Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 22

Sunday, June 30, 1968 Section Page 1 Solheim just wanted to improve his golf game, but built a better putter and wound up with an year business. His Karsten Manufacturing 2201 W. Desert Cove, has grown from a hobby to full-time employment for 32 persons. At right is pinging putter that started it all and in background are grips of the 42 putters the firm builds now. Pays All He Wanted to Do Was Improve His Game, But He Putted Himself Right Off the Course By A.

V. GULLETTE Associate Business and Financial Editor Karsten Solheim of Paradise Valley is a victim of an idea that was too good. Bafepk in 1956 he was working with General Electric living in Redwood City, and playing 18-hahdicap golf. Solheim wanted to improve his golf game and picked on his putting as the place to do it. He decided eventually to make a better putter to help himself along.

An engineer, Solheim easily incorporated his ideas into a design and shortly had the putter. When he tapped a ball with it, the bronze alloy club head vibrated with a bell-like ping a readymade Ping Putter. AT THE PALO Alto Country Club, golf pro Pat Mahoney saw the putter and liked it. "You should be designing golf clubs," he told Solheim. Friends also liked the putter, and they asked to make putters for them.

"So almost before I knew it," recalled Solheim, "I had a hobby business going." Then came a couple of breaks, Solheim said: a sports magazine story July 22 Slated For Talley Bid On General Time The next round in Talley Industries' fight to merge with General Time, is now on the calendar for July 22. U.S. District Judge Inzer Wyatt paved the way last week by dismissing a suit brought in New York against Talley Industries, by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Talley, Mesa aerospace maker of propellants, mechanical equipment and computer system products, has been engaged in the proxy fight to gain control of General Time since February. GENERAL TIME first had lost two suits to prevent a General Time stockholders' meeting in Stamford, on April 22 and the voting of the Talley shares.

That meeting was adjourned to allow a count of the proxies. The SEC suit to enjoin Talley and American Investors then was filed. Talley Industries said that an unofficial tabulation of proxies showed Talley Industries won the contest by approximately 96,000 votes, adding: "This would mean, pending further developments, that the Talley slate of Continued On Page 5-F about a musical putter when Solheim applied for a patent, and a Redwood City newspaper feature when the city fathers rejected a neighbor's complaint about Solheim's hobby business. It was about this time that Solheim made a decision to which he credits the success of his putter sales. "I was advised by a friend to concentrate on the golf professional, with extra emphasis on the touring pros, he said.

"THESE ARE the men who can make or break you, because if a club pro doesn't like your product or if he feels that the retail stores are competing with him for the golfer's trade, he won't stock the putter." This type of selling was slow. "I attended every major golf tournament that was within reasonable travel- ing distance on weekends and I got to know most of the golfing pros on the tour," he said. "I'm sure some of them still remember those early days when I worked so hard to persuade them to at least try my putter." 5 At home, Mrs. Solheim handled the paper work and put up with use of her kitchen as part of the putter assembly line and of all the corners in her home for storing putters. "SHE EVEN reluctantly financed her vacation trips with the children by stopping at all the golf courses on the way.

"She was a good saleswoman, though," said Solheim. "She would come out with an order in 10 minutes where I'd have spent at least 45 or more. "I always wondered how she did it when she didn't even play golf." General Electric transferred Solheim to the Valley in 1961. He picked a house with a large garage and friendly neighbors. "We used the garage and were building about 20 putters a week, my youngest son and he said.

And he was expanding his line of putters, which now total 40. Life was good. He was even able to realize his goal of improving his golf game. Continued On Page 5-F Mrs. Solheim BACK TO WORK machine operators, many of whom were laid oft when the California Girlswear plant in Coolidge was closed, have re- turned to work at the plant which has been taken over by Levi Strauss Co.

