Word: decio
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Arthur Julius Decio, 35, of Elkhart, Ind., is a millionaire because he early recognized and exploited the billion-dollar-a-year market for low-cost mobile homes. As president of Skyline Homes, the industry's biggest producer, he is worth just over $5,000,000. Skyline's sales in the past four years have jumped 500% to $59 million, and Decio expects to race along with the fast expansion of the two population groups that buy the most mobile homes: young marrieds and retired oldsters...
...Decio started in the garage behind his childhood home in Elkhart, which is next to-and on the wrong side of-the New York Central Railroad tracks. His father, an Italian immigrant grocer, sank some savings into mobile homes in 1951, but did poorly and begged son Art to try either to rescue or liquidate the small company. Decio, then a steel salesman, put in $3,200 of his own, recruited three friends and started to work...
...Skyline would have to build a unique model and carve out a distinct market to survive. To do that, he designed a 20-ft., smaller-than-usual mobile home that had the advantage of being cheaper and more easily transportable than competing models. Once Skyline was on its feet, Decio got the idea of imitating the automakers' methods of frequent model changes and nationwide distribution. He introduced a "research and development" department to design new styles of mobile homes, started building a network of 2,300 dealers that now covers the entire U.S. He brought out four lines...
...structure that takes as much as 70% of income, it is still easier to make a million in the U.S. than anywhere else. Reasons: a rapidly changing American technology, the shift to a service economy, and the insatiable appetite for new and better ways of doing things. Says Arthur Decio, 34, president of Indiana's Skyline Homes Inc., who rode the mobile-home boom to a personal fortune of more than $5,000,000: "It's easier to get ahead than it was 15 or 40 years ago. Look at the population growth and the tremendous rise...