In Memoriam

Tweet

Anita Roddick, 64, co-founder, with her husband, Gordon, of the Body Shop, in Chichester, England. A vocal champion of socially responsible business practices, Roddick developed merchandise that reflected her interest in social justice, offering cosmetics that weren’t tested on animals and came bottled in ecofriendly, refillable containers. She took the Body Shop public in 1984 and sold it to L’Oréal for nearly $1.4 billion in 2006.

Louis Flores Ruiz, 88, co-founder of Ruiz Foods, in Dinuba, California. Ruiz’s parents came to the U.S. after their land was seized by Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution. In 1964, Ruiz started making cheese enchiladas in a 400-square-foot facility. The business quickly expanded into burritos and tamales, which helped establish the market-leading El Monterrey-brand frozen foods. Today, Ruiz Foods employs 2,500 and has $400 million in annual sales. And, according to the company, 30 cents out of every $1 that is spent in the U.S. each year on Mexican frozen foods is spent on El Monterrey.

Paul Secon, 91, co-founder of Pottery Barn, in Rochester, New York. In 1949, Secon and his brother Morris bought three barns full of handmade ceramics in upstate New York. At first, they hauled merchandise to Manhattan by station wagon; then they opened a store. As the business grew, Secon traveled to Europe to find new products. He fell in love with Denmark and moved there, and he and Morris sold his share of the business in 1968.

Mark Smith, 66, rocket engineer and entrepreneur, in Huntsville, Alabama. Smith left a job at NASA to launch two companies that developed modems: Universal Data Systems, which he sold in 1980, and Adtran, a two-time Inc. 500 company that has 1,600 employees and a market value of $1.6 billion. “Forty years ago Huntsville was nothing but a bunch of cotton farms,” says Tom Stanton, Adtran’s CEO. “Mark helped lead the technological evolution of this city.”

Ralph F. Stayer, 92, founder of Johnsonville Sausage, in Naples, Florida. Growing up fatherless during the Great Depression, Stayer saved every penny he could to buy a butcher shop in Johnsonville, Wisconsin, in 1945. Today, his bratwurst is distributed nationally and--despite the old adage about how sausage is made--the company is studied by business schools as a model of quality manufacturing.

Lois Wyse, 80, advertising executive, in New York City. Wyse, who co-founded Wyse Advertising with her first husband, Marc, in Cleveland in 1951, helped put local companies on the national map. She famously persuaded a client named Bed & Bath to change its name to Bed, Bath & Beyond, and its sales perked up instantly. In 1966, Wyse opened an office in New York City, where she wrote a column for Good Housekeeping and helped to start the Committee of 200, an organization for women executives. But her most enduring achievement was crafting the tag line “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.”

 PREV  1 | 2 | 3 

Read more:

Sign-up for our Small Business Success Newsletter

Email Address: