To grow fast, he needed a lean and efficient team
When Daniel LoBue, originally from Switzerland, set out to head up an American company 20 years ago, he’d never run a business on his own. But here’s the thing about LoBue, president of Buford-based Tego Systems: He doesn’t shy away from challenges. He likes to take them head-on.
He was named an assistant vice president of a private bank in Europe, even though he had no prior banking experience, and went on to outperform his peers. He credits the biographies of US business tycoons, of which he’s read many, for teaching him how to stay driven, deal with failures and push ahead.
At Tego Systems, which manufactures and distributes flooring installation products to flooring distributors, he weathered some early storms — nearly going bankrupt twice. But like the business giants he’s studied, everyone from the Vanderbilts to Steve Jobs, he learned from his mistakes and bounced back stronger.
The company, with headquarters in Georgia, is now a leader in its industry. It nearly doubled its revenue in one year and is on track to keep soaring. LoBue saw avenues for new product growth — in this case wood moldings, at a time when wood supplies had dried up during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic — and needed to jump on the opportunity quickly. He credits Tandem Bank for making that possible.
“Most banks, if you don’t check all the regular boxes, it is very difficult to convince anybody to help you. Even at most small banks, you’re at the mercy of an underwriter who has no real understanding of a customer’s business,” LoBue says. “Typically, there’s too much red tape.”
That was not the case at Tandem, where he had a decade-long trusted relationship with a banker who substantially increased Tego’s line of credit, thereby providing the working capital necessary for the business to keep expanding.
“Tandem has a lean and efficient team across the board,” LoBue says. And for an ambitious entrepreneur like him, who’s always looking for the next opportunity for growth, that’s the only kind of banking team he wants in his corner.