Going up (fast) Speed key to increased sales of battlefield-tested shelters

Jon Prusmack demonstrates how fast a small shelter can rise from folded to up in several seconds using his patented articulating hub assembly.

The military has come a long way since those leaky, drafty, environmentally unfriendly MASH tents that were also anything but mobile as their acronym (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) implied.

One of the pioneers of today’s quick-erect shelter systems is A. Jon Prusmack, chief executive officer of DHS Technologies L.L.C. (www.drash.com) in Orangeburg. With speed being the word out in a battlefield, one model, the 1,102-square-foot J series, can go up in 15 minutes.

And the major key to the speed and ease is one of Prusmack’s inventions. It is also a key to his success.

“The difference with my product is you can pop it up with no locking device. I have a hub design called an articulating hub assembly that does that.” His competitors’ shelters require locks and hooks. And they use aluminum.

“If the commander says at night to strike the tent and you forget those hooks, they break all over the place. It doesn’t make any difference with ours, they can take it right down.”

Prusmack’s shelters use composite tubing that is made of Titanite, which is three times stronger than aluminum for the same weight.

His line of products includes five series of shelters -- with a sixth in development -- and 42 models in varying sizes. All the shelters can be connected to each other as well. The company also makes six trailer models.

There are more than 11,000 shelters and 3,500 trailers in service with the U.S. military and NATO worldwide, including Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 100 shelters were used in hurricane-hit areas of the United States in 2005.

The company, which makes about 40 trailers and 100 tents a month, has had tremendous growth since Prusmack started it in 1984. DHS Systems did $95 million last year, he said. DHS Technologies, a holding company that owns DHS Systems, Reeves EMS L.L.C., Southeast and MilSys Ltd. UK, did about $110 million.

In five years, “we’ll be at $500 million” through organic growth and acquisitions.

He wanted to be a general and in order to do that he had to go through the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He had the grades and got an appointment to the academy, reporting in the summer of 1962. But it would not last. Resentment by upperclassmen over his A grade average and being a member of the football and wrestling teams led him to fighting back, which resulted in a high number of demerits.

A good artist, Prusmack got involved with designing logos for mugs and ashtrays for the 22nd Company, as well as other companies. He also started selling hot dogs from space he rented from a custodian. It was so successful that he bought a car and got an off-campus apartment, both against school regulations. Things went well until he was ratted out by a classmate. One day Prusmack went to check on his car that he stored at a gas station. The Shore Patrol and a Marine Corps major were there waiting. The commandant of the midshipmen wanted to know who was involved in the hot-dog business. This plus a previous incident in which a lieutenant commander upbraided him for having a scrape on the visor of his hat, soured his view of staying with the academy.

He was given two options: resign and be out in 24 hours or stay and the officer would submit his name to the secretary of the Navy for dismissal which might take six months. He called his father who was a professor at New York University. His father asked if he was set on being a career naval officer. Prusmack said he wasn’t sure. His father suggested he leave the academy. He did and resumed his studies at NYU.

In his spare time he worked for his father who had a small graphic-design business that primarily did annual reports. He graduated in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in math and economics and a minor in art. He then attended The Art Students League and continued working for his father.

In 1967, his father was going to teach at the University of Hawaii and told his son, here’s the key, there’s a $5,000 loan, pay it off and the business is yours. It was Prusmack and two other people.

He changed the company’s name to Applied Visual Communications and moved from the Wall Street area to near City Hall in 1968. The first person he hired was a “beautiful blond girl with an enormous amount of talent.” Her name was Patti and today she’s his wife and chief administrative officer of the company.

He grew the business and added partners. Along the way he developed a passion for rugby and became an avid player. He also was a private pilot. His off-work hobbies worried his two partners, fearing he would end up dead. In 1978, they bought him out. As far as his ex-partners’ fears, he injured his neck such that it stopped him from further play. He did coach until l984. He then took 10 years off and came back as a referee from 1994 to 2004.

He returned to graphic arts, setting up an office at 635 Madison Ave. using the revenue he made from selling the partnership. He came up with an idea for a publication called Made in USA that would promote U.S. exports. He presented his business plan to Dow Jones International and McGraw-Hill. Both declined.

Dow Jones called him one day to say it had a deal for him. “We have the rights to sell all the advertising space in the 1980 Moscow Olympic program. But there’s a conflict. We can’t do it. Would you like to take over?” Prusmack agreed.

“I sold in the United States, all of the advertising for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Coca-Cola, AT&T, all these companies. The rates were $35,000 to $40,000 a page and I got 15 percent. I sold it, I invoiced it, I got paid before (President) Jimmy Carter pulled us out.”

He received about $50,000 to $60,000, “a lot of money at the time.”

After taking a course at the World Trade Institute, he looked around and tried to determine what to export. He read an article on the large number of hospitals Saudi Arabia was building and they were looking for supplies. He knew the marketing director of Nice-Pak Products, which was in Yonkers at the time. He asked to be their exclusive distributor for the Middle East. He got the rights to sell PDIs, professional disposable medical products.

He then obtained from the U.S. Department of Commerce a list of all the importers and medical distributors they had on record for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Oman.

“I was operating out of my apartment on East 82 Street … one side of the bedroom had my art table the other side an office with a typewriter. No faxes or e-mail at the time; no computers. The only thing you had for international business was a telephone, the U.S. mail or a Telex.”

He crafted a direct-mail piece with a couple of samples and some literature and each day would mail three or four pieces to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. He invited them to be an exclusive distributor for Nice-Pak products. He subscribed to an answering service that would pick up calls at 9 a.m. on Mondays and close at 5 p.m. on Fridays. Six months passed, nothing.

