'The lady upstairs' named state's Woman Entrepreneur of the Year.

|The lady upstairs' named state's Woman Entrepreneur of the Year

When Mary Faris Sawin, a widow and substitute school teacher, took over her husband's tool supply business with her three daughters in 1984, some men who worked for them snickered behind their backs, calling them, "the ladies upstairs," Sawin recalled.

Those were rough times for North Hollywood-based General Industrial Tool & Supply, because its No. 1 customer, Rockwell International Corp., was winding down work on the B-1 bomber project, which accounted for at least 75 percent of the company's business, she said.

"We were very concerned and so were the people working here," said Sawin, president and chief executive officer. "Here four women came in who didn't know the business. We had to learn the business."

Sawin learned and, in fact, learned so well that she was honored by Gov. Pete Wilson at a luncheon last week as the state's Woman Entrepreneur of the Year.

Sawin's achievements were brought to the attention of state officials in the Office of California Small Business Advocates after she was featured in the Los Angeles Business Journal special report on women-owned businesses, said Debbie Johnson, assistant to the administrator of the office.

State officials were impressed by Sawin's feat in rescuing the business from "the brink of disaster," Johnson said. "She came up with the idea of turning her business around and going in different directions."

In the mid-1980s, Sawin took a tools business that catered to the aerospace industry and restructured it, expanding inventory to attract customers like movie studios, furniture makers and other businesses. "What we did was take this company and gut it, like you gut a house," she said.

But first Sawin and her daughters, all married women in their 30s, learned the business, she said.

Sawin and daughter Kathleen Durbin, who is now the company's chief financial officer, took accounting courses at UCLA. Daughter Joan Hoppock, vice president of marketing and sales, took a machinist course at Santa Monica College, and daughter Karen Boyle, vice president of operations, brushed up on her computer skills, Sawin said.

General Industrial grossed $8.2 million last year and Sawin estimates the company will do $8 million to $10 million in revenues this year.

For small business owners struggling through aerospace industry's downsizing. Sawin has this advice: "There's business if you look for it. In the old days, you got business without even trying, now you have to work for it."

PHOTO : General Industrial's management team: Mary Sawin, president, with daughters Karen Boyle, Joan Hoppock and Kathleen Durbin