Plant eventually is expected to produce 300 dozen Levi's daily. Levi's Output Rolls from Coolidge Plant By VINCE TAYLOR Final County Bureau COOLIDGE Levi's familiar blue jeans began moving off the production line here last week, headed for a distribution center at San Jose, Calif. First pair of the traditional Western men's apparel to be produced in the only Levi Strauss Co. plant in Arizona was presented to Coolidge Mayor Sid Liberman. "We are going to frame these," said Liberman.

ESTABLISHED i weeks ago in the Coolidge Industrial Development Corp. building, formerly occupied Samson by California Girlswear, the new plant is adding operators in a gradual buildup for the scheduled daily output of 300 dozen pair of Levi's, requiring about 7,000 yards of cotton denim per day. "A lot depends upon the job we do," explained Carl Samson, plant manager. He said 50 machine operators are busy cutting and stitching the Levi's, which have changed little since the company was established in 1850. Each pair requires 35 separate operations as it moves down the production line.

SAMSON WAS enthusiastic about capability of women in the area to adopt to his company's basic requirement of quality. "In just this short period their rate of progress is exceptionally good'," he said. The State's Business Job Bid Checker Fidelifacts Finds Real You Behind Application Sheen Campbell By DON G. CAMPBELL Business and Financial Editor Many of the employes are experienced personnel previously employed in the California Girlswear operation. "Some retraining was necessary, but their previous machine experience has been a great help," Samson said.

Within a year, the company expects to have 275 to 300 that can be used efficiently in the two downtown Coolidge buildings they will occupy. "FROM THAT POINT on, growth would depend upon acquiring more possibly in a new building," Samson reported. Marvin Caudill, president of the Pima-Coolidge Development voiced the possibility that Levi Strauss might eventually locate in the Pima- Coolidge industrial park, employing as many as 1,000. On Page 6-F INFORMATION CENTER Mountain States Telephone Co. first information cen ter in Arizona is in operation at 25 W.

Fifth Tempe. First floor serves as public of- fice, second as facility for 40 information service operators. It is one of those days in the office when it's so quiet that you can hear a pin drop. And that's exactly what's happening as Hortense Blowse (reception) keeps dropping the pin with which she is picking the lock on the office petty cash drawer. For Miss Blowse this is fairly standard office procedure; a shakedown inspection of her modest apartment would uncover a 10-year accumulation of postage stamps, typewriter ribbons, 20-pound stationery and a varied collection of costume jewelry, handbags and other feminine knickknacks stealthily lifted out of the office ladies' room over the same time period.

While the receptionist's acquisitive ways do not, necessarily, pose a major threat to the economic well-being of the company that has harbored her for so long, they have nevertheless constituted a small, but steady, drain on its resources and have created an extremely sticky morale problem among the other employes who have so long been victimized by this compulsive thief. And yet the chances are good that 10 years before a relatively uncomplicated pre-employment check would have uncovered the reason why Miss Blowse had held so many previous jobs for such short periods of time. Unfortunately, dishonesty on the part of employes is only one of the complications that enter into the hiring picture today. There's many an employer, for instance, who would settle, gratefully, for a good, conscientious thief on the payroll rather than the half-dozen incompetents that he has instead. NATIONALLY, FOR instance, it has been estimated that the cost of hiring an industrial salesman is about $6,684 in recruiting and testing costs, in training and in reduced sales until the salesman is paying his own way.

If he's as good as his new employer hopes he is, then the $6,684 is well spent; but, unfortunately, the cost is about the same even if he turns out to be lazy, a chronic absentee, an alcoholic, dishonest, emotionally unstable, criminal, unmoral, a malingerer or in such serious financial trouble that he can't concentrate on the job. Bit by bjt, according to C. V. D. Rousseau, president of the Phoenix-based Fideli- facts, business is having to learn the hard way that the solution to keeping bad apples out of the barrel is in checking each individual apple before it has a chance to come into contact with the others.

