Where Great Ideas for New Businesses Come From

Today Mambosok fields a sales force of 10 reps, serving 1,000 accounts around the globe. The receivables and the inventory are finally computerized. And the founders expect to approach $3 million in sales in 1993. "We wanted to do something fun, something funky," says Bunnell. "It turned out to be a business." -- Anne Murphy

Stagestruck
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How I Won My Company in a Lawsuit
Actress Remy O'Neill led the Malibu life. She guest-starred on "The Love Boat," partied with Robert Duvall, taught Bette Midler yoga, and played a mean tennis game. She had enough money to invest and live off the proceeds. That is, until 1988, when O'Neill tried to cash in some investments and found out her stockbroker was broke. She sued him and learned that the only asset left was a nearly bankrupt manufacturer of fabric spools, Pacific Fabric Reels, in Mira Loma, Calif.

Well, maybe running a factory could be fun, thought O'Neill. Her IRS-agent father used to read her bedtime stories from his tax journals. (Really.) She worked her way through nursing school by keeping physicians' books, and later managed a staff of 80 in the emergency room of New York City's Maimonides Medical Center. And acting had taught her valuable presentation skills, she says. "I know what gets people's attention."

She decided to go for the broke factory. "It seemed that all these strange little life skills might work together in running a business." Plus, she figured that running a company -- any company -- was better than kissing her savings good-bye.

Winning ownership of that business took a year of negotiating and $100,000 in legal fees. In November 1989 O'Neill found herself directing a dying company in an industry she knew nothing about. Sales were $830,000, but the company had accumulated losses of more than $600,000 and faced serious negative cash flow. O'Neill also discovered that she had a real quality problem: the ends of her spools were falling off in customers' hands. "I was ashamed," she says. "I hated my spools."

Her attorney lost sleep over her career change. O'Neill lost sleep, too, working on her last film, To Die For II: Sons of Darkness, through December 1990, as she ran the factory by day, while hamming it up in front of the camera by night.

But she was determined that the experiment wouldn't fail. Figuring that numbers were numbers, no matter what the industry, she started with the financials. Streamlining production, ordering new machines, and improving the product came next. Her reel remedies worked, and she began building equity. Three years later, in 1993, Pacific Fabric Reels' sales have reached $983,000, with $246,000 in net profits.

O'Neill is thrilled that opportunity knocked and delivered a clanging factory. "One of the frustrations of acting is that you're always waiting for someone else's decision," she says. "I don't mind losing by my own hand, but I hate losing by someone else's." -- Phaedra Hise

Just Say Yes
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Oops, We Must Be in the Moving Business
Siblings Ethan and Abby Margalith just wanted some spending money for the summer of 1973. Abby was 19 and waiting tables. Ethan had just finished high school and couldn't find a summer job, so he borrowed a truck and hauled some odds and ends to the local swap meet. He made a few bucks but earned even more delivering some chairs for a dealer who spotted his truck. When he got the cash, he realized, Hey, this could turn into a summer job! Soon Abby joined in.

Their first moving truck was a 1944 weapons carrier rescued from a mud slide. The owner had told the Margaliths, "If you can dig it out, you can have it." An artist friend painted "Starving Students" and the Margalith home phone number on the side, and the siblings parked the truck in Beverly Hills at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Sunset boulevards.

"This was when movers still wore full uniforms and little hats" and had prices to match, says Abby. "We became the no-frills, low-cost mover." Abby and Ethan's fliers echoed the Age of Aquarius: "To us, you're beautiful people, not chickens ripe for plucking," read one. "Twenty-four-hour service for lease breakers!" read another. The Margaliths billed themselves as "cheap, fast, funny, reliable." They took personal checks. They didn't have a clue what they were doing.

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