Dream Big

 

"Make no little plans," said the great 19th-century architect Daniel Burnham. That spirit is alive and well in today's company builders. The trick, of course, is turning a vision into flesh and blood, dollars and cents reality. The entrepreneurs on the following pages, 2003 Inc. 500 winners all, overcame myriad financial and operational obstacles to realize their business dreams.

Seeking Treasure -- in High-tech Trash

As a computer recycling pioneer, RetroBox has had no trouble attracting business. But keeping up with demand can be expensive.

At first, Stampp Corbin, the owner of Resource One, a Columbus, Ohio, computer reseller, demurred when a customer asked for help in getting rid of hundreds of unwanted computers. But on further reflection, he says, "I thought, 'Hey, this looks like a pretty good business." So he started another company offering tech disposal services to local corporations. Eight years later, RetroBox is the national leader in the burgeoning "computer asset retirement" industry with 80 employees and more than $12 million in annual sales.

RetroBox serves nearly 100 large corporations, some of which replace as many as 10,000 computers a year. Those machines are hazardous in more ways than one. Not only do they contain toxic chemicals that can leach into the ground and contaminate the soil, their disk drives can contain valuable or potentially embarrassing information. Retrobox wipes the hard drives and sells the salvageable ones to bargain-hunting companies and individuals.

The company soared. But by 1991, Corbin, a Harvard M.B.A. with a financial bent, sensed a brick wall ahead. Though it was badly needed, banks wanted nothing to do with what they saw as a used computer business. "At one point," he recalls, "I cautioned my staff that we might not make it."

Fortunately in that hour of need, RetroBox was able to secure a $600,000 "mezzanine" loan. The loan was enough to help the company over the hump and it won several big recycling contracts. Within two years, RetroBox was able to reduce its debt load and refinance the large loan with lower cost loans.

Late last year, Corbin sensed that RetroBox was at another crossroads and needed to rethink its financial strategy. "The cash management needs of a $150 million organization, growing at single-digit rates," he says, "are different than those of an early growth company growing at 50-100% per year." He is leveraging the company's financial strength to reduce interest rates on existing debt and obtain better terms from suppliers. He is also in the process of raising additional capital to beef up marketing to potential corporate customers. "The demand is out there," he says. "We just need more feet on the street."

He has received a host of proposals from private investment firms, ranging, he says, from "an all equity infusion to a mix of equity and mezzanine debt." His challenge: "determining the best financing structure to enhance the company's future growth and profitability."

Fit to Drink

Bob Perini scraped together his savings to quench his thirst for something pure and crystalline. The investment has paid off in more ways than one.

You never know where a great business idea is going to come from. For Bob Perini, a partner in a Virginia energy consulting firm, it was his kitchen faucet. "The stuff coming out of it was pretty awful," he recalls. His obsessive quest for a better alternative to the tap taught him more than he ever wanted to know about H2O -- and about building a business. His $5 million-a-year enterprise, Gaithersburg, Maryland's DrinkMore Water, is a testament to the benefits of a savvy strategy and sound financial management.

Unimpressed by local authorities' insistence that the foul-smelling water in his Washington, D.C.-area home met federal standards, Perini and his brother Jack, a chemical engineer, designed a 10-stage system designed to remove virtually every impurity. In 1993, they pooled their savings to open a retail store. But after almost three years they realized that selling water one jug at a time was getting them nowhere launched a separate delivery service. They used their own money and capital from loans and private investors -- "friends, Romans, countrymen, everybody we could think of," Perini says -- to buy trucks, stainless steel vats, and other equipment.

In 2001, DrinkMore sold $2.8 million of water. This year it will move nearly double that amount, 95% of it to more than 12,000 delivery customers. Perini acknowledges that DrinkMore could probably grow even faster. But he is reluctant to go back to private investors or take on more debt. "Our liabilities are low and our Earnings are good. We're in what you might call the cash flow part of the program," he says. "We like it like that."

On the Crest of a Craze

Bobblehead mania transformed Malcolm Alexander's young company overnight. But what does he do for an encore?

In 1999, when the San Francisco Giants baseball team asked Malcolm Alexander if his three-year-old sports promotion business could supply bobbleheads for a Willie Mays commemorative giveaway, he said "absolutely," even though he had never heard the term. Smart move. His delivery of 35,000 spring-necked statuettes to Candlestick Park six months later touched off a bout of bobblehead mania that continues to this day. In five years, Alexander Global Promotions, based in Bellevue, Wash., has distributed upward of 18 million Bobble Dobbles, its trademarked term, quadrupling annual revenues to nearly $25 million.

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