‘We Just Kept at It’ (Editorial)

Darren and Kelly Brown, the married owners of Arkansas Air Flow, discovered that their former bookkeeper and employee, Amy Trammell, embezzled from their business over six years. (Karen E. Segrave)

Arkansas Business brings our reader stories of business failures as well as those of business successes, but earlier this month, our Mark Friedman reported on what could have been a business failure but wasn’t. And the reason why it wasn’t bears a lesson for us all.

It was the tale of Arkansas Air Flow Inc. of Sherwood, which in 2012 hired Amy Trammell. “Within about six weeks, she was embezzling company money,” Friedman wrote. “By the time her thefts were discovered six years later, they had cost the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning company more than $1.8 million.”

Darren Brown, founder of the HVAC installation and service company, had two choices. He could file for bankruptcy liquidation or fight to make the company profitable again. He and his wife, Kelly Brown, chose to fight. They called their vendors, explained the situation and started paying off their debts. “We just kept at it,” Kelly Brown said.

Trammell, who pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud last year, is in federal prison.

But Arkansas Air Flow has repaid the debts left by Trammell, Kelly Brown said, and the company’s revenue has risen 52% since it discovered the theft. The company refused to let an employee’s betrayal define it.