Organized in 1955, the franchised Fidelifacts now has offices in 25 major cities and field representatives in virtually every community of any significant size in the country. Constitutiong a nationwide network of more than 300 former Federal Bureau of Investigation Fidelifacts concentrates exclusively on pre-employment investigation and related matters. Rousseau, who served with the FBI from 1942 until 1947, largely in western Europe and Latin America, joined Dun and Bradstreet as manager of its South American offices in 1947, and then resigned that post in 1953 when he came to Phoenix to settle a family estate and decided to make his home here. With the family estate taken care farmland acreage in the Peoria area Rousseau organized Business Research Inc. here in 1952, acquired a Fidelifacts franchise in 1952 and, in his first year, chalked up the second highest volume of business in the nationwide chain.

He was elected president of the organization In 1958 and re-elected in 1965. The executive offices have been here since 1960. "One of the big misunderstandings about this sort of investigative work Rousseau said this past week, "is the feeling in some quarters that we're simply trying to dig up something that can be used to keep a man out of a job. What we are actually doing is simply supplying the employer with all of the facts available about an applicant so that in most cases the applicant can be put in an environment where he can be utilized profitably." AS AN EXAMPLE, Rousseau said, should an otherwise good man be denied a job because he tends to crack up under pressure, makes a lousy impression when meeting the public, or is a poor "team Not necessarily, as long as there is some way the man can be utilized so that these weaknesses aren't allowed to influence his performance: by putting him in a low-pressure job, keeping him away from the public or employing him where he works individually, instead of as part of a team. The complexity of trying to sort out the bad apples without outside investigative help is compounded by such factors as the high mobility of today's work force and the fact that most of the conventional methods of screening applicants are too superficial ti give the employer any more than a basis for making an educated guess.

Letters of recommendation, for instance, are virtually useless would ever submit an unfavorable letter?" Rousseau asks), and letters and phone calls to former employers are not much better because of the human tendency to gloss over unfavorable past performances. And interviews, while indispensable are not likely to give the employer a true picture of what the applicant is really like; he is after all, on his best behavior. This is why, Rousseau said this past week, Fidelifacts never utilizes any other investigative technique than face-to-face interviews where careful probing minimizes the possibility of misunderstanding, understatement or overstatement of the facts under study. All of which makes such an investigation sound like a pretty grinding expense, Rousseau admitted, but, in actuality, the client in Fidelifacts' case has complete control in advance over the cost of the report. This is accomplished by putting a specific price tag on each item that the client wants checked and this, of course, will depend in large measure on how sensitive the job is for which the applicant is being considered.

"In considering a young man with limited work experience, for example," Rousseau said, "it may be quite adequate to check his last employer and his high school records. For a middle-aged man being considered for a very responsible job, however, you might want to check out every one of his previous employers his neighborhood and all of his school records." Theoretically, then, a really thorough job going oil the way back to the cradle including investigations through overseas contacts could very well entail $1,000 in man-hour charges. But, Rousseau said, the average Fidelifacts report covering a man's past two employers and two or three checks on his personal life is in the $35 to $50 range. And just how common is it for these investigations to turn up some damaging information on an applicant? ON THE BASIS of the approximately 50,000 reports that Fidelifacts makes each year, Rousseau said, about 27 per cent of such investigations turn up some sort of "derogatory" information. But this is a long way from meaning that 27 per cent of the people under study didn't get the job for which they applied.

It could mean that a youthful indiscretion was uncovered; it could mean that the applicant glossed over the fact that he was fired from a job that he claimed he resigned; it could mean that he has a personal flaw in his character, but one that hasn't necessarily interfered with his job performance. All of them, however, are points that should be considered in the hiring decision even though the employer chooses to ignore them. "Contrary to a lot of the criticism" Rousseau said, "no one is in this pre- employment investigation field to gig someone for a past mistake or weakness. What we're interested in is where a definite pattern of behavior emerges. That's your danger sign." For Fidelifacts, incidentally, this "danger sign" criteria is a pigeon that came home to roost with a vengeance recently when a back-to-the cradle investigation of an applicant for a Fidelifacts franchise was found to have a long history of association with the Mafia.

All of which would tend to underline the very point that Fidelifacts tries to make: that it pays to investigate FIRST..