Feature image: Tim Stanley and Christina Morgan
Tim Stanley bills himself as owner, founder and problem solver of TDSIT, an information technology services and office technology firm based in Lowell. Recently, he added another unofficial title to his business card, that of “acquirer,” by which he bought Business World in Little Rock, effectively doubling the size of the company.
For the 60-year-old Illinois native and former collegiate football standout, signing the check for that was only the start of his biggest adventure in business, short of launching the firm itself 28 years ago. Like all mergers, the real work started after day one and the integrations of the two ventures.
“I didn’t realize how easy my life was until I bought Business World,” he said. “It has made me sharpen my game. It’s stretched me and pulled me in directions I didn’t know I could go. It’s a hard thing to bring two companies together in two completely different markets, even though they’re within the same state.”
Stanley found the expertise he needed to pull off the merger of the two companies and their clientele close to home. He gives his daughter, company president Christina Morgan, the lion’s share of the credit for sussing out the details.
“She’s the one that really did the numbers on Business World Inc.,” he said. “I mean, she’s a financial queen; she caught things the M&A guys didn’t catch. If I were to diagram what she means to this company, I’d draw these three circles. One would be the people that get the work. Then you have people that do the work, and then you have the other circle where people get paid. Where all three of those circles intersect is where Christina sits. I’m just so proud of her.”
Stanley first came to Arkansas in 1989 with Eastman Kodak Co., which, at that time, was in the copier business and needed someone to run the Fayetteville office. After a successful run in northwest Arkansas, the company transferred him to Memphis, where he managed national accounts, including the Home Depot and Sam’s Club.
Returning to Arkansas, he caught wind that Kodak was getting out of the copier business, and in 1996, he opened TDS.
“Initially, TDS was just the initials of my name,” he said with a chuckle. “I settled on TDS Inc. because it was monogrammed on the cuff of my shirt. Nine weeks later, we figured out that stood for Total Document Solutions, and then about eight years ago, I put IT at the end of it.”
Stanley said he would have been content to remain in northwest Arkansas indefinitely had it not been for an early mentor, the late businessman Jerry Carlisle, who owned Business World. Carlisle took a run at buying Stanley’s operation and, despite being rebuffed, took a liking to the young entrepreneur anyway. Years later, Stanley found out just how much his mentor respected him.
“I wasn’t looking to expand. I wasn’t looking to grow or buy somebody,” Stanley said. “Jerry basically had been prepping me this whole time to buy him if I wanted to. He didn’t want an outsider to come in who didn’t have the same values that he did for client support.”
Unfortunately, Carlisle died of cancer during the closing stanza of negotiations, which took from Stanley not only a wealth of operational knowledge but a rich vein of connections within the business community.
“You know, in northwest Arkansas, 80 percent of the people aren’t from there. Everything’s new and shiny. Well, down in Little Rock, hell, 80 percent of the people that live here and work here are from here,” Stanley said. “My kids didn’t go to Catholic High School or Pulaski Academy, you know? I didn’t go to the University of Arkansas. I had zero Little Rock connections. Suddenly, my guy, who was going to introduce me to everybody he knew in Little Rock, was gone.”
Connecting with a former Kodak colleague, Stanley made the acquaintance of two retired bankers in Little Rock who agreed to come aboard solely to make introductions. Thanks to the local ambassadors, Stanley, who later relocated the company’s physical location to NorthShore Business Park in North Little Rock, steadily built the connections that have the Little Rock branch office humming.
“It has been the best,” he said. “It’s slow. I’m having these 15- to 20-minute individual appointments with business leaders, but once I go in there, 98 percent of the time, I’m coming out in a competitive account.”
Now, with a burgeoning reputation in central Arkansas, 42 dedicated employees, and a solid leadership team behind him led by Morgan, Stanley is thinking even more growth for his company, which, in addition to copiers, also handles managed IT, cybersecurity and cloud solutions, among other digital services.
“I think within the next two years, we’ll need to make another acquisition,” he said. “This process has really reenergized me, and with the people we have in place, I can see a lot of opportunity for the future.”
