A Chat With Harvey Dean, president/CEO, Pitsco

CS: You mentioned in an earlier e-mail that maintaining a focus on your central business goal was especially difficult in the early years. Could you expound on that?
Dean: I fell in love with business in the late 1970s. I started or acquired several small business ventures. One example is this guy who visited me with a patent for a retractable vehicle step for tall, four-wheel-drive vehicles. This was before running-boards were popular. And so I started a small company and hired three or four people to manufacture these retractable vehicle steps in the back of the Pitsco building. Of course, we still did our Pitsco stuff. And there were three or four other business ventures that I entered into. Of course, the popularization of running boards sunk that little business. But I just loved the concept of making something and selling it.