Dallas City Wire

It was on the Virgin Islands at Richard Branson’s Necker Island five-day conference that the idea came to Travis Hollman, CEO of Hollman Lockers, a leading manufacturer of team sports, fitness and workspace lockers.

“Why build lockers when you can come to work and do something even greater than that,” said Hollman who attends Branson’s entrepreneur’s conference every year. “I wanted to make my business a sustainable company,” he told the Dallas City Wire.

The consensus among the group of entrepreneurs was that education is the start in life people need to get ahead.

“If you can get the people in your company to strive for something better, it’s going to build the character of your company,” Hollman said in an interview.

A week later back onsite at his Texas company, he noticed two older workers who had been sanding for his company all day long for 15 years. 

“I wondered what it would mean to them for their kids to go to college,” Hollman said.

The father of two contacted the president of the local community college to inquire how such a program might work for his 220 plant employees. Turns out, it cost $150,000 year.

“People are getting their GEDs and they come to my office crying,” Hollman said. “To them it’s a big deal. I have 12 students in nursing school who are children of my employees who will never work for Hollman but they will be middle class.”

In addition to funding the education of 120 people, Hollman also refused to lay off any employees during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“We got lucky in that we received some money from the government after we made that statement,” said Hollman whose wife, Stephanie is the star of the reality TV show Real Housewives of Dallas.

As previously reported, Stephanie Hollman posted about her husband’s generous move on Instagram.

“It is important to do the right thing at a time like this instead of focusing on our profits," she wrote. "We hope other companies that are financially able to take care of their employees will follow [many small businesses are not in the position to do so and are struggling to survive at the moment]. We are all in this together." 

While Hollman sits on the executive boards of a domestic violence charity and Big Brother Big Sisters, his wife saved a girl with leukemia two years ago by donating her bone marrow in support of DKMS, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the fight against blood cancer and blood disorders.

“My wife decided that we should give lockers to a deserving high school every year so we started our charitable giving division and announced a contest where everyone writes into us, tells us their stories and we vote on them,” Hollman said.

Among the winners are schools in Houston and in Flint, Michigan.

“They don't have working toilets and no doors on the stalls at this school in Flint,” Hollman said. “My wife and I decided we had to help these people with not only doors for the bathroom stalls but also plumbing equipment.”