Article

On a hot streak

Bob Rudinsky, former owner of Bodwell Banking and inventor of the ATM Sunglasses, is blazing ahead with several new projects. Among them: a heater for ATMs in chilly climes. by Kevin Gibson, contributing writer

March 11, 2002

Bob Rudinsky recently moved to Florida after a lifetime in chilly New England. He is building a new house and is the proud father of a 15-month old son named Jordan.

Last summer, after 5 1/2 years, the 32-year-old sold his ISO, Bodwell Banking Solutions, and became a rich man. This after starting the business with an investment of about $3,000.

When you're hot, you're hot.

And Rudinsky also knows that when you're cold, you're cold. His next endeavor is marketing an item he wishes he'd had during his ISO years: the ATM Heater.

Brrrr

As a deployer of ATMs in New England, he constantly battled the cold in order to keep his machines from freezing up and becoming inoperable. Often, it was a losing battle -- not to mention a costly one.

"It would get so cold overnight that come morning the machines would be frozen," Rudinsky said. "We're talking about having heaters blowing on these things for hours -- that's how frozen they were."

Rudinsky claims he lost $100 or $200 every time his machines froze, because of down time and paying for service calls. Not to mention dealing with angry ATM users.

"When machines don't work, people get ticked off. Imagine if you're on vacation and you stick your card in and it freezes," he said. "There were a few times it was someone from the other side of the world. (A machine) grabs their card and you've got a person panicking."

But Rudinsky considers himself a problem-solver. He discovered the heaters recently and right away knew he was on to something.

According to Rudinsky, the heaters are easy to install and attach right to an ATM. "All you do is peel off double-sided tape, stick it to the wall of the safe and extend the cord. Anyone with a plug can install this thing."

Another benefit: The retail price on the ATM Heater is $349, a drop in the bucket when you consider the potential costs of thawing and repairing ATMs over and over. "As a preventive tool, I would spend $350 in a heartbeat," Rudinsky said.

Bill Lougheed, president of Entrepreneur Expansion Corp., an ISO in Ontario, Canada that manages about 250 ATMs, said he'd be interested in the ATM Heater. "We're always looking for new ideas on how to keep them warm," he said. "Right now the temperature here goes as low as 10 below. If he has something that would work, we'd be very interested."

Neil Clark, of ATM Express in Billings, Mont., said the extreme temperatures there require his company to construct a full enclosure around any ATM that is not located indoors. "With most machines built for outdoors, you've got to do a building also," he said.

But a description of Rudinsky's product piqued Clark's interest: "That's kind of a neat deal. In a lobby where (an ATM) is between a set of double doors it's still exposed to sub-zero temperatures, so it might be a good deal. I would use it. You bet."

Editor's note:An alert reader from Toronto Dominion Bank tells ATMMagazine that many exterior ATMs in Canada have heaters installed. According to Marco Di Cresce, the bank's Senior Project Officer, Self Service, electric heaters are a base feature on his bank's exterior ATMs. They are used on machines that experience ambient temperatures of 15 degrees Fahrenheit or below at the fascia of the machine.

More than meets the eye

Rudinsky insists he found this invention by accident but, given that the existing heaters have been collecting dust since being produced about a year ago (he is selling the heaters as an agent for a company called the NES Group), one has to give him credit for recognizing the potential in the idea and identifying a market for it.

The NES Group made the heaters for use at New England ATMs owned by Fleet Financial and Citizens Bank but didn't look to market them elsewhere.

It isn't the first time Rudinsky has made something from nothing.

Take as an example his ATM Sunglasses, an invention that is practically brilliant in its simplicity. Rudinsky learned that customers of one busy outdoor ATM were having trouble seeing the display on sunny days -- and avoiding using it. So he created and installed a tinted cover, making the readout clear. The cost was $150.

"Once the product went on, they were getting another thousand customers per month," he said. "They spent $150 to make $1,500 per month."

Needless to say, Rudinsky's company sold a few more of the ATM Sunglasses.

Then there is the Money Strengthener. Rudinsky hired a man named Dick Roussin -- "the greatest employee I've ever known," Rudinsky said -- to work for Bodwell, which owned, managed and serviced up to 150 ATMs. The two men made frequent service runs to fix an all-too-common problem: cash jams.

