Beware of the Crashing Waves by Jack Cashill
Last year's Corporate Report 100 had the oddly ironic theme of "Riding The Wave." Ironic, because two of last year's top three companies were more or less washed away in the typhoon that hit the Nasdaq markets right about the time this issue was coming to press. Among those companies was NetSales, last year's designee as number one. The introductory photo to the segment shows CEO Bob Fraser adrift in a pool of water, holding on to a board to keep him afloat-a prescient image if there ever was one. A month ago NetSales closed up shop, unable to find a buyer to bail it out. The third photo showed maverick e-commerce maven, Scot Kane, CEO of Peripheral Vision Infosystems, waist deep in water. At the time, probably not even Kane, knew how hot that water was going to get and how quickly it was going to get hot. PVI flamed out dramatically earlier this year, leaving a trail of irate creditors in its wake. Curiously, the second photo shows Mike Brown of Euronet sitting up high in a lifeguard chair. This too proved prophetic. Despite the obvious adversity in the tech markets, Brown's company, now called Euronet Worldwide, kept a careful watch on business opportunities, increasing its revenue by 27% over the last year and earning another posting among the top ten of the Ingram's 100. Yet for all the distress calls from the tech markets, nine of this year's top ten fast growing firms are involved in the information technology business. The risks may be great, but so are the rewards for those who weather the storm. For those interested, this month's Industry Outlook delves into the world of IT in some depth. As the participants note, this past year's shakeout will, in the long run, return a bit of sanity to business models and stengthen the long term prospects of those that endure. The growth numbers may not be as spectacular in the next five years as they were in the last five, but IT companies should continue to dominate the top end of the Ingrams 100 for some time to come. The one company of this year's top ten not in the IT arena, Entertainment Properties Trust (EPT), is not that far afield: the movie theater business. Of note, too, all ten of these firms were founded within the four year window of 1993-1997, a propitious time, it would seem, for the launching of a new enterprise. There is, admittedly, something of a grape and elephant quality about the top ten companies, with nine grapes and one elephant, Sprint PCS, the fourth of the ten. Its gross revenue last year of $6,300,000,000 is roughly 42 times more than the revenue of the other nine combined. If there is a tendency in the Kansas City area to underestimate Sprint, especially after its merger with WorldCom fell through, one look at Sprint PCS's accomplishments should dispel it. That a company of this size can grow this quickly, and innovate so dramatically, testifies to the deftness of Sprint management. Kudos also to Step One, Inc. and ASAP Communications. In addition to Euronet Worldwide, these are the only other top ten repeats from last year. Amazing, they reappear in ninth and tenth places respectively in 2001, exactly as they finished in 2000. Step One managed to repeat despite the corporate equivalent of a sex-change operation, abandoning, as it did, its homely, humdrum monicker "Step One" for the exotic and alluring "Conseva." Speaking of gender, this year, for the first time ever, three of the CEOs of these top ten companies were women, including Barbara Polston of ASAP, Jeanette Prenger of Ecco Select (another cool name), and Martha Gershun of BizSpace. This speaks well of the fluidity of Kansas City's business climate as IT has historically been a boy's world. Indeed, all 100 of these companies speak well to the possibilities of growth and self-fulfillment in one of the world's freest and most fluid markets, the often understimated but relentlessly high performing, Kansas City.
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