Charles Wisniewski isn”™t certain yet whether the family owned Teddy”™s Transportation System in Norwalk will stretch into the third generation, although “we do have a third generation starting to work here.” That would be Wisniewski”™s 17-year-old nephew, James Bento, a reservationist with the limousine service. “We don”™t know and he probably doesn”™t know either” whether James will be part of the business, Wisniewski said. “He”™s coming up to his second performance evaluation, and that”™ll be a question we”™ll ask ”“ ”˜Where do you see yourself? Where do you think you”™ll fit in?”™”
Wisniewski and his sister, Linda, sort of had that question asked of them when they were in their early teens ”“ Wisniewski was 16, Linda was 14 ”“ and their parents were considering buying a taxi service in Norwalk called Teddy”™s Taxi ”“ which, coincidently, was their father”™s first name, Ted. “Mom and Dad asked us if we wanted to participate in the business, and we agreed to do so,” Wisniewski said. His parents persisted, asking, “if we were ready to work nights and weekends and summer vacations,” just to make sure the teenagers knew what they were getting themselves into.
“We said, ”˜Yes,”™” Wisniewski said. They”™re still doing that.
For some time their dad had wanted to find a business to buy that his family could run. “After the Marines, he had a small trucking company for a few short years, and in between trucking gigs he started driving a limousine for a service,” Wisniewski said. That was in the early 1970s, and the elder Wisniewski watched the limousine service he worked for grow in response to the burgeoning number of corporate headquarters and businesses moving out of New York City and into Stamford.
“Stamford grew from nothing to the third largest home of Fortune 500 corporations in the world in the ”™70s and ”™80s,” Wisniewski. His dad “saw the potential and had the desire for a business, and found a limousine company for sale a mile and a half down the road already named Teddy”™s.” He bought the business, which was founded in 1932 and came with an Avis franchise and permits and licenses to operate five limousines. He paid about $50,000 for the business, mortgaging the house to do it.
One of the fastest growing
“We operated Teddy”™s for a while and bought one limousine to put one of those license plates on,” Wisniewski said. It was a 2-year-old 1976 Special Bicentennial Edition Cadillac formal limousine. “It was stretched by Cadillac and had jump seats that folded up and faced backward,” he said. “Mom answered the phone, took reservations and did the billing, and Dad drove the limousine.” Early on “I knew I had to go out and get a business degree to help run the business.”
Wisniewski graduated from Norwalk High School in 1980 and earned a bachelor”™s degree in business administration from UConn in 1984 “and immediately started with the company. I was already working during Christmas break, summer break, on conference calls with mom and dad even while I was up in Storrs,” he said. “And while I was getting the business degree, projects and studies I would do for classes were on various aspects of the company.”
Wisniewski was in the office “pretty much from the get-go,” he said, and in May 1984 started running the business right out of college. “One of the first things I did was buy a personal computer. I said we”™ve got to get one and much to my surprise, both mom and dad said I was right, that they had been thinking about it but didn”™t know what to do about it.”
By the time he joined Teddy”™s full time, the operation had a half dozen vehicles and “probably more than one driver for each, maybe 10 or 11 drivers,” he said. “Today we have 32 vehicles, mostly town cars.” That could sound like small potatoes, really, compared with some of Teddy”™s competition. Teddy”™s doesn”™t make the Limousine and Chauffeured Transportation magazine”™s Top 100 list, for example. And he”™s surrounded by competition that does, like Rudy”™s Limousine Service in Greenwich, at No. 38 on the list with 103 vehicles, 82 of them sedans. And three limousines companies in Westchester County that made the list have a total of 389 vehicles.
“Back in the neighborhood of the early ”™80s I used to count the listings in the Stamford SNET Yellow Pages,” he said. “There were probably 40 limousines companies. Last year YellowPages.com came up with 204 companies in the area surrounding my ZIP code; 400 in the White Plains Zip code. The Manhattan ZIP code probably is near 1,000.”
But Teddy”™s is doing all right, though. “We were awarded a place on Inc Magazine”™s 5,000 fastest-growing companies in America” last October, he said. “It was 4,731 or something like that.” Actually, it was 4,512, based on Teddy”™s 42.9 percent revenue growth from $2.6 million in 2003 to $3.7 million in 2005, according to the magazine.
This past November, the UConn Family Business Program named Teddy”™s a Family Business of the Year, one of four Fairfield County family businesses to receive the annual award. “And we were a finalist with Limousine Digest magazine for Operator of the Year for the large fleet category.” Wisniewski said. “I was somewhat surprised,” he said of being in the large-fleet category. “I guess there are an awful lot of mom-and-pops still in the business.”
Global reach
The bulk of Teddy”™s business consists of driving individuals to or from airports. “Half the passengers are people who typically take the train to work in the city every day, but when they have to visit a client, there”™s no easy way for them to get down to LaGuardia,” Wisniewski said. “The other half are people who work in satellite offices out in Des Moines and need to visit the headquarters in New York. We pick them up at the airport and bring them into the city or Westchester or Fairfield County.”
And during the past few years, Teddy”™s transitioned from a run-of-the-mill limousine business into “the global executive ground travel management business,” he said of the global reach of Teddy”™s over the Internet. “We can put you in a 30-passenger bus in Beijing if we have to.”
Teddy”™s has built a network of partners Wisniewski has met at trade shows that he can call upon to connect his clients to limousine service around the globe. The business can track a client on his way to Stamford from San Francisco, for example, with a GPS device tracking the limousine on its way to the airport.
But the business is still a family affair, despite its high-tech global reach. “We”™re not too big on titles around here,” said Wisniewski, who is president and chief executive officer. His sister, Linda Bento, is financial manager; mom, Shelly, is corporate secretary; and younger brother Ted is vice president of customer service.
And despite rumors of recession, “we have the ability to contract when necessary,” he said. “If the market forces a downsize, we can do that. So many limousine companies are mom-and-pop with no room for downsize. But we don”™t foresee that. We”™re really going gangbusters.”
