Tomberlin said the company tries to do its part in the local community and is involved in a couple of causes. He said he is a "big fan" of Augusta Christian School and that type of platform of education.
Mr. Tomberlin is the kind of guy who will call someone to thank them.
"He doesn't call you when he needs something from you. He'll call when he wants to thank you or relate something to you that he thinks you need to know," Mr. Annis said.
Although Mr. Tomberlin still classifies himself as a hunter, most of what he does these days is work, starting at 6:30 a.m.
"Trying to accomplish what we are looking to do is all-consuming and very risky," he said.
Because he has employees in so many different time zones, when his day is ending there are many who are just getting started. "In this environment, you are always connected. My last e-mails roll out about midnight."
Mr. Tomberlin was born and raised in Savannah, Ga. He attended college in Toccoa Falls.
Before he came to Augusta in 1985, he was working for Cook Industries, which was the parent company for Terminix and ServiceMaster. He worked on some acquisitions for the Southeast for Cook and then went into business for himself by buying Annis Pest Control.
"I enjoy being an entrepreneur and creating businesses," Mr. Tomberlin said. "Pest control was a vehicle ... I did that a short time. It gave me a foundation to get started."
He and his wife, Vicky, have been married 26 years and they have two children. One is in college. He said the children share in his enjoyment of power sports, but his wife does not.
"She tolerates me doing it, that's her support," he said.
Mr. Tomberlin said he doesn't see the Tomberlin Group as a generational business and would not put pressure on his children to follow in his footsteps.
If they want to follow his example they will find a passion and head off in that direction.
Reach Tim Rausch at (706) 823-3352 or timothy.rausch@augustachronicle.com.
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