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Stephen Geppi

Diamond Comic Distributors

Timonium, Md.

Founded: 1982

Business description: Distributes comic books

Employees: 700

Projected 1993 revenues: $220 million

Stephen Geppi has been a comic-book fanatic since he was a nine-year-old sorting comics in the back room of a neighborhood liquor store in Baltimore's Little Italy. Later, in his early twenties, his passion was reignited when he saw his nine-year-old nephew reading a comic book. "I saw him enjoying that comic and flashed back to when I was his age." Geppi discovered that the 10¢ comics he had read as a boy were now collector's items worth hundreds of dollars, so he started buying and selling comics at garage sales and swap meets and through the mail. "Before I knew it," he says, "I was making more from comics than from my full-time job." So he quit his job and opened Geppi's Comics World, his first retail store, in 1974. Today he owns the largest distributor of U.S. comics in the world.

The switch from retail outfit to distributor was almost accidental. In 1982 one of Geppi's main distributors was on the verge of bankruptcy. Geppi stepped in, mostly to ensure his own future supply of comics. In an industry that has seen much consolidation in recent years, Diamond has enjoyed tremendous growth through geographic expansion and through acquisition. In 1988 it became the first truly national comics distributor when it acquired a major West Coast supplier. Today Geppi has a 45% market share in a $500-million industry. "Now I focus on making the market grow so that my 45% means more," he says. Diamond became the first U.S. comics distributor to go international when it formed a London subsidiary, in 1991.

At one time there were some 20 comics distributors, but because of attrition and consolidation, that number has now shrunk to about 12. Diamond leads the pack, with its closest competitor at 25% market share. Distributors historically operate with very slim margins, so Geppi tries to do more than compete on delivery time and price. "Those are given. We have to offer more." Diamond's extra effort comes in the form of a variety of services to the retailer, like catalogs, co-op advertising, and stockpiling inventories. Diamond is also in the process of bringing increased technical sophistication to the industry. The goal is to extend technology up to the vendor and down to the retailer in the form of bar coding and point-of-sale systems to improve automation and inventory control. Geppi envisions placing "golden handcuffs" on retailers, "so they can't switch, because we're too good." -- Christopher Caggiano

Jim Carpenter

Wild Birds Unlimited

Indianapolis

Founded: 1981

Business description: Sells bird-feeding supplies and nature gifts at the retail level

Employees: 650

Projected 1993 revenues: $35 million

With an initial investment of $8,000, avid bird-watcher and bird feeder Jim Carpenter has created, through franchise development, a 152-store retail chain where bird lovers flock to chirp and chatter.

"We went into a market that retail hadn't taken seriously," says Carpenter. "And now that the industry is expanding -- there are over 80 million people feeding birds -- we have given the hobby the respect it deserves."

Carpenter's strategy is simple: to make the shopping experience more pleasant than it is in pet-store supermarkets, in garden centers, or at price-competitive discounters, Wild Birds' managers are trained and certified to teach people how to enjoy birds. They cater to bird-watchers and bird feeders, providing accurate information and advice on everything from bird names, behavior, and courtship rituals to what kind of birdhouse and birdseed would best suit an individual's needs. They also hold weekly in-house lectures and seminars.

The stores themselves are a delight to the eyes and the ears. They're decorated with running-water displays, murals, and minigardens, and they ring with the lilting sounds of singing birds (on tape).

The cash register also rings. Wild Birds Unlimited grew 50%, taking in $35 million last year. -- Vera B. Gibbons

Ashok Trivedi and Sunil Wadhwani

Mastech Systems Corp.

Pittsburgh

Founded: 1986

Business description: Provides specialized software services including software design and development, systems integration, and data communications/networking in the client/server marketplace

Employees: 678

Projected 1993 revenues: $36 million

After quite a few beers one night, longtime friends Sunil Wadhwani and Ashok Trivedi decided to start Mastech Systems Corp. "The more we drank, the better the ideas got," says Wadhwani.

Wadhwani had entrepreneurial experience from his recently sold million-dollar medical-device-manufacturing company. Trivedi brought corporate expertise, having spent 11 years at Unisys Corp. as a software specialist, marketing manager, and product manager.

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