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The (Second) Son Also Rises

Published March 1, 1991 Hal Plotkin |

Just one generation ago, Molex Inc. was a small company in a deep rut. Annual sales hit $3 million, then stuck there. Like many family businesses, Molex, a maker of plastic connectors that route elec...

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Living Dangerously

Published March 1, 1991 Berkeley Rice |

IT IS A WARM DAY in the Southern California city of Torrance, the air is still, and Frank Robinson is about to risk it all for a dream. The 61-year-old engineer and chief executive of Robinson Helico...

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A House Divided

Published March 1, 1991 Howard Muson |

LAST AUGUST, Eva Berg Shoen, 44, was shot to death in the resort town of Telluride, Colorado, where she lived with her husband, Sam, and their two children. The killer entered the Shoens' home during...

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Ads in a Recession

Published March 1, 1991 Tom Garbett |

Your sales are soft, profits are down, and the press is obsessed with economic gloom and doom. Your advertising doesn't seem to be pulling, and you are thinking of cutting back, saving your bait until...

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Learn From Japan? Ha.

Published January 1, 1991 David Graulich |

The economy is comatose, credit is crunched, and U.S. companies are under more pressure than ever from overseas competitors. In order to prevail, many American business people are grimly determined t...

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How to Beat the Credit Crunch

Published January 1, 1991 Louis Moscatello |

Fastframe U.S.A. Inc. gets its financing the old-fashioned way. John Scott,who started the picture-framing stores three years ago and has three otherfamily members in the business and grew it to $14 ...

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The Young Maverick

Published January 1, 1991 Dan Rottenberg |

1974 Hal Rosenbluth graduates from college.He resents his family's travel agency because it hasalways been a rival for his parents' attention, andbecause it strikes him as dull. But lacking a betterp...

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Daughter Dearest

Published January 1, 1991 John A. Davis |

THE DAY RUTH Torgeson threw three customersout of the store, her mother's concerns about thefuture grew. Well, Ruth didn't exactly throw themout, but that's how they felt about what had happened. The...

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Starring in Your Own Ads

Published January 1, 1991 Anne B. Fisher |

There's no mistaking that Daw's Home Furnishings in El Paso, Texas, is a family business. The store's full-page ads in local newspapers proclaim "HOME OWNED AND OPERATED FOR OVER 38 YEARS!" The smilin...

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Scoping Out Insurers

Published January 1, 1991 Mike Cohn |

Will you outlive your life insurance company? Until quite recently, the question was rhetorical. Little in lifewas as secure, stable, and enduring as the insurance industry. Today, however, the...

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Resolving Conflict

Published January 1, 1991 Kenneth Kaye |

When she heard her terminally illhusband and two sons start yetanother round of nasty squabbling, Grace Spyros could dolittle but mutter, "Here we goagain." She knew the combatants' habitswell enough...

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Risk is No Longer a Four-Letter Word

Published January 1, 1991 Peter Davis |

When Jan Carlzon was appointed CEO of ScandinavianAirlines System (S.A.S.) inthe early eighties, the company was a stagnant bureaucratic organization that wasbarely surviving on what remained of its...

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Workmen's Comp. Costs

Published January 1, 1991 Jayne A. Pearl |

While manufacturers across the country are losing money because of yearly increases in worker's compensation claims, a Massachusetts-based makerof men's suits named Grieco Brothersis saving a bundle...

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Strategic Marketing

Published January 1, 1991 Daniel A. Nimer |

Your son is doing a terrific job. Heis turning out a high-quality floor buffing machine while holding theline on operating costs. Thebuffers command a premiumprice. By raising the price even higheran...

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Dangerous Liaisons (Don't Mess With The Boss's Son)

Published January 1, 1991 Howard Muson |

Savonda Thomas suspects her husband, Steve, is having an affair with one of his employees, a flag person in the family construction company. One night Steve tells his wife he's going to the hospital w...

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Taking Your Company Overseas

Published December 1, 1990 Stephen J. Simurda |

As recently as 10 years ago, Bill Fleming says, exporting accounted for 35 percent of sales at the Fleming Manufacturing Co. in Cuba, Missouri. Fleming neglected his overseas business as the domestic...

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Health Insurance

Published December 1, 1990 Jayne A. Pearl |

Last year health insurance premiums for business rose 20.4 percent. To hold the line, more and more companies, large and small, are auditing their health care bills. It can be done by outsiders or wi...

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Good to be Home for the Holidays

Published December 1, 1990 David Graulich |

Ah, the holidays. Those joyous times when family members gather around the dinner table in Rockwellian tableau and share glad tidings.But for members of family businesses, the holidays present a speci...

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Family Harvest

Published December 1, 1990 Berkeley Rice |

WITH A GENTLE PUSH, the Jenkins family orchestrates the September harvest of their 56-acre cranberry farm. For four generations the Jenkinses have farmed the bogs of Cape Cod, cultivating the tart re...

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Competing When Wal-Mart Comes to Town

Published December 1, 1990 David Diamond |

WAL-MART IS COMING! Those are fighting words for the family owners and operators of the 60 shops that line State Street the main thoroughfare in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. When news leaked out last ...

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