Empire Builder

Over the Past Year, John Falavolito
Has Taken Consolidated Cellular to New Heights

by Michael Barrett

Jamie Lee Curtis he’s not, but the way John Falavolito’s been growing his Skagit-based cellular-phone empire, it’s difficult to find anyone in the fourth corner of the state with more exposure and drive.

Falavolito, a Pennsylvania-reared Italian-American, has taken his award-winning cell-phone company to new heights with the recent opening of a 22,000-square-foot headquarters building in Sedro-Woolley and new markets as far away as Spokane and Bend, Ore.

“I started the company as Consolidated Communications 13 years ago. What we’ve become is literally a supermarket (for the cell-phone industry),” he explains.

And Consolidated Cellular — the newer name reflective of the industry’s meteoric growth and change in just four years — does not discriminate among its many major cell-phone providers. “We sell them all,” Falavolito states: “VoiceStream, Verizon, AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless and others.”

According to a recent survey, Verizon Wireless leads the nation with 26.3 million subscribers, followed by Cingular Wireless with about 19 million; AT&T Wireless with 15 million in partnership with other, localized companies; Sprint PCS and affiliates with 9.2 million; Nextel with 6.2 million; Alltel, 6.0 million; and VoiceStream, 3.1 million.

“We did over $8 million in gross sales in 2000,” says Falavolito, who owns 90 percent of the company. “We are the largest provider (of cell phones and accessories) in northwestern Washington.”

Consolidated Cellular, which has grown in the past couple of years by “a little more than one new store a month,” ended 2000 with 30 outlets and nearly 90 employees. All of the stores currently are north of Lynnwood, in the Spokane area, and a few in western Oregon and Bend.

Falavolito stays clear of urban areas, he says, because they play by different rules. “They’re a package-and-carry market,” he explains. “They’re cost conscious, not quality conscious, which we are; but that’s why we’re successful.

“When we go into the area, we own the market. There are no other stores like ours. And if you do an extremely good job, you’ll be a success.”

 

Blue-collar born

John Falavolito, 53, was born to a blue-collar family in Coraopolis, Pa., a small working town up the Ohio River a few miles northwest of Pittsburgh. He’s a Navy Vietnam War veteran whose introduction to the Pacific Northwest came through The Boeing Co.

“Boeing recruited me,” he recalls. “That’s what got me here. My training was with GTE.”

He fell in love with the Skagit River because of his passion for the outdoors — particularly fishing — and soon he was working for Mount Vernon’s Dimensional Communications, in which he still owns stock.

“In those early years, it was long-distance service we were dealing with, but that flowed into wireless. It was US West Cellular, which changed to Air Touch, and AT&T and Nextel. The proliferation of wireless came all at once: VoiceStream, Sprint, GTE, US West. Now, in our markets, VoiceStream, Verizon and AT&T Wireless are the leaders.”

For Falavolito, starting a company completely devoted to the wireless industry was a slam dunk: he had the skills, the knowledge and the drive.

“I’m a builder,” he declares. “I enjoy seeing a team grow and succeed. The average age of a worker in the company is only 23. We’ve been blessed. I really enjoy getting up in the morning and coming to work and seeing the company grow like this.”

He set up small shops in Mount Vernon, Anacortes and Burlington, with the main store at 669 Sunset Park Drive in Sedro-Woolley. The little house at 2210 Riverside Drive, Mount Vernon, is still part of the chain, and Burlington now has two with the newer store next to the Exxon Station at Rio Vista and Burlington Boulevard; Anacortes’s outlet is now in a 1,200-square-foot retail space next to Starbucks Coffee at 1716 Commercial Ave. The remaining 26 shops are new.

Meanwhile, Falavolito outgrew the first Sunset address and moved across the street into the new location facing Highway 20, where the exposure was greater. So attractive was this property that he negotiated purchase of two large lots to construct his headquarters there. The massive, swept-wing-like building, so obvious as one comes into town along the highway, is evidence of Consolidated’s rapid rise to number one. The Sunset Tower Plaza, as it’s called, is located at 638 Sunset Park Drive.

“Sedro-Woolley needs that kind of building,” says Sunset co-owner and spokesperson Andy Thompson. “This is the only class-A office space in town.” He adds that a business will do well here, “since the latest car count along the highway is 30,000-40,000 a day.”

Consolidated Cellular takes up about 12,000 of the total 22,000 square feet, with the rest up for lease. So far, a sizable portion has gone to the West Side Delicatessen, the only eatery in the Sunset complex, and a smaller office opened by Bill Clay for his Cascade Limousine Service.

“We have about 8,000 square feet available, with the smallest space about 700 and the largest up to 6,000, which can be broken down,” Falavolito notes.

The Consolidated portion is state-of-the-art, with a large retail store on the ground floor, business office with computer-trafficking center upstairs, and a garret-style meeting room at the top of a spiral staircase above. The executive offices have interior windows and glass doors.

“It’s like being in a fish bowl,” Falavolito states. “We can look out at the other workers, but they can also look in at us. It’s total exposure. That’s what kind of company we are.”

 

Garnering business laurels

And exposure is reaping benefits for Consolidated Cellular. It has garnered a batch of local awards, including finalist for Best Customer Service and, two years running, Best Cell-phone Company. The firm also has received numerous awards from various phone-service companies, such as Verizon and VoiceStream, and Consolidated was chosen last May Small Business of the Year by the chamber of commerce in Sedro-Woolley.

His executive department includes Jim Olson, vice president of operations; Angel Hansen, vice president of administration; and Chuck Moffatt, controller, who recently came to the company with 40 years of management and accounting experience, including 17 as division manager for Coca-Cola in Eastern Washington.

Falavolito is himself a major award winner. Last year, he was honored with the highest award in Kiwanis International, called the George F. Hixson Fellowship Award, in recognition of his long-standing leadership with the Kiwanis Club of Mount Vernon, as well as being a two-time president and generously donating to the Kiwanis International worldwide service project of eliminating iodine deficiency disorder. In addition, he’s an active participant in the Wildcat Steelhead Club and St. Catherine Catholic Church in Concrete, where he lives. He has four children, two of them attending Eastern Washington University in Cheney.

Every week, he spends a couple of days in town, meeting with management and others on company business, and two more days out of town, helping set up stores and dealing with administrative needs. Only rarely on Fridays, he says, does he get away from the office to go fishing.

One reason may be the construction of the building in Sedro-Woolley, which has occupied much of his time recently — that and customer service.

“We did a company study not long ago and came up with the statistic that about 35 percent of our customers came to us by word of mouth. That’s a sizable figure,” Falavolito says.

Of course, advertising never hurt, right? One cannot help notice the many full-page newspaper and magazine advertisements that offer incredible deals on cellular phones — or the spots on television where Jamie Lee Curtis springs in and out of elevator shafts or away from boring dinner parties to have a conversation on her VoiceStream phone.

“Those big ads you see do help,” says Falavolito, who does plenty of advertising on his own. “They bring people to the stores.”

Getting people in is important for another reason, he continues. “Unlike some companies, we can give customers what they need. Not all cell phones are the same; if you live in Concrete, you don’t want a phone that only works four miles off Interstate 5. Providers are different, and our sales staff knows what phone works best for each application. We have well-trained wireless experts on our staff.”

This is another part of “building” so close to Falavolito’s heart — making friends of customers.

He’s built a profitable business; he’s built new friendships; he’s built a gigantic headquarters building in Sedro-Woolley; and he is continuing to build his cellular-phone business. It makes sense, then, to call John Falavolito a true “empire builder.”