The Entrepreneur of the Year Register
The company also tracks trends closely. It continually expands its product line (with patented designs in frame and tube technology) to battle its closest competitors, Schwinn and Raleigh. "Our being well-rounded helps us in a very volatile industry," says Turner. -- Vera B. Gibbons
Bob Baker and Jim Watson
Skyway Freight Systems
Watsonville, Calif.
Founded: 1977
Business description: Provides air-freight and trucking services
Employees: 750
Projected 1993 revenues: $100 million
"Some companies see us as an information company. Some see us as a freight company. I think that means we've struck a good balance," says Bob Baker. In 1977, he and Jim Watson put together a business plan to use the belly space of wide-body airplanes for shipping freight, raised $80,000, and started Skyway Freight Systems. Two years into the business, Baker and Watson had the foresight to computerize the company. By installing a real-time freight-tracking and -information service, they won a key account with Motorola in 1979 and, eventually, a place on the Inc. 500 in 1983 and 1984. "If you can move data instead of moving freight, you're way ahead of the game," says Baker.
Last May transportation giant Union Pacific Corp. paid $100 million to purchase Skyway, because, Baker believes, it was interested in Skyway's innovation and technology. "I'm most proud of taking a pure idea and making it into something salable to one of the premier transportation companies in the country." Not bad for an $80,000 investment. -- Stephanie Gruner
* * *QualMed
Founded: 1985
Business description: Provides managed health care
Employees: 1,050
Projected 1993 revenues: $600 million
Malik Hasan and his partners started qualmed mainly as a defensive measure to protect their private neurology practice in Pueblo, Colo. "We didn't go into it to start this business," Hasan says. "Our business was being affected by HMOs, so we set up our own." Soon Hasan realized that QualMed was better equipped to control HMO costs than other managed-care companies were, because of its in-house medical expertise. QualMed assigns one medical director to manage 20,000 members, an unusually low ratio in the industry. The medical director's job is to oversee treatment and to review physician care. Hasan believes that if you place physicians, instead of administrators, at the center of patient care, the quality of care will go up and the cost associated with inappropriate procedures will diminish. "If you start focusing on quality issues, suddenly you find that your costs are going down," he says. That philosophy helped land the fast-growing public company a slot on the 1992 Inc. 100. With QualMed's 1993 sales projected to hit $600 million, Hasan says, "I decided that maybe this was not a bad business to be in."
-- Stephanie Gruner
Founded: 1986
Business description: Leases and sells personal computers
Employees: 54
Projected 1993 revenues: $105 million
In 1986 Bob Chlebowski sold his interest in First Alliance, a computer-leasing company, for $150,000 and used that cash to open St. Louis Leasing Corp. (SLC).
Chlebowski saw that leasing networks of PCs, as opposed to leasing mainframes and minicomputers, was the future of the industry. While at First Alliance, he had seen customers' purchasing decisions were made in the individual departments, rather than in the information-services departments. So a company could have dozens of brands of computers, each with its own configuration and idiosyncrasies. Plus, buying on a PC-by-PC basis didn't take advantage of volume purchasing power.
Chlebowski stresses the advantage of leasing PCs -- treating the cost as an expense item rather than a capital expenditure, which increases liquidity and helps prevent companies from getting stuck with outdated equipment -- and he's had terrific success with Fortune 1,000 companies. But the real money is in selling the used equipment when the leases expire; that represents the most profitable aspect of Chlebowski's business.
At first SLC developed a small-business clientele for used PCs. Then it occurred to Chlebowski that the individual consumer might represent a terrific used-computer market. So in the fall of 1992 SLC launched its first retail outlet, dubbed 2nd Byte. It has since opened a second store and is scouting for a third metro St. Louis location. Chlebowski says he's not quite ready to take his retail efforts national. "We want to make sure supply isn't a problem and build up more of a history with the outlets we now have." -- Christopher Caggiano
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