Tracking their progress provides a neat perspective on the creativity and flexibility of the American economic model.

     First, though, a word on the July 1997 issue of Ingram’s Magazine. Its ads and editorial reveal just how routine change is in the ever-changing world of our area’s free enterprise. There were full-page ads, for instance, for AMC’s Power and Light District. “When we flip this switch,” reads the headline, “you’re going to see downtown in an entirely new light.”

     Here, the qualifying use of the word “when” makes this a technically accurate statement. That switch was never quite flipped and just as well. The plans were not sufficiently grounded in reality.

     Another ad boasts of the “great traditions” of the “Saint Luke’s Shawnee Mission Health System.” Saint Luke’s still has great traditions, but they no longer include Shawnee Mission. In fact, all the talk now is about Saint Luke’s flirtation with another possible Kansan mate, the University of Kansas.

     One prophetic article addresses a proposed motor sports speedway. At the time of the writ-

ing, it was still uncertain whether Kansas or Missouri would get the track. Among the potential sites not mentioned at all was Wyandotte County. People had yet to sense just how profound the impact of April 1997’s consolidation vote would be on the county’s ability to promote economic development.

     Given the spirit of the times, the Ingram’s July

1997 edition also paid a good deal of attention to technology, including a feature article on the battle between analog and digital for “wireless commun-ication, a.k.a. portable telephones.” 

     It is surprising then that so many of the honorees in the Corporate Report 100 were relatively low tech companies. Top honors that year went to J.M. Neil & Associates, a temporary placement firm. J. M. Neil in turn beat out the second place Rush Delivery Services, a local courier, and third place Three Dog Bakery, makers of gourmet products for pooches.

     High or low tech, J. M. Neil has continued to prosper. In 2007, it ranked 16th among the fast growing companies. The reader will soon see how extraordinary an accomplishment this is. JoAnne Mina and Naftaly Mina have expanded the company from three employees in 1994 when it was restructured to more than 270 today. The company now positions itself as a full-service business consulting, staffing, and process outsourcing agency with a nationwide clientele in both the corporate and government sectors.

     Although Rush Delivery is no more, its president Rick Gilbert has gone on to bigger and better things. Gilbert, who started as a courier in Dallas in 1988, launched Rush Delivery in 1993 and eventually sold it to Dynamex. In June of 2001, Gilbert founded 24/7 Express Logistics. Located in North Kansas City, 24/7 Express Logistics is now the largest expedited delivery and courier service in the Kansas City metro region. Gilbert has expanded his horizons beyond the local courier service to include a fleet of vans, straight trucks and tractor trailers that provide expedited, same-day service throughout the surrounding five state area.

     Dan Dye and Mark Beckloff—with inspiration from the eponymous “three dogs,” Sarah, Dottie & Gracie—founded Three Dog Bakery in 1989. The 1990s were a rush of surprisingly good national publicity and headlong growth as exemplified by their top three finish in 1997’s Corporate Report 100. In the last few years, eager to retire, Beckloff and Dye have yielded the reins of the company to new CEO Scott Ragan and his three silent partners, who are putting the company back on the fast track once again.

     Ironically, the recent pet food scare works in the best interests of boutique shops like Three Dog. Currently, the company has 39 bakeries in the United States and Canada and eight more in Japan. Ragan and his partners plan to expand that total to 130 worldwide by the year 2010.

     Of these top three 1997 companies, only J.M. Neil made the list of the 100 fastest growing companies in 2007. What speaks volumes about the energy and volatility of free enterprise is that J.M. Neil, in fact, is the only one of 1997’s top 20 companies to repeat in 2007. That is not to say that the other nineteen have failed, by no means. As with Rush and Three Dog, many have mutated, changed names, changed ownership, changed direction.

     A classic case is that of Dr. Robin Potter’s PulseCard, Inc, number nine on the 1997 Ingram’s CR100 list. In 1997, PulseCard had 31 employees, nearly $4 million in revenue, and a top ten spot on the Corporate Report 100 list.

     As a young Overland Park dentist, Potter came up with an idea that was clearly ahead of its time—that of a national health-care credit card. In true American fashion, he went to work on making it a reality. To prove his seriousness to his potential investors, he gave up his dental practice, developed a marketing plan and a slide presentation, and took his show on the road before literally hundreds of individuals. By 1989, Potter had identified about 20 investors and secured roughly $700,000 in financing. No one worked harder to make a go of it—and the company had some limited success—but Potter was advancing an idea that could not quite penetrate an industry as bureaucracy thick as healthcare.

     In the course of trying to find a market,

Potter and his company exhibited at tradeshows all across the country. While managing these exhibits, Potter recognized another problem not nearly as great as that of healthcare reimbursement but one much more easily solved—the lack of a useful tool to coordinate all the many variables required to exhibit at tradeshows.

     In 1998, Potter launched TRAQ-IT tradeshow management software. That same year his software won the “Buyers’ Choice” award at its debut at the Exhibitor Show, an annual event organized by Exhibitor Magazine to showcase exhibiting products and services, and the company was off and running. Since then more than 800 companies both here and abroad have used TRAQ-IT Software. The enterprising Potter sold PulseCard along the way and has plowed right on ahead into the future with TRAQ-IT.

     Jeff Yowell of DATACORE has not done too shabbily either. In 1997, DATACORE Marketing, Inc. placed 13th on the Corporate Report 100 list. Yowell had founded the company as a 24 year-old in 1992 within a local ad agency. He built his business on the very bright idea to meld data-base management and database marketing. Unlike PulseCard, this idea was not ahead of the time. It was right on time.

     By 1997, Yowell had had sufficient success to buy the business out and launch DATACORE Marketing as an independent entity. Database marketing may not have been the most glamorous endeavor in the larger industry, but it was among the most cost efficient in helping clients reach their objectives.

     Despite repeated crises in the marketing profession over the last decade, DATACORE grew every year. By 2006, the firm had increased its 1997 revenues six fold to $15 million and its employee base to 120, and suitors came-a-calling.

     In March of this year, one of those suitors, KnowledgeBase Marketing, acquired 51% