Another Take At Zero-Energy Buildings: Optimum Energy’s Nathan Rothman (Part 1)

Nathan Rothman is the president and CEO of Optimum Energy. He has spent the past 20 years as the president of a privately held company which structured, financed, built, and managed “green field” manufacturing plants for its clients around the world. Prior to that, Nathan founded Valiant Yacht Corporation, which was awarded the “Product of the Decade” by the pleasure boat industry. Nathan is an alumnus of Northwestern University and the Illinois Institute of Technology and is a Certified Business Energy Professional.

SM: Nathan, I would like to start with your personal story. Where are you from and what kind of environment did you grow up in?

NR: I was born and raised in the Bronx. I am a Yankees fan and am happy that they won the World Series. I went to school in Chicago at Northwestern University and the Illinois Institute of Technology. I grew up in a lower middle class family and was always entrepreneurial, even when I was a little kid. I had newspaper routes and gave dogs haircuts, and that has gone to where I am today. This is the fifth business that I have been involved in.

I ran a clothing business in the 1960s while I was in college. It was a mod clothing business selling bell-bottom jeans during the late ’60s. We designed, manufactured, and had retail stores. We were fortunate to be able to sell that to a large conglomerate in 1971. I started it in 1967.

In 1973 I started the Valiant Yacht Corporation. We built sailboats from 32 to 50 feet. We won the product of the decade award, raced all over the world, and hold numerous titles for production sailboats. I sold that company in 1983 to Chris Craft.

I went to China in 1984, right after Nixon arrived there. I started to do business in China in 1984 through 1987. We built manufacturing plants such as steel mills, iron plans, leather tanneries for Nike and Reebok in Thailand, and wire rope mills in China and Malaysia. We also did a plywood mill in Chile. We would go in as a company below the radar screen of the bigger engineering and manufacturing companies and build greenfield plants. We also handled the financing of the entire plant. We had no particular expertise in any technology, but we did have expertise in the manufacturing process.

Asia collapsed in 1997. Our company went from 640 people down to three in a 90-day period. That was an interesting experience for me. My previous experiences had been extremely successful. That is when I learned that you never know what is ahead of you in the economy. We had $22 million in U.S.-denominated debt. As the economies in Asia collapsed, their currency weakened that debt went up to $46 million in U.S.-denominated value in 30 days. That put us between a rock and a hard place.

It was a good learning experience about hedging currencies and getting ahead of potential changes. Everybody was so bullish in Asia that everybody thought the currencies would keep growing. That old saying that a shoe shine guy knows about and is telling you what to invest in the stock market that is definitely a time to not be in the market. That is what was happening in Asia. Everybody was investing. Everybody was so bullish on the opportunity that the writing was on the wall. You have to keep your ears to the ground.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Another Take At Zero-Energy Buildings: Optimum Energy’s Nathan Rothman
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