One Saturday morning the apartment phone rang and Prusmack answered. The caller identified himself as being with the Saudi Export Co. He was interested in becoming an exclusive distributor.

“He asked what would it take. I figured I had to make 50,000 bucks in order to survive. So I told him he had to buy a stocking order of $160,000, including freight. The cost of goods was $100,000, freight was $10,000 and I would make $50,000.”

Financial formalities established, Prusmack received three weeks later a letter of credit for $160,000 at Chase Manhattan Bank. Nice-Pak had never exported, so Prusmack had to make the executives understand they would not get paid until the products were on the ship.

They agreed. “We put it on the boat, they got the money and they said ‘Ooh, this is pretty good.’”

More orders came. At the end of 1981, Prusmack visited hospitals in Saudi Arabia and saw how clumsily surgical packages were put together. When he returned to the U.S., he learned the marketing director at Nice-Pak was leaving for Sterile Design, which coincidentally made surgical packs. Prusmack called and requested custom-label packs made for export. He set up a company called Sterile Tray Systems. In the meantime, he moved the business into an office at 1726 Broadway -- U.S. Export and A.J. Prusmack Design; two operations.

His big customer was the national guard, also known as the Praetorian Guard. In Saudi Arabia, Prusmack said, there are three armies -- the national guard protects the kings and family, the ministry of defense is responsible for the borders and the ministry of the interior is responsible for internal threats.

“The national guard has the best hospitals around the country, best equipped. Sheik was asked to put a field hospital together and he didn’t know how to do that. So he asked me.”

Who knows more about a field hospital than anybody? The Army. Figuring he’d start at the top, Prusmack picked up the phone and called the surgeon general of the Army. He got passed down to a department known as DEPMEDS (Deployable Medical Systems), where he talked with Bud Balderson, who was involved in medical logistics and field hospitals.

He learned during a visit with Balderson that mobile field hospitals are not mobile. Combat Army Support Hospital uses a tent that’s too labor intensive and too bulky to put up; nurses and doctors can’t do it. You need engineering support. “If you can come up with a quick-erect tent system, that would be a winner,” Balderson told him.

“Well, I don’t know the foggiest thing about that. So I go back and talk to Patti and I say keep your eyes open.”

She asks him to take a look at a collapsible frame used at trade shows.

“If I change this and change that I can make this into a shelter. First thing I did was build a little model. And it worked. Then I go back to find who made the frame and I contact the manufacturer down in Maryland.”

He worked on his new concept for two years. By 1986, two are built.

He met Dr. Leon Starr, medical director at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and told him of his shelter invention. Starr afforded him the use of a section of a hangar at the airport. The frames were made in Maryland and the covering in Massachusetts. The items were sent to the hangar where he and his wife assembled the shelters after work.

In 1988 Prusmack leased a little building in Tappan and created a company called Deployable Hospital Systems, which is focused on providing quick-erect tents and structures for the military medical community.

One of the first opportunities for Prusmack to demonstrate his equipment was for the 44th Medical Brigade at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the late 1980s. He figured since it was going to be hot down South, he designed a trailer with a generator and an air-conditioning unit. Then he thought why not come up with a trailer with a tent, generator and air conditioning; all in one package. “This idea hit a sweet spot. Everyone was looking for a package like this.” And so he got into the trailer business.

The first sale he had with the trailer was to the U.S. Navy SEALS, which had requested a field trial in Honduras. Two months later he heard back and the SEALS wanted four trailers.

The first ones were manufactured at Ship and Shore Power Systems in Yonkers and assembled in Tappan. Two other manufacturers built the chassis and AC.

“In 1991, I didn’t have any money left, I had to lay people off, except the export people.” He said it was tough having to lay off the 12 people who worked for him.

“I went to Patti and said we have two choices: if we close the business and default on the lease all we have left is an idea. If we gamble everything and keep the business operating even though we don’t have anybody here, we still have capability. We chose capability.”

They sold land they owned in Vermont, South Hampton and a condominium in Sun Valley, Idaho.

They went eight months before orders started to trickle in. He was able to bring back some workers.

“In 1994, we hit a million dollars in sales. In 1995, we hit $2 million; in ‘96 $4 million. Then 6 million, then 8 (million) then 16 million then up to $40 million and then by 2004 we were up to $68 million.”

In 1996, he changed the name of the company from Deployable Hospital Systems to DHS Systems.

At that time a private equity firm, the Carlyle Group, bought 30 percent. Prusmack then formed a holding company called DHS Technologies. “Then we started to look at acquisitions.”

In 2003, he bought Ridge Manufacturing in Huntsville, Ala., a metal fabricator, which was renamed Southeast. The company makes all the chassis for the trailers. “It’s the largest CARC-painting (chemical agent resistance coating) facility in the Southeast. It has about 50 people, with another 20 working on a new product called DC2E, deployable command and control equipment. In 2005, Prusmack acquired Reeves EMS L.L.C., a Maryland-based company that was a customer to which shelters were sold for decontamination. “Then we acquired a British company MILSYS, in order to solidify our NATO market.”

The Orangeburg facility now employs 220 people. Another 100 are at a Huntsville facility that serves as a technical support and business development center.

Prusmack recently bought a 130,000-square-foot building in Huntsville, where all trailer manufacturing will eventually be done.

His engineering staff is working the kinks out of his latest product: a 225-square-foot RTV camper that includes a kitchen, two-burner stove, generator, refrigerator, storage, 26-gallon water tank, canopy, passageway and eating area.

As for his philosophy, he says, “Life is not good. Life is not bad. Life is.”