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The Entrepreneur of the Year Register

David Heerensperger

Eagle Hardware & Garden

Tukwila, Wash.

Founded: 1990

Business description: Operates retail home-improvement centers

Employees: 1,300

Projected 1993 revenues: $147 million

Dave Heerensperger was an entrepreneur at age 24, when he started his first home-improvement business, Pay 'N Pak. After developing the business into a chain of 112 small home centers, Heerensperger was quick to spot the market's demand for larger warehouse-style chains. So after leading a leveraged buyout to fend off a hostile takeover, Heerensperger left Pay 'N Pack in 1989. With $4 million of his own capital plus additional private and public financing, he opened his first Eagle Hardware & Garden store in November 1990.

Catering to do-it-yourself customers as well as professional contractors, Eagle Hardware stores each carry more than 55,000 different items, maintaining more inventory than any of their competitors do. Low prices on brand-name products allow the company to benefit from higher margins on harder-to-find merchandise.

That basic "more of everything for less" strategy is enhanced by innovative merchandising. Each store, for example, features a Design Center with 8,000 square feet of kitchen and bath displays, including some 26 styles of kitchen cabinets. Design coordinators, using computer-assisted design, work with customers to plan home-improvement projects. A "racetrack" aisle provides convenient access to the store's various departments.

Just three years old, Eagle Hardware already seems to be living up to Heerensperger's somewhat hyperbolic description of it as "the Nordstrom's of the home-center business." -- Vera B. Gibbons

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Mitchell Kertzman

Powersoft Corp.

Burlington, Mass.

Founded: 1974

Business description: Develops, markets, and supports PowerBuilder, an applications-software-development tool for the client/server market

Employees: 260

Projected 1993 revenues: $42 million

In 1968 Mitchell Kertzman dropped out of Brandeis University and landed a job as a rock-and-roll deejay in Boston. Today he runs Powersoft Corp., a company many analysts have touted as one of the hottest initial public offerings of 1993. Sales for the applications-development-tool builder shot up from $55,000 in 1990 to $21.2 million in 1992. Foresight and good timing have led Kertzman to success. In 1988 he shrewdly entered the emerging client/server market, an industry experts say will double in market share each year for the next couple of years. Then he risked his small manufacturing-resource-planning business by sinking more than $3 million into research and development. The investment resulted in PowerBuilder, an applications-development tool designed to serve the Windows-based client/server market. The gamble paid off. In February Powersoft's stock nearly doubled on its first day of public trading.

Kertzman likes to attribute his company's success to the quality of his people, who he says are in tune with the needs of information-services departments. How does he get them? "Beg, borrow, and steal, with an emphasis on steal," he says. How does he keep them? One way is by rewarding employees who best exemplify the company's corporate values. Plaques, travel vouchers, and an extra week of vacation are awarded annually to individuals who best demonstrate a firm commitment to quality, customers, and coworkers. -- Stephanie Gruner

Richard Long and Gary Turner

GT Bicycles

Huntington Beach, Calif.

Founded: 1979

Business description: Manufactures and distributes bicycles and accessories

Employees: 250

Projected 1993 revenues: $100 million

Gary Turner's son had a problem: too much hard, off-road travel had broken his bike's frame. The handyman of choice? His father, a race-car driver and soon-to-be entrepreneur.

Turner borrowed a friend's tube-bending machine, reconstructing a frame that was more durable and stronger than conventional off-road frame designs. Neighborhood demand soared, so Turner joined forces with a newly befriended local-bike-shop owner, Richard Long. Together they put plans in gear. GT Bicycles -- financed with the sale of Long's retail operation and flexible credit terms from distributors -- was formed in 1979.

In an industry in which manufacturers are forever in search of cheaper foreign labor, GT Bicycles does much of its manufacturing domestically. And in an industry in which the United States traditionally does a lot of importing, GT exports to more than 30 countries.

So what's the magic formula? "In a downturn economy, we haven't streamlined anything," says Turner. "But we do everything in-house." Management spends aggressively on research and development, works diligently with vendors, and is in constant and direct contact with some 4,500 dealers (the highest number in the industry). Long-term relationships with suppliers keep prices down.