The Entrepreneur of the Year

Otten has, according to his managers, been single-minded in plowing every available dollar of profit back into the company. "We have been a business with a very clear mission," says Mills, who started with Otten as a lift operator.

In pursuing his strategy, Otten has differed tactically from many of his competitors. For instance, instead of squeezing maximum profits out of its real estate by building high-priced luxury condos, Sunday River used its development dollars to maximize the number of beds available in the area. They'd rather sell 50 units at $30,000 than five units at $300,000, says Art Marshall, in charge of hotel and condo operations, because that gives them more accommodations to rent. And, he adds, each unit was presold before it was built so Sunday River wouldn't tie up its capital in unsold inventory.

"The real profit here," insists Marshall, like everyone else who works for Otten, "is in the lift tickets."

"In 1980," says Otten, "I turned 31 years old, and I was ready for something. You could have put me almost anywhere, into almost any venture. The one thing that made Sunday River work was my realizing that I was ready to take the risk." Not the financial risk. "An entrepreneur's real risk isn't money," says Otten, who didn't have much of that to lose, anyway, "but that he's betting himself. My risk was that I was telling people that I was going to succeed where the best company in the business had not."

He's also perceptive enough to recognize that the risk and his challenge have changed now that Sunday River is solidly profitable and a major player in the New England market. The business has grown beyond the capabilities of any one person, no matter how talented, to run by himself. Otten is building a corps of managers.

"My biggest responsibility now," Otten says, "is hiring people."

"Les," says director of marketing and sales Bill Jensen, "wonders whether he's the president to lead the company through continued growth."

So, while the company is in better shape than it has ever been, the entrepreneur's risk hasn't ended.

Leslie B. Otten

Company Name Sunday River Skiway Corp., d/b/a Sunday River Ski Resort

Acquired In 1980 by Leslie Otten from Sherburne Corp. in exchange for $840,000 note

Product or Service Downhill skiing

Location Newry, Maine

Skier Days in the Year Prior to Purchase 40,000

Skier Days Last Year 350,000

Financial Performance Year Prior to Purchase $240,000 loss on sales of $541,000

Turnaround Financing Internal, using profits from lift-ticket sales and real-estate development

Financials ($ thousands)

RUNNER-UP

George Archuleta

Vitalink Communications Corp., Fremont, Calif.

The investors -- venture capitalists -- had given up on Vitalink. Shut it down, they said in 1985. Hold it, said George Archuleta, the company's VP of marketing and sales. I have this idea.

Founded in 1980 to provide satellite transmission of data, Vitalink blew through $48 million in venture capital, but no amount of money was going to make the original idea work. Just give me $1.2 million more, he told the skeptical financiers, and we can use the company's expertise to launch a new business: linking big companies' widely scattered local area networks. If $1.2 million could get back $48 million, it was worth a shot. So the VCs cleaned the management house, gave Archuleta the money, and put him in charge. In 1988, just three years later, Archuleta and his crew earned $6.7 million on $37 million in sales, and Vitalink was well down the road that led back from oblivion.

RUNNER-UP

Victor Kiam II

Remington Products Inc., Bridgeport, Conn.

Who doesn't know that Kiam liked the razor so much that he bought the company -- which had accumulated $30 million in losses over the previous four years. Promoting himself in a bathrobe was just part of his corporate turnaround strategy -- the most visible maybe, but not necessarily the most important.

Kiam initiated management changes at Remington Products that brought pride back to a venerable company whose employees had forgotten what it felt like. Want to know how he did it? It's no secret, not since Kiam decided to tell all in a couple of books. Just look under K in the bookstore business section. The proof that it worked -- for him, anyway -- is that Remington has grown from $43 million in sales when he bought it to $268 million in 1988 when its profits, not losses, ran close to $19 million.

EMERGING ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR

Louis Krouse, National Payments Network Inc.

About 30 million American households do not have checking accounts.

That's a problem -- and, of course, an opportunity. Louis Krouse spotted the opportunity and turned it into a company.

All these people without checkbooks are a problem, for instance, for utility companies. They've got to provide these customers with someplace to pay their bills. The utilities maintain a few branch payment offices, but mostly they contract with banks, which are, after all, accustomed to taking in money.

But these checkless people have become a problem for banks, too. While banks are trying to persuade their