The corporation developed new and effective internal communications practices, including standardized reporting, quarterly joint management meetings with all subsidiaries, and formal budgeting and capital appropriations procedures. A corporate level senior executive, for example, now supports the subsidiaries in their continual improvement of manufacturing processes, operating efficiencies, and the quality of their final products. Nonetheless, the goal of the corporate headquarters remains to coordinate, support, and provide financing for the operations of its subsidiaries rather than to manage them.

Between 1995 and 1998, the new corporation faced a period of serious internal trial in one of its three divisions. As part of a strategy of corporate expansion that emphasized internal growth, the Truck Accessories Group, including the Leer division, had grown to comprise four manufacturing companies and a sizeable group of retail stores and wholesale distribution centers. Management undertook a costly and complicated reorganization of the $200 million division so as to focus it more properly on its separate retail and wholesale markets and to upgrade its manufacturing and marketing capabilities. While the concept of the reorganization was sound, its execution was not, with the result that some of the components of the Truck Accessories Group ceased to operate profitably. Consequently, the division and the company suffered financially between 1995 and 1998. Nearly all of management's attention in those years was devoted to correcting the Truck Accessories Group's shortcomings rather than building value in the other more profitable divisions.