Paging industry veteran George Perrin, founder of Paging Network Inc., announced his retirement last week, effective Jan. 31-ending a 17-year reign as head of the world’s largest paging company.
Perrin established PageNet in 1981 and served as its president and chief executive officer until 1993, when he abdicated to Glen Marschel and assumed the role of chairman. He remained chairman from 1994 to August of 1997, when he again stepped down, this time in favor of John Frazee, Jr.-who replaced both Marschel and Perrin. Since then, Perrin has remained with the company as a board member.
According to Scott Baradell, PageNet director of corporate communications, Perrin was working to gradually wean the company from his influence and was waiting for the new management team to settle in before bidding his goodbyes.
“Through the past several years, I’ve expressed my intent to take an ever-decreasing role in PageNet,” Perrin said. “With strong, new management in place that has a background in telecommunications, I feel confident in taking this step now.”
“He feels like the management of the company is in good hands,” Baradell said.
Those hands belong to Frazee-president, CEO and chairman of PageNet-who heaped accolades on his departing predecessor. “Through the years, Mr. Perrin has built an unsurpassed nationwide wireless transmission network and a subscriber base of more than 10 million,” Frazee said. “The vision, talent and dedication necessary to create such an industry-leading organization is enormous. Those of us associated with the company today are committed to taking the strategic assets which he and the employees he led have created to the next level of achievement in the fast-paced and exciting wireless arena.”
And the tributes just kept pouring in.
“Perrin deserves significant credit and praise for having gotten PageNet to its industry leading position over the last 12 years,” read a Prudential Securities update on PageNet, which predicted his retirement just days before the announcement.
Perrin is the latest in a string of executives to leave PageNet recently, but for decidedly different reasons. Marschel, former president and CEO; Leigh Alexander, senior vice president of strategic planning and marketing; and Kenneth Sanders, vice president and chief financial officer, all left PageNet in an August house-cleaning action.
The upper level exodus began just after the company’s second quarter results last year, which confessed to a failed rollout of its VoiceNow voice paging service. The entire rollout seemed to symbolize all of PageNet’s problems and poor marketing was pegged with the blame.
Since then, the company has voiced its intention to concentrate more on slow growth and marketing. The strengths of all the new additions to PageNet seem to support this purpose. The latest to join the company is Jack Lewellyn, a former executive of OceanSpray with strong marketing skills, who has been appointed a board member.
“We believe Lewellyn’s addition is a step in the right direction for the company,” read Prudential’s update. He “brings a sorely needed oversight to this area of PageNet.”
Earlier, the company took on Ted Mullinix as vice president of strategic planning, replacing a portion of Alexander’s former role. These latest developments will likely not be the last for PageNet either. Frazee is expected to continue building his management team throughout the remainder of the first quarter, as the positions of chief financial officer and senior vice president for marketing have yet to be filled.
Both industry analysts and Wall Street almost universally have applauded Frazee’s personnel actions to date and, according to Baradell, PageNet employees have added their voices to the cheers.
“People are very excited about the direction the company is heading in,” he said. “Jack (Frazee) is a person people really believe in … He’s a person that inspires hope and hard work … He’s very decisive. He has ideas employees think make a lot of sense.”
In particular, Frazee has been credited with boosting the overall mood at PageNet, which could only go up after the VoiceNow failure.
“Morale at PageNet is very high right now,” Baradell said.
As for the future of VoiceNow, the company remains focused on achieving a successful launch in Chicago, scheduled for sometime in the first half of the year. The Chicago launch is critical, as PageNet said it will decide the future of VoiceNow based on its performance there.
