#374: Barter Exchange Inc. Austin, Tex.
We're always flattered when people tell us Inc. has affected how they do business. But Matthew O'Hayer has taken it a step further. He says he'd never even heard of the bartering industry until he read about it here. He was so intrigued that he started Barter Exchange Inc., which joins the Inc. 500 in its first year of eligibility.
BEI coordinates the trading of goods and services for 4,000 companies nationally; a restaurant, for example, might serve BEI members and get paid in trade dollars, which it then uses to get menus printed or buy media time. "Bartering is just another marketing tool," says O'Hayer, who makes the bulk of his money from a 10% charge (in Uncle Sam's dollars) on transactions.
BEI, by the way, is one of its own biggest customers. BEI uses trade dollars (paid monthly by members) for Peat Marwick Main & Co. accounting, as well as for its computers, cellular phones, fax machines, printing, most of its advertising, and even part of its payroll. "We've got three employees about to get married," says O'Hayer, "and they're using trade dollars to pay for bridal dresses, tux rentals, receptions, and photographers.'
#392: Just Fish Inc. Winslow, Wash.
When Julie Just was hired to do sales for a fish-trading start-up, she had no idea that the president would grow disillusioned within the month. Or that he'd quit, and sell his 80% share and liability for the debt to her for $400. Or that she'd operate the company out of her house for the next two years, eventually hire a couple of other people, and end up marrying the other investor in the business. But life, as they say, is what happens when you're making other plans.
Says Just, whose previous jobs have included waiting tables, picking apples, and helping to run a salmon farm: "I always figured my lot in life was to be a bookkeeper. In essence, that's what I do now, but on a broader scale.'
She arranges for fishermen to ship salmon directly from Alaska to her wholesale customers in the States and abroad; sometimes she traipses down to the Puget Sound docks herself to pick out, unload, ice up, and truck off the best fresh-caught fish.
Her finest compliment? She sent a Japanese client, known for his particularly high standards, a sample of the fish that was filling his 15,000-pound order. "He told me later that he didn't even look at it. He said, 'I didn't have to -- I know I can count on you.' That's a sign that we're doing something right.'
#439 and #76: Bulldog Movers Inc./
Alpha Products Inc. Atlanta, Ga.
It's impressive enough to make the Inc. 500 with one company before your 28th birthday. But evidently that wasn't enough for Jim Scott and Richard Williams: they've done it with two.
First came the idea for strapless sun visors -- plastic wedges that clip onto the wearer's head. Scott and Williams, figuring they could make enough to pay for their third year at the University of Georgia, convinced a mold maker to do the work for no money down, and they were off.
They bought a van "in anticipation of all the visors we'd be carrying to UPS," but the mold maker got behind schedule. Necessity being the mother of invention, they ran a few ads claiming "college students will move you for less," and they were off -- again.
Within a year and a half, Bulldog Movers had 15 trucks and was the biggest intrastate moving company in Georgia. And last year, Alpha Products sold about 10 million visors.
Which company are they concentrating on now? Heeding the advice Dustin Hoffman so blithely ignored in The Graduate, Jim Scott earnestly answers: "Plastics. That's where we see our future.'
#468: E-Mu Systems Inc. Scotts Valley, Calif.
How has a small U.S. maker of electronic musical instruments survived in an industry dominated by the Yamahas and Rolands of the world? Credit, in part, Michael Jackson.
When Jackson used E-mu Systems' experimental synthesizer to sculpt his best-selling album Thriller, E-mu became the talk of the town. By the time Japanese imitations started pouring into the States, E-mu already had the credibility of gold records and movie soundtracks -- not to mention a whole new generation of products.
"Our lead time was several years," says chairman and CEO Scott Wedge. "And actually, by the time [the Japanese] got here, the exchange rate had shifted so radically that comparable synthesizers weren't any less expensive."
Despite the company's success, Wedge has been unable to tap any venture capital. "We've got 20 products we want to work on, but we can fund development of only one or 2. It's frustrating -- the biggest threat we face from the Japanese isn't their technology, it's the fear they instill in investors.'
#486: Strategic Management Group Inc.
Philadelphia, Pa.
Not enough money to make payroll? Creditors knocking on your door? No problem. Joe Gekowski will help. Gekowski and co-founders Leslie Spero and Michael Aronson, who head Strategic Management Group, aren't kind-hearted bankers. They're teachers. And the companies they bail out are created by a computer.
Who plays the training firm's game? Senior and middle managers of Fortune 500 companies, mostly. And sure enough, says Gekowski, many groups end up teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
