Irwin Jacobs: The Eternal Opportunist

In fact, by his own admission, the past year’s setbacks and losses, along with the overall instability of the economy, have rattled Jacobs’ worldview the way few things have in his eventful career.

“Personally, I feel more vulnerable than I used to,” he says. “Not because I don’t have the confidence I’ve always had, but because I can’t predict what’s going to happen. It gives you an insecure feeling when you create budgets and have to change them two or three times a year. I’ve never done that before. You say this is the bottom, and all of a sudden you’re under the bottom. I don’t care how much money you have—if you’re in business today, you’re vulnerable.”

Though Jacobs is talking about the foundering economy, it’s difficult to believe his personal losses are not part of his unaccustomed uneasiness, because—and this is another important component of his story—his business and family life are inextricably entwined.

At the moment, two of his kids and a pair of his sons-in-law are active in Jacobs’ enterprises. His only son, Mark, is president of Watkins Inc., the 140-year-old Winona–based manufacturer of personal care and household products that Irwin Jacobs plucked out of bankruptcy in 1978 and this year will do more than $100 million in sales. A Brown University grad and sometime actor who’s had small roles in Goodfellas and other films, Mark wore lederhosen and sold souvenirs at Grain Belt when he was a teen, and says he can’t remember not being involved in his father’s businesses. Daughter Melinda’s husband, Howard Grodnick, runs Jacobs Trading, whose liquidation business, according to Irwin, is up 100 percent over last year. Another daughter, Trisha Blake, runs FLW Outdoors, which stages hugely popular televised fishing tournaments that Time magazine describes as “NASCAR on the water.” (Jacobs conceived the tourneys to help sell boats, but says the program has since become a “serious operation” in its own right, with tie-ins to Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, and other major sponsors.) Trisha’s husband, Robert Blake, is a Genmar executive.

“When we were kids,” says Melinda, an energetic local blogger and lively media presence, “we all helped out with liquidations and stuff.”

“My children are very much part of my world,” Jacobs says. “They’ve all been very successful.” He pauses and offers a rueful smile. “And here I am, running our boat business—our largest business—and laying people off. We’ve had slowdowns in the past where we’ve laid people off and then brought them back. But this is different, and it’s caused me heartache because I know I’m hurting people’s lives. My family knows it concerns me.” The recent deaths of his brother and Pohlad have deepened and extended the concern. “No question,” he says, “it’s been an emotional time.”

Jacobs is reluctant to talk about his brother’s death. He and Shelly, who was three years his junior, had once been very close but grew apart in later years—they were “two very different people,” he says. Shelly was outgoing and social, though he never married and had no children. He dabbled in show business and relished the attention that comes with running popular dining spots (Shelly’s Woodroast restaurants in the Twin Cities). Despite many friends and reportedly no small amount of financial help from his brother, Shelly’s careers eventually fizzled.

“I was closer to Carl than I was to my brother,” Jacobs says. “Carl was somebody I looked up to the way you look up to a parent.”

Jacobs and his wife called on Pohlad for the last time about two weeks before he died. “Carl was in his chair,” Jacobs says. “He was in pain. He had arthritis in his legs that was just awful. For years it was that way, but he’d never complain. That last time, my wife sat on one side of him and I sat on the other. We held his hands. I’d always kiss Carl when I saw him—when I saw him and then when I left, particularly in the last several years. I wanted him to know the affection I felt toward him. Anyway, that day he said to me, ‘Come here.’ I thought he wanted me to kiss him. But when he pulled me close, he said, ‘I got another deal for us. Right after the first of the year. We’ll do one more.’ I said, ‘Whatever you say, Carl.’

“Of course there was not another deal. He was fading fast and he knew it. He just wanted to talk that way, because it excited him. He wanted to feel some of that old excitement.”