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November 2008 Barbara Lynch would never bake a tough cookie, but she is one, for sure. Lynch, 44, bailed on high school and was a runner for local bookies before nestling under the wing of celebrity chef Todd English. A James Beard Award -- winner, she has built Barbara Lynch Gruppo (formerly No. 9 Group) into a more than $10 million amalgam of six high-concept restaurants and food businesses. She expects revenue to double with three new ventures: a '50s-style cocktail bar, a reimagined lunch counter, and the hautest haute cuisine restaurant to touch down in Boston. "Not bad for a kid from the projects," says Lynch. |
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October 2008 Everyone knows we're moving toward a paperless world, right? Well, not so fast. One of the oldest names in papermaking, Crane & Co., best known for its high-end stationery, is literally printing money. The company, based in Dalton, Massachusetts, and run by the same family since its founding in 1801, has a lucrative contract to manufacture currency paper for the U.S. Treasury and print money for countries such as Sweden, Saudi Arabia, and India. And by adapting papermaking technology to create a range of new products, it has moved into markets as diverse as energy, environmental services, and office furnishings. CEO Charles Kittredge talks about Crane's 200 years of winning bets and his strategy for the next hundred. |
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August 2008 In 1988, three young guys in New York City -- an acting student, a magazine researcher, and a software producer -- were so happy to see the end of the 1980s, they held a funeral for the decade. They painted their faces blue and led a procession through Central Park; they burned a Rambo doll and a piece of the Berlin Wall. Although they couldn't have known it, Chris Wink, Phil Stanton, and Matt Goldman had launched what would grow into an entertainment juggernaut. Since opening in New York City's Astor Place Theatre in 1991, the Blue Man Group has played in 12 cities across the globe. More than 17 million people have seen its shows, and today, tickets go for $43 to $132. Goldman, the onetime computer geek turned impresario, tells the Blue Man Group's unlikely story. |
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July 2008 Phil Hanes started life as a pampered rich kid. But he quickly learned how to win people's trust and get big things done. He worked his way up the family business, Hanes Dye and Finishing, oversaw its desegregation push, and became CEO in 1964. The company was sold in 1993 for $65 million. The charismatic Hanes has long been a serious champion of the arts, urban renewal, and land conservation. In 2006, at age 80, he wrote his first book, How to Get Anyone to Do Anything. Now, with his 5,000-name-strong PalmPilot at the ready, Hanes still has plenty of persuading left in him. "I just love people," he says. |
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May 2008 When Bob Williamson left home at 17, he lived on the streets and did time for heroin possession. But he pulled himself together, got a job, and eventually began his own business as a manufacturer of art supplies. In 1993, Williamson started a company to develop software for cafeterias. Today Horizon Software International supplies more than 15,000 schools, colleges, and universities and has sales of $26 million. Meal payments are made online, and parents can monitor what their kids eat at school. Horizon, based in Atlanta, also sells to hospitals, retirement communities, big corporations, and, soon, U.S. military bases around the globe -- "wherever," he says, "large numbers of people need to be fed." |
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April 2008 Gordon "Butch" Stewart's voice is deep and slow, and he speaks with melodic phrasing, suggesting the sun-soaked climate of his native Jamaica, where he started Sandals Resorts, in 1981. Today, Stewart owns and runs 20 resorts under the Sandals umbrella, including the original Sandals all-inclusive, couples-only resorts, the Beaches resorts for families, and four boutique hotels. Stewart serves as company chairman, while his son Adam, 27, is now the CEO. The resorts are sprawling, with flourishes like multicolored pagodas, swim-up bars, and poolside Greek temples. One resort boasts 100 separate swimming pools. From its small beginnings, Sandals, based in Montego Bay, has grown into a multibillion-dollar company. |
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March 2008 New York City has always been a magnet for oversize ambitions and big dreams. When Laurel Touby showed up here, in 1985, her fantasy was to become a successful writer. She imagined spending her days in a big loft, hobnobbing with artists and the urban literati. In reality, breaking into journalism was a difficult and lonely affair. So Touby started throwing parties to cheer herself up and meet other writers. Good move, because she wound up building her parties into mediabistro.com, a hot job-posting and community site favored by journalists and media executives. |
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February 2008 No business, no problems. No problems, no business. Problems are opportunities for solutions." With that mantra, George A. Naddaff punctuates virtually every one of his stories. And there are so many stories. Now 77, Naddaff has run, launched, or taken national more than half a dozen companies. He's best known for Boston Chicken, whose shares soared 143 percent in a record-breaking IPO in 1993, the year after he sold it. (The company filed Chapter 11 in 1998 and changed hands twice more.) Naddaff's other ventures have included two day care companies, a business brokerage franchise, and, his latest baby, UFood Grill, a restaurant chain for the health conscious. "Cut my veins and salesmanship pops out," says Naddaff. "I love to sell what I believe in." |
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January 2008 Jack Ma hit pay dirt when his Chinese business-to-business start-up, Alibaba.com, went public, in November. The offering raised more than $1.5 billion and gave the company a valuation of $26 billion. Ma, 43, grew up during China's Cultural Revolution. He taught himself English, then caught the Internet wave as China's economy opened in the 1990s. Today, Alibaba is China's largest B2B site and a favorite among American and European companies that are buying from Chinese suppliers. The site earned $39 million on revenue of $129 million in the first half of 2007. Ma has also taken Alibaba into search, through a joint venture with Yahoo, and his Taobao online auction site has become bigger than eBay in China. |
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