INC. winners and losers from 2004-01 issue
The winner: How I Did It: Roxanne Quimby
The story of Roxanne Quimby is the stuff of entrepreneurial legend. A divorced mother living without electricity, she teamed up with Burt Shavitz, a reclusive beekeeper, and in 1984 began selling items made from beeswax. Over the years she built that crafts business into Burt's Bees, a leading natural personal-care brand. Last fall Quimby, who'd bought out Shavitz when he retired, struck a deal to sell 80% of the company to AEA Investors, a private-equity firm, for more than $175 million. She plans to donate half the proceeds to a land trust to establish a national park in northern Maine and is now even weighing a run for that state's governorship.
The losers: Letters to Bush
Re: The entrepreneurial owners of successful, fast-growing companies have some suggestions, compliments, and a few grievances to air when it comes to doing business under the Bush administration. FYI, Mr. President!
While reading this, I noticed that about one letter per page came from an idiot. Interspersed between calls for opening up the Salary Reduction Simplified Employee Pension (SARSEP-IRA) and not adding more regulations to web-based travel businesses were these gems (search for the company name - no internal permalinks):
- From Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff, Co-founders, Honest Tea, Bethesda, Md.
- From Jeffrey G. Suss, President & CEO, Complex Litigation Integrators, Tinton Falls, N.J.
- From Damon Gersh, President & CEO, Maxons Restorations, New York, N.Y.
- From Marc Richman, CEO, For Any Occasion, Tampa, Fla.