I met Stakel only once, and I know little about him or his business. But I remember his enthusiasm, so I can't help sharing some of it. I keep tabs on his company -- now called Baker's Choice Products Inc. -- at the supermarket and would never buy any other brand. Sometimes my loyalty even overcomes my judgment: when I saw one of the company's sidelines, fluted paper hot-dog trays, on sale a few months ago, I bought some -- even though I never buy hot dogs.
Now I'm no lunatic. I don't really care about muffin cups and I certainly don't care about hot-dog trays. What interests me is people; muffin cups only matter because I saw how much they mattered to someone else. And that is something Fluted Paper Products taught me: that even the most mundane, mass-produced goods and services -- the ones you never think twice about -- take on meaning once you make the connection between them and someone who cares about them.
Unfortunately for my professional objectivity, I didn't stop making that connection with muffin cups. In fact, since I began working at Inc. -- where much of my job is listening to CEOs wax passionate about businesses I never dreamed could exist -- I've sometimes felt that my view of the economy is disintegrating. What had looked like a monumental mechanical structure now always seems on the verge of splintering into a million little niches, each given life by some energetic CEO. It's as if I used to see the economy only from the outside, and now I also get a glimpse of what's going on inside. Maybe the price I pay for the view is a little less objectivity -- and the cost of a few hot-dog trays.
ROBERT A. MAMIS
What a Great Leap Forward it will be when the People's Republic of China takes over Hong Kong in 1997. Among other gains, the PRC will be able to craft one of its leading exports, folding umbrellas that bartenders stick in the cherries of exotic drinks, from modern plastic rather than ancient wood. But turning a profit from nonutilitarian objects is not as easy as it looks, and the PRC would do well to study our own industry.
The American ability to earn a living from lawn flamingos and Elvis figurines has been the envy of many a nation, including the Japanese, whom the United States soundly trounced in that arena of trade in the 1950s, forcing them to move on to cars and TVs. Indeed, so central has the manufacture and marketing of uselessness been to native commerce that perhaps some day a typical junk factory will be re-created at the Smithsonian, representing as significant a contribution to enterprise as the ice-cream parlor and the mass-assembly line. If so, an air of economic miracle must be strongly implied, such as presently exists at H. Fishlove & Co., on North Major Street in the drab light-industry outskirts of Chicago.
Fun-loving Hyman Fishlove started making novelties in 1914, and the company he founded is now the world's leading supplier of windup clattering teeth, among other joke items. In the museum version, the setting will appear unchanged and uncleaned from the day the factory was opened (example: light bulbs of the type in which you can see the filament). There will be only one desk, on whose surface, cluttered by handwritten invoices occasionally stamped "paid," all fiscal and lunchtime activity takes place. At the front door will be a pile of crates, either coming in or being shipped; the sole employee who can specify which is which, is out sick for the week. The machinery, even though it fabricates only modest-sized goods such as a fake faucet you stick on your forehead (at a party, presumably), will reach from floor to ceiling, powered by OSHA-flouting belts and pulleys, and will be in need of immediate repair. The principal will be posed on the telephone, as usual not talking business.
That much of the atmosphere can be captured for our grandchildren. What can't be shown, though, is how the founders of such enterprises managed to feed their families for decades -- including through the Great Depression, when even Henry Ford had trouble -- purely on the backs of gewgaws. In the end, I hope seat-of-the-pants operations like H. Fishlove & Co. can keep plugging along for another 80 years, somehow, because that will mean all's well with our system.
PAUL B. BROWN
Maybe it's the mint juleps. (I'm the only person I know north of the Mason-Dixon line who actually likes the drink.)
Maybe it's the location. (Having spent my entire life in and about Manhattan, I'm a sucker for small towns.)
Or maybe it's the CEO. (He's one of the few people I know who gets smarter the more he drinks.)
But whatever the reason, my favorite company is Maker's Mark Distillery, near Loretto, Ky.
Now I'll concede picking anything near Loretto, Ky. (population: 900), is not an obvious choice. First off, you can't get there from here -- or from just about anywhere else for that matter. Loretto is an hour's drive from Louisville, through some the prettiest rolling green and brown farmland you'll ever see. And even once you're there, there's not much there there. A general store, post office, and school. That's about it.
Except for Maker's Mark, a $9-million company that makes -- according to just about every trade journal and professional society -- the best bourbon there is.
What I like about the company is apparent once you drive onto the grounds. They are immaculate. The 200-acre lawn is always freshly cut. The office buildings -- which are nothing more than a handful of restored two-story houses -- are always recently painted, and even the horses that roam about on the hill are sleek and well groomed. If you are going to make a class product, you should look classy, even if the odds of one of your actual customers stumbling on the place are remote. Image is important, and that's something T. (for Taylor) William Samuels Jr., the company's president, understands.
Bill Samuel
