The Man Who Went From $500 To Billions
He was ranked 61st out of 400 in the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. He owns Flex N-Gate, Jacksonville Jaguars, Fulham F.C, he is an investor in AEW and the Black News Channel.
Shahid Rafiq Khan was born in Lahore, Pakistan. Young Khan would build and sell radios, he would also lend his comic books to friends for a small fee. When Khan was old enough to attend university he started applying to universities in a land where he had heard that the streets were paved with gold, America. After applying to various institutes, Khan accepted the first acceptance letter from the University of Illinois. At 16, his father gave him $500 and told him to go to the US and get his education. So at 16 with a dream in his eyes, Khan moved to the United States. This was the 1960s, Illinois was hit with the worst storm in history. It took Khan 10–18 days to arrive in Illinois and when he did, he was welcomed with 2 feet of snow. Something Khan has never experienced before. Upon arrival, he went to a hotel asking Khan for $9 per night, Khan knowing that he only had $500 could not afford to stay, and the staff told him to try YMCA. With a torn shoe Khan went to YMCA, YMCA wanted $2 a night and Khan was happy to stay there. The next day Khan started to look for a job and found one as a dish washer paying him $1.20 per hour.
Khan wanted to meet people so he joined a fraternity, with the fraternity Khan went to football games, learned about the sport that he knew nothing about. Most of the guys at the fraternity had a convertible, which meant, Khan would need another job.
Khan walked on the streets knocking on doors with a resume, he succeeded in finding one at a small manufacturing company called Flex-N-Gate.
Khan at Flex-N-Gate would design, manufactured and assembled parts. As Khan was working he realized that the bumpers were taking a long time to assemble because they were heavy, expensive and had many components. He started visiting the library to find a better solution. When he finally graduated in 1971, he went back to Flex-N-Gate and manufactured a bumper by himself. His design only had one piece; it was lighter and much more cost-effective. Flex-N-Gate was benefiting in two ways, they were charging their customers more for the new design and they were spending less to build the bumper.
With the new design on the assembly line two years, Flex-N-Gate was making more money annually than they ever had. The company was sold to a buyer and Kahn went on to work for the buyer, but he soon realized that under the new ownership, Flex-N-Gate wanted to do things differently, so Kahn left.
With a loan from the Small Business Administration, and his own savings of $16,000, Khan started a company- Bumper Works. He developed a bumper that has since become an industry standard. Working at his new business, he heard that Flex-N-Gate was for sale, and bought the company in 1980 for $800,000. With the purchase, Khan had an already established brand and the manpower he needed to go big.
At the time, Khan visited GM to be their supplier, when Khan met one of the chief engineers at GM. He told Khan that his job was in danger, because he had missed a weekly target, if Khan can provide a better solution and make their bumper even lighter, he can save his job and provide Khan with a purchase order. But as Khan presented the new design in hopes of getting a purchase order GM told Khan that they have good and bad news. The good news was that the parts worked, and the bad news is that because GM was going across the board, they do not have a place for a small size company. Khan did not get the purchase order he was looking for.
For Khan, GM’s purchase order could have been the breakthrough, but for now, he had to come up with another business plan to save his company. He took some graduating students from UI and told them that they would get a free trip to Japan and back, all they have to do was to translate for him. Because Japanese companies were under the mindset that if a technology is cheaper they were willing to give it a shot. Khan successfully got a purchase order from Zuzu and Mitsubishi.
Flex-N-Gate started to make transactions with Japanese manufacturers, the company grew. Flex-N-Gate became the only supplier for the entire Toyota line in the United States. But then the year 2008 was approaching, khan knew that the automotive industry was in trouble and that in order to survive, cash had to be conserved. At the time they had 17,000 employees globally. He had two options, either to file for bankruptcy or let people go. With the hard decision, the company started to cut back but provided health insurance, out of 20 automotive part providers, 2 were left after the recession. One of them was Flex-N-Gate.
Khan now wanted to own of a sports team, a sport that he had fallen in love with when he came to America- Football. However, at the last minute, Stan Kroenke, who owned 40 percent of the Rams, exercised his right to match Khan’s offer and bought the rest of the team himself. It was disappointing for Khan, but Khan determines to own one, did not, give up. He remembered meeting Wayne Weaver and approached him. Khan and Wayne sat down and finalized a deal on a napkin, they both felt that in order to maintain a relationship and to have a successful transaction they will have to avoid adding or deducting things. And on November 2011, Khan bought the Jacksonville Jaguars for $760 million. To improve fan presence Khan took Jaguars international, which brought in more sponsors.
In July 2013, Khan entered negotiations with Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed to buy London Soccer Club, Fulham. The deal was finalized in the same year and estimates are that it costed Khan anywhere from £150–200 million. In 2019 his son approached him with an Idea, the AEW. With his son, Khan invested in All Elite Wrestling. In 2020 with the former Oklahoma quarterback and now a politician-Julius C Watts Jr., Khan launched the Black News Channel, a channel for minorities, showing their culture and values.
Today Flex-N-Gate have their parts on one-third of all the cars and trucks sold in America. Their sales revenue touches 3.5 billion. the company now has 64 plants worldwide and over 24,000 employees. The story of Shahid Khan is an inspiring one, it teaches the power of perseverance.
