Entrepreneurial success followed father’s advice

MORE THAN WORDS: Emily S. Harrington, president and CEO of Qualified Resources International, has worked to carry on the entrepreneurial spirit instilled in her by her father. / PBN FILE PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
MORE THAN WORDS: Emily S. Harrington, president and CEO of Qualified Resources International, has worked to carry on the entrepreneurial spirit instilled in her by her father. / PBN FILE PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

A father’s dying words propelled Emily S. Harrington toward becoming the entrepreneur she’d always wanted to be.
Harrington, 58, the president and CEO of Cranston-based Qualified Resources International, is one of nine siblings, most of whom, like their father, Marcial Samson, have chosen to run their own businesses. A native of Manila, Harrington came to the United States at 16, but moved back and forth between Rhode Island and the Philippines, before settling in the early 1990s at Citizens Bank here.
Samson had been not only a sporting-goods manufacturer and mayor in Caloocan, a city within metro Manila, but also a prisoner in the mid-1970s under the martial law declared by former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos.
“We talked a lot” the day before he died in 1992, Harrington recalled. “He … just encouraged me to try and start a business, and [said] that he believed in me. That was very important. It was motivating. I … resigned within a week” from Citizens.
At the bank, where she was first a loan-installment credit manager and then an assistant treasurer, Harrington had noticed the use of a lot of temporary workers. She wanted to start a business that would provide short-term and permanent placement services to direct-hire, light industrial and office-support staff in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
But the launching of the first incarnation of her business, Qualified Resources Inc., was not easy.
Refused by bank after bank for a business loan, she finally secured one for $25,000 through Fleet Bank. By 1994, her husband, Timothy Harrington, who has expertise in marketing and sales, joined her in the business.
The company grew rapidly, and by 1998 was featured in Inc. magazine as one of the country’s fastest-growing firms. In 2000, the company realized $14 million in annual revenue.
By 2004, a global staffing company known as Staff Service in Tokyo approached the Harringtons and bought 80 percent of the business. Five years later, the Harringtons sold the remaining 20 percent of the company, but negotiated to retain the corporate name and, while losing the workforce, also retained ownership of the original building in Cranston.
The company became Qualified Resources International Inc., and rebuilt. Three years later, with Tim Harrington as chairman and Emily Harrington as president and CEO, the company was doing business in Bellingham, Mass., and Manila, as well as Rhode Island.
The firm earned $5 million in annual revenue in 2012, Emily Harrington said, and branched out from light industrial to place staff as engineers, accountants, bankers and salespeople, she said. She expects to exceed $5 million in revenue for 2013.
Tim Harrington says his wife’s go-getter attitude and hard work contributed to her success.
“People we bring in, many can’t keep up with her, but they try to emulate her, they look up to her, they catch on,” he said.
Mentoring, in fact, is one of Emily Harrington’s favorite ways to relate to employees. In fact, their daughter, Laura Naughton, now 27, works at the company managing recruitment, and has her mother’s strong work ethic, Emily Harrington says.
“We are very innovative in finding ways to stay in business and grow,” she said, “and we have fun with it as well.”

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