Walking into Thor Konwin's office can be disorienting. His name is typically linked to high-tech medical manufacturing - and lately, state-of-the-art theater development. Yet his office is an anachronism.
The front room looks like an antique store - a showroom for restored typewriters, cash registers and adding machines of a bygone era. Like exhibits in a museum, the well-cared-for relics are presented in glass cases with accompanying plaques.
But while the overwhelming impression is that a visitor walked into the wrong suite, this is, in fact, the headquarters for Entertainment Leaders Inc., a Cathedral City company with ambitious plans to build a chain of Imax theaters featuring commercial blockbusters as well as the educational fare usually associated with the six-story movie screens.
The displays are trophies of a passionate hobby spanning two decades, Chief Executive Officer Konwin explains almost apologetically. They're also a sideline business started by Konwin and his wife Gigi in 1991. Under the company name This Olde Office, the couple sells restored business machines via the Internet.
It's not surprising to learn that Konwin has a business on the side. He has bought, sold, founded and grown businesses almost habitually over the past two decades.
When asked how many companies he's started or how many he's currently involved with, he has to stop and count. He came up with six starts and four current firms.
Small wonder his name has popped up in nearly every Who's Who volume but American Women.
Ray Maghroori calls the 54-year-old Konwin a "true entrepreneur." The dean of the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management asked Konwin to stay on the school's advisory board after Konwin left Palm Springs-based Bird Medical Technologies Inc. in 1992.
"He's a true entrepreneur who's made a major contribution to our program over the years," said Maghroori.
He credits Konwin with the university's plan to launch an extension center in Cathedral City.
It was Konwin's role in founding Palm Springs-based Bird in the first place that landed him on the school's advisory board, a panel populated by top executives of heavyweight local firms like Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. and United States Filter Corp.
The year was 1983, and Konwin was chief financial officer of Riverside-based Bear Medical Systems Inc., a firm whose parent company, Thomas Tillings Plc., was being acquired by British Tire & Rubber.
Konwin and several Bear associates saw potholes ahead: British execs opposed research and development spending, while Bear was an R&D firm specializing in medical ventilators. So Konwin and his colleagues left Bear and bought Bird Products Corp., the respiratory care division of Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Corp.
It was a transaction Konwin is particularly proud of - intellectual rights to company products made the deal financially tricky, he said. Still, the team was able to buy Bird in 1984 for $7 million. They paid off bank loans within a year, made four more acquisitions, took the firm public in 1990 and sold it in 1995 for about $75 million to Thermo Electron Corp.
Konwin says he retired from the company after taking it public because the hard, meaningful work was done.
"He needs to be challenged," said Fred Bell, Konwin's partner and chief operating officer at Entertainment Leaders.
Indeed, even during his tenures at Bear and Bird, Konwin was busy with side ventures.
Today, his other businesses include a Palm Springs commercial real estate development firm called Equilink Inc. and a Riverside medical equipment leasing company called Med One Financial Group Inc. He's CEO of both as well as Entertainment Leaders.
All of Konwin's enterprises have involved partners. His resume makes frequent use of the word "co-founded."
"Everything in life you do with partners; that's what it takes to be successful in business today. There are no more Henry Fords," he said.
His current partner, Bell, says he's glad he persuaded Konwin to emerge from semiretirement two years ago.
Konwin is a visionary and "one of the smartest people I've ever met," Bell said, adding that one of Konwin's greatest assets is financial wizardry. According to Bell, Konwin was instrumental in getting financing for the company's $7.5 million theater project in Cathedral City.
Bell, who once ran an Imax theater in San Antonio, Texas, first pitched the idea to Konwin two years ago, but the entrepreneur initially wasn't interested.
A few trips to film conventions changed his mind, Konwin said. "I challenge anybody to see a current 3-D (large-format) movie in a current 3-D theater ... and not say that's the future of film," he said.
Now a prophet of Imax supremacy, Konwin plans to open five Imax screens in Southern California in as many years.
They'll show standard documentary fare like other large screens, but they'll also show commercial films like "Jurassic Park" using modified projection equipment Bell developed during his tenure in San Antonio.
Konwin wants to build the theaters now so they can catch a wave of Imax feature films currently under development by major studios. He believes large-format 3-D features will eventually revolutionize film.
Name: Thor KonwinOriginally published in The Business Press 12/22/97
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