"We would do 20 service calls a day for cash jams, so we started jamming cardboard in the back of the cassettes to keep the money up," Rudinsky said. "Then Dick, in his basement, did some plastic cutouts in the shape of a dollar bill. We found a manufacturer who duplicated the design he did in his basement."

The Money Strengthener was born. No more jams. Problem solved.

Yet Rudinsky stresses that the products he's come up with are simply solutions to common problems. Necessity being the mother of invention, he said it's only natural that new products develop in this way.

"We found a problem and were able to fix it," he said. "If we fix it for one, others must have the same problem."

From rags to riches

Rudinsky was able to fix one problem, his own unemployment, in a most impressive manner.

Rudinsky, who majored in finance in college with a minor in economics, got his first "real" job as a consultant for a medical software company. He left that position to take a job with ATM manufacturer NCR. Part of his training was learning the technical side of the machines.

He quickly realized that ATM sales was a field in which he could prosper. He left NCR to work for a small ISO and, in a short time, racked up $30,000 in commissions. He got married and, upon his return from the honeymoon, was fired "because the guy didn't want to pay my commissions. I ended up getting nothing."

Well, not exactly nothing. Armed with a newfound knowledge of the ATM industry, he decided to start his own business. The name, Bodwell Banking Solutions, came from Rudinsky's address at the time on Bodwell Road.

"I believed in myself and few of the customers said, 'I'll give you a chance,'" Rudinsky recalled.

Rudinsky started out selling new and used hardware. One of his first customers, Jack O'Toole, knew how to deploy ATMs and agreed to help Bodwell expand.

"He was like a mentor to me," Rudinsky said. "He had a partnership in a bank and in '94 we started deploying ATMs. It was in my house the first year, then I started hiring employees and moved into a professional office space."

Before long, Bodwell Banking Solutions had customers across the U.S. "At the beginning, I started the business with about $3,000. Just by hustling, the first year's receipts was like $500,000 or $600,000," Rudinsky said. "God bless the NCR training program."

Rudinsky's problem-solving approach to business served him well. "I would find a customer and say, 'What's the solution you're looking for?' I didn't want to sell them a product, I wanted to sell them a solution."

To drum up business, Bodwell sent out mailers. Early efforts were often experimental and needed "200 rewrites," Rudinsky said.

"We would just try something. First thing we sent out was usually terrible. After a while, we became very good at marketing. We found things that worked and things that didn't," he said.

Moving on

After 5 1/2 years, Rudinsky decided it was time to get out of New England. He got an offer to buy Bodwell from the owner of a company called Information Sales Associates. The guy's name: Jack O'Toole, the man who had been Rudinsky's mentor in the ATM business.

"It was a big joke when I sold the company to him," Rudinsky said with a laugh. "I said, 'Geez, you got me into this game, and now ... .'"

Rudinsky said he doesn't really miss New England. He took several months off after the sale because his accountant said it wasn't in his best interest to earn any more money before the end of 1999. That's what you call a hot streak.

Irons in the fire

Not that his mind hasn't been working.

He has an idea for a one-stop shopping Web site for ATM deployers. He also is working on a how-to manual for potential ATM owners. It will include information on what constitutes a good ATM site and other bits of knowledge for newcomers, right down to drafts of all the contracts a future ATM owner might need.

"There really is nothing out there like that," he said. "I made a lot of mistakes that cost me a lot of money along the way, so I think it would be nice if there was a manual out there that would have helped me out."

In the meantime, however, the ATM Heater is his main focus. Having lived in New England all his life, he understands fully the ramifications of the weather there, and knows there is a built-in client base.

Rudinsky has purchased the domain name ATM Heater and a Web site is in the works. He reiterates that, more than selling products, what he is doing is solving problems.

"I just want to be known as a person who is very entrepreneurial," he said. "I see an opportunity, I go with it and I solve the problem. At the end of the day, for me, when I actually find a solution that works, there is some pride and satisfaction in that."

Contact Rudinksy at:ATMGI@aol.com or 561-218-8641.