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WEEKLY FOCUS: ENTREPRENEURSHIP, Page 12 VOL. 40, NO. 18
MAY 6 - 12, 2019
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Notable Women in Entrepreneurship Pages 18-23
Jack Staph, Cleveland Marathon Page 27
CLEVELAND BUSINESS
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NEW KID IN TOWN
FINANCE
Equity Trust Co. focuses on growth New CEO says IRA market is trending up By Jeremy Nobile jnobile@crain.com @JeremyNobile
Julian Franzen, general manager of the Menards store in Brooklyn, stands on a mezzanine in its lighting center. (Stan Bullard photos)
Massive Brooklyn store is latest addition to Menards’ regional stable By Stan Bullard sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltywriter
Julian Franzen, general manager of the new Menards Mega Store in Brooklyn — which the company calls its Cleveland store — said he loves giving tours to people who have never before seen a Menards. “People are surprised at what we have, such as food and an automotive section,” Franzen said. Food, indeed. There is a 12-aisle food, health and beauty section, which includes a display of nutrition supplements and vitamins that a
pharmacist might envy. Fresh bread, frozen shrimp and a huge rack loaded with laundry detergent are also there. Menards has been selling food since 2007, so it’s not a late-inning addition to the do-it-yourselfer haven at a time when a variety of retailers are adding food to their offerings in the face of online competition. “We see it as convenience for our customers,” Franzen said. Inside the hulking, 240,000-squarefoot store at 7700 Brookpark Road there’s breadth and depth of supplies for the most hard-callused contractor or do-it-yourselfer. SEE MENARDS, PAGE 8
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A shopping visit at Menards may mean a customer can pick up, from left, soup or frozen shrimp, as well as new faucets or kitchen cabinets.
Before joining Boston’s State Street Corp. through an acquisition, George Sullivan helped grow Investors Financial Services Corp. between 1993 and 2007 from $53 billion in total assets under advisement (AUA) to $2.2 trillion. That asset base, and the firm’s work in accounting for the mutual fund industry, are what Sullivan spurred State Street to purchase it in a $4.5 billion deal 12 years ago. Sullivan stayed at State Street, where he was running its alternative investments solution business for the firm of some $30 trillion in AUA, until March. That’s when he was recruited as CEO for Westlake self-directed IRA provider Equity Trust Co., a firm of $25 billion in AUA, where he wants to make an impact similar to that achieved with Investors Financial years ago. “We were able to take something that was relatively small in the beginning and turned it into a pretty significant medium-sized company when we sold it in 2007,” Sullivan said. “The conclusion I came to is I would really like to do that again and from the CEO seat.” The Desich family, which owns the firm — whose executive vice chairman is Jeff Desich — chose Sullivan to fill the position last held by Matthew Wilson, who served as CEO from October 2015 to April 2018, when he joined E-Trade Financial Corp. Part of the draw for Sullivan was the self-directed IRA space itself, which he said has “huge potential.” SEE EQUITY, PAGE 25
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