Sylvan Learning Center Founder Starts School For Entrepreneurs Here

With the upper echelons of the corporate hierarchy increasingly buffeted by downsizing, many executives cast adrift are putting their expertise back to work in their own consulting practices.

Quality of life and relative freedom from big-city problems appear to be helping Spokane garner a goodly share of these highly qualified, experienced, entrepreneurial gurus.

Among newcomers here, the Krypton Institute is a standout for at least two reasons:

Founder Berry Fowler formerly was chairman of two highly successful companies - Sylvan Learning Center, and The Little Gym International.

And he wasn’t given the boot. He sold both companies.

“To truly have employment security,” observes Fowler, “you have to be the owner. Then you are the last one to leave - right?”

There are no end of displaced middle- and upper-management executives out there, says Fowler. “Everywhere you turn,” he says, “there are horror stories of a very talented executive making $100,000-plus whose company decided to hire someone new for $40,000 - and, bang, he was out on the street. If he finds a job in a year or two, it’s probably 40 percent of his old salary.”

Not surprisingly, downsized workers are among the most prolific founders of new enterprises. Indeed, Fowler reports, one in 25 adults say they are in the process of starting their own business.

“Krypton Institute,” says the founder, “is essentially a school for small-business entrepreneurs.” It offers intensive training to those just starting up, and to those already in business.

In 1979, Fowler started Sylvan Learning Centers to offer diagnostic and prescriptive instruction in basic skills to schoolchildren and adults. Sylvan has more than 550 outlets, he reports, with a market capitalization exceeding $240 million. He retired in 1987 for five years.

Then, four years ago, Fowler acquired a fledgling children’s fitness company in Kirkland, Wash., with four outlets. In three years, Fowler built Little Gym into an international chain with 130 franchised outlets, before selling and moving to Spokane to start Krypton Institute.

Fowler’s wife, Anne, is a hometown girl, the daughter of Frank and Frances Sadler of Spokane.

The institute held the first of its classes three weeks ago.

DataPro enjoys strong growth

DataPro Solutions, a Spokane company specializing in paperless automation for document storage and retrieval, reports a doubling of its business over the past two years.

According to owner Doug Johnson, the company expanded into a new industrial sector, computer output to laser disc. It added a customer service department, hired four new employees, and notched $1.6 million in product sales - all in 1995.

The company now employs 15.

DataPro Solutions traces its roots back to Data Processing Services Inc., reputedly the oldest and at one time the largest independent computer service center in the Inland Northwest. It was founded in 1959, when data processing was still done by computer punch cards, and only bigger businesses could afford their own computers.

Johnson bought the company in 1991.

Kmart rumors die hard

Rumors run rampant but Veradale Kmart manager Ed Nollmeyer says, “There has been no word that this store will close.

“It was just remodeled a couple years ago,” he notes, “and I don’t know why they’d close this store. Why would they close a profitable store?”

But he himself observed that Wal-Mart plans to build just a few blocks away. ShopKo, Target, Fred Meyer and Best already are in the same neighborhood.

“We probably are a little overstored,” concedes Nollmeyer. “But bring ‘em on - we’ll beat Wal-Mart head to head.”

Earlier this year, Kmart, which has shed hundreds of stores and thousands of employees the past couple years, divulged plans to close another 70 outlets. It’s part of an ongoing effort to slash costs and spur lagging profitability.

Kmart has three Spokane stores - two on East Sprague.

Corporate spokeswoman Teresa Fearon, at Kmart headquarters in Troy, Mich, informed me, “I have nothing that tells me that any of those stores will close. Usually, location of a Wal-Mart in our vicinity will prompt such rumors.”

As to siting a Wal-Mart practically on the doorstep of so many other discount giants, Fearon said, “It’s not by accident that they picked that spot next to a Kmart. It’s a pattern we see all across the country - we do all the research, then they come in and put a store there.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel writes a notes column each Wednesday. If you have business items of regional interest for future columns, call 459-5467 or fax 459-5482.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review