At a recent conference for family business owners and members, keynote speaker Leo Vercollone, second generation president of VERC Enterprises, told his audience to “celebrate failure.” His point was that if you don’t try, you don’t achieve – but not every attempt is a surefire success, and that’s ok. Failure is a learning experience.
But it’s certainly a fine line to walk, and to walk well. Developing new products and services and bringing them to market requires a tremendous investment in resources. If it hits big – or these days, particularly in publishing, manages to hold its own – it was all worth it, of course. If it fails, though, asking employees to make repeated attempts to find the sweet spot can be demoralizing and exhausting.
Even chasing the trends can backfire. There’s always something new in homebuilding and commercial development and redevelopment. The home theaters that were going to be the next big thing in luxury homes haven’t taken off – what’s the point of a specially designed screening room when commercially available televisions are already large enough to take over half your wall? So-called “micro-apartments” may take off in dense urban areas, if well-positioned in the market – at least until the proposed tenants discover that they are basically living in boxes.
In commercial developments, the next big thing seems to be “decommissioning” leasable space to create amenities like WiFi lounges, game rooms and outdoor amenities. Outdoor amenities, including fire pits and bocce courts, for a region of the country that has – at best – five months of enjoyable outdoor temperatures, are also taking off. In both suburban and urban areas, developers are responding to market demands to create open, flexible work spaces – though whether those actually increase worker productivity and satisfaction has yet to be determined. On the other hand, the “live-work-play” concept, when well-positioned and executed, may indeed be the future of office park developments.
Exploring new territory has certainly paid off for the lenders featured in this issue of The Commercial Record. The Fast 50, beginning on page 22, is our annual ranking of the 50 fastest-growing lenders in Connecticut, by percentage, in loan volume and number of loans in the first half of the year. By launching new products, aggressively expanding their market share and taking new risks, these banks, credit unions and mortgage companies are hitting their sweet spots.
Upping their commercial lending game has paid off substantially for Newtown Savings Bank, which increased its number of loans by 500 percent and volume by 1448 percent, earning it the sixth place spot. But it’s not just the number of loans, it’s also the value; Webster Bank went from zero commercial loans to one – one worth $5.4 million, earning it the top spot on the list.
Congratulations to all of the Fast 50 lenders for their successes. It takes guts and grit, vision and determination, faith and follow-up to get to the top, and they have achieved it. We look forward to their appearance on the 2015 list.
Cassidy Murphy is editorial director of The Warren Group, publisher of The Commercial Record. She may be reached at cmurphy@thewarrengroup.com.
