MEET DAG HASCALL
OWNER
CROC’S CASINO RESORT-JACO,
COSTA RICA
HASCALL STEEL COMPANY -GRANDVILLE,
MICHIGAN
Dag Hascall knows the steel
business inside and out. He has been living and breathing it since the tender
age of 8 when his father, Wayne Hascall, founded Hascall Steel Company.
For twenty years now, Dag Hascall
has been President and CEO of the family-owned business and he enjoys it as
much today as he did nearly 30 years ago.
“It’s all about people,” he said.
“Whoever comes through the door, we treat right. I’ve got a great staff
and
group of employees. When things are needed, they get together and split up the
responsibilities and make sure it happens.”
Wayne Hascall founded the company
in 1972, initially operating the sales office out of his home. Two years later,
the company began operating out of a leased portion of a 4,000-square-foot
facility.
Like other family members, Dag
Hascall helped fill in employment gaps in the Hascall Steel’s early years.
Growing up, he held a variety of jobs at Hascall Steel in the evenings
including packaging, driving fork trucks and operating machines.
After graduating from Forrest Hills Northern High School in
1981 he went on to the University
of Texas, became a Sigma Nu and
captain of the wrestling team, ultimately earning a bachelor’s degree in
Business/Engineering in 1985. Dag came out of college “with a lot of ideals and
visions of a perfect world.”
“I came back and tried to apply
those ideals to my job and butted heads with my father,” he jokingly recalled.
So he tried something different.
He moved to Katmandu, Nepal in 1988 , where he established a
six-man silversmith shop and spent a year running Yashah, which was in the
business of manufacturing, exporting and importing jewelry and handicrafts.
“If we saw an item we wanted to
sell we would find the village where it was made and buy it there to eliminate
the middlemen,” he said. “I think the purchasing of products has always been
one of my specialty areas.”
In 1986 Dag Hascall returned to
Hascall Steel and assumed the title of vice president of operations, with
responsibility for overseeing production scheduling and assisting in sales and
purchasing. Three years later Dag took the lead in purchasing its current
150,000-square-foot facility on Spartan Industrial Drive
in Grandville, Michigan. In 1993, he took the helm as
company president and became the owner of Hascall Steel Company in 1994.
“Our suppliers and customers
accepted me at my father’s word,” he recalled. “He built the business up to a
level and built a level of trust with people. He was always a man of his word
and people respected that. I was able to start with his reputation then build
my own on top of that.”
Computers have changed the
company’s way of doing business with customers in providing additional means of
communication via the web and e-mail, he said. But customers who prefer to do
business in person or over the phone are just as easily accommodated.
As with most other businesses, technology has
enhanced
Hascall Steel Company operations and helped add value to the goods and
services the company provides. But as Hascall noted, moving steel and loading
steel is still being handled the same way it was decades ago. Computers haven’t
changed the labor part of the equation.
“We try to make it easy for the customer.
Everybody has different needs and different ways they like to do business,”
Hascall said. “We don’t try to make everybody do it our way. We try to keep our
system very wide open.”
As for the company’s business
philosophy, honesty seems to be the best corporate policy.
“The thing I try to encourage
with my workers and all the people I come in contact with is to do what you
say; to keep your word,” Hascall remarked. “I place a lot of importance on
integrity and making sure that if I make a commitment to someone, I honor it. I
think a big part of our success is being very honest with people.”
With the obvious success of
Hascall Steel and Dag reuniting with his cousin Rory Hascall, the dream of the
Resort Hotel Casino was brought to life. Owning land in Jaco without a solid
development plan and with Rory looking for a challenge, Dag found just the
right guy who shares his character traits of integrity, commitment and
ingenuity. “I could not be happier with
the way things came together. Croc’s
Casino Resort is about making dreams come true, Dag smiled as he spoke”.
Taking the success Dag Hascall
has delivered consistently in the steel business and applying it to all of his
other ventures is a natural. In addition
to
Croc’s Casino Resort, Dag owns Steel Stud Solutions, Micro Industries,
Providence Partners, ITS Partners, Steel Man Transporting and Barren Cedar
Holdings.
The proud owner of the newest
address in Jaco, Croc’s Casino Resort, Dag Hascall is a man of the means
necessary to complete this awesome project and a man of his word that it will
be built with exacting quality standards, as expeditiously as possible.
Exceptional service with honest delivery will be the winning hand at
Croc’sCasino Resort.
