A Chat with John Economaki, Founder and President, Bridge City Tool Works

The first thing I did was call the bank and say, "I've got serious issues with my loan covenants. What's going to happen is that Christmas isn't going to happen here. I can tell you this." I told them I wanted a meeting with them in a week, but meanwhile I'm going to do my housekeeping here. So we laid off 85 percent of the staff, and we're a small business. We had 50 employees at the time, and before the month was out, we were down to 13, and that was a stretch. Our sales dropped 90 percent. ... Then the bank told me, don't worry about it John, we're giving everyone a 30-day grace period automatically. And I told them we were seasonal, and 30 days wouldn't do squat. That's not going to happen.