George Hechtman – Principal

817-944-2708

George has more than 35 years of senior management experience in both the professional services and consumer and business products industries. He has worked at everything from public Fortune 100 companies to small and medium-sized privately held firms. His focus has always been on important transition situations, including those involving hyper-­growth, turn­around, and restructuring.

Mr. Hechtman began his working relationship with Steve Huntley and HMS while serving as chief administrative officer (2002–2003) of Good Guys, Inc., a $750 million consumer electronics chain store. Previously, he’d served for five years as senior vice president of OfficeMax Stores, Inc., overseeing $1.5 billion in sales in the company’s Western Division, which included 334 stores, several of which were acquired during his tenure through the purchase of smaller competitors. For three years, he also served as vice president of merchandising and franchise operations at a predecessor company to OfficeMax, where he was instrumental in bringing the two companies together in a merger. Before joining OfficeMax, George was a partner at McMillan­Doolittle, an internationally recognized strategic consulting firm in the retail and consumer products industries. His duties at McMillan­Doolittle included the running of its Richmond, Virginia, office.

For the past six years, George has been the principal partner of Hechtman Venture Development (HVD), a business development firm that works with small and medium-sized companies. HVD’s unique method is to recruit subject matter experts and organize them into virtual project teams designed to meet each client’s particular needs. Its clients include a variety of service providers, original equipment manufacturers, resellers, and distributors in the cellular and consumer electronics industries. For four years prior to founding HVD, Mr. Hechtman was president and COO of a $90 million cellular telecom company with 95,000 subscribers, in which capacity he worked to achieve a merger between the company and a smaller affiliate. As the interim COO of a utility company, in 1999, George also oversaw the firm’s attempted roll up of a number of independent HVAC companies.

Mr. Hechtman has been active in several trade organizations, including the Consumer Electronics Association, the Cellular Telephone and Internet Association, the International Council of Shopping Centers, and the National Retail Federation. He was educated at U.C., Santa Cruz. A fifth-generation Californian, George has lived and worked throughout the United States.