Counting Down to 50

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 2024

Five decades ago, a Kansas City investment broker by the name of Ludwell Gaines decided the business community here was missing a few things: a sense of curiosity, a modicum of integrity, and enough fire in the belly to address issues that traditional media found … discomforting.

So he founded a magazine called Outlook, which would later brand as Corporate Report, which in turn became Ingram’s. Some things do change. Some, like the values Gaines held dear, never will.

The issues that concerned Gaines in 1974 have not improved. That’s about the most charitable way to phrase it. In the intervening years, readership of the biggest daily newspaper in this market has declined by 80 percent; at this point in the 21st century, broadcast coverage remains as insignificant as it is irrelevant.

We’re not exactly the same creature Gaines initially envisioned; we’ve grown, expanded our focus, and become a number of things. Primarily, though, we see ourselves as a means for members of the broader business community—its executive class in particular—to make the connections that benefit on both the individual and organization levels.

We’re all about connections. That starts with regular coverage of the most significant business sectors here—banking and financial services, health care and insurance, construction and development, and higher education and workforce training. Those editorial themes rotate in our pages throughout the year, providing enterprising coverage that explores how market conditions, economic trends, executive achievement, and other factors are influencing growth and investment in a region that runs from Topeka to Sedalia, from St. Joseph to Harrisonville.

Our goal is simple: We want to connect executives and business owners with data-driven information to help them frame their own decision-making.

Beyond the news coverage, we see the power of building additional connections with a robust program of business and individual achievement awards. We spotlight the best employers. Young executives making an impact. Top-tier health-care providers, educators and others who set standards. Why? Because you can’t connect with the highest-achieving, or the best of the best if you don’t know who they are. And with 75,000 organized businesses in this region, trying to discern those on your own is a hopeless challenge, especially if you have a business to run.

Add in our industry ranking lists, updated each year to showcase the leading companies in banking, professional services, health care, education, real estate sales, construction, venture capital, and literally dozens of other disciplines. By doing so, we connect potential customers with proven market leaders.

Lud Gaines started it all with a single platform: a monthly print magazine. We’ve taken the baton from him and added other means of sharing this wealth of content with special publications, such as our Chiefs’ Super Bowl tributes, with an increasingly robust online presence addressing the biggest news developments daily, and with Ingram’s Executive Insights, a series of daily, themed newsletters that provide additional business insights to thousands of subscribers.

Much has happened in this region—good and bad—since that first issue of Outlook came off the presses in December 1974. As we’ve learned over the years—and relearned, examining about 650 issues since then—is the importance of serving as an archiver of the biggest of business trends in this region, of the most influential of business personalities, of the most successful companies, and of the region’s greatest collection of thought leadership from executive suites.

The very first issue of this publication came as a Wall Street bear was beginning to emerge from hibernation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at just under 578 points—a day’s worth of volatility in modern market movements, with the DJIA recently hitting all-time highs of more than 44,000—a 77-fold increase.

Missouri’s borders may be fixed, but the growth within them hasn’t been. In that span, the state’s population has gone from a shade under 2.3 million in 1974 to just shy of 3 million today, up nearly 700,000. We’ve advanced as a state in tech (most notably, for use on the farm), in logistics and in life sciences. 

Kansas has bolstered its position as a center for downstream agribusiness, vehicle manufacturing, health-care delivery, and research. All of those factors have enhanced this region’s reputation for being less likely to fall into national recessionary patterns and more likely to emerge first from downturns, thanks to an economy that does not rely on one or two major employers in given sectors.

Having been right there, stride for stride, with the business community through so much of this shared journey, we pause here with this special edition to commemorate a milestone year in Ingram’s history. We hope this retrospective view of business during our own history will be as informative and entertaining for you as it has been for us.