About SRC Holdings Corp.

Our story begins in the recession of the 1980s when SRC was a small division of International Harvester – who, for the past two years, had been laying off 1,000 employees every week. The Springfield, Missouri factory would be next on the chopping block. With no job outlooks, Jack Stack and the other managers became desperate. To save everyone’s jobs, they scraped together $100,000 and set out to buy the company.

After being rejected for a loan by over 50 financial institutions, Jack finally found a bank to grant them the loan. The final deal is still the worst loan in corporate American history – an $8,900,000 loan with $100,000 in equity.

In his quest, Jack learned the “language of business” and realized it wasn’t that difficult to understand. With an 89:1 debt-to-equity ratio with an 18% interest rate, he needed every employee to understand that meeting their loan payment was critical to their success, how to reach that goal, and that their jobs were at stake if they didn’t. The key was open-book management with the idea that if everyone was working to build a great company, they would be unstoppable.

On February 1, 1983, Springfield Remanufacturing Corp. was born with the vision to do things differently. They explained the company’s financial statements to all the employees and how they impacted those numbers. They created The Great Game of Business® to serve as a tool for teaching business metrics. Soon they had grown to one of the most successful businesses in America, and journalists from all over the world began flying to Springfield, Missouri to learn more about these incredible associates and their unique way of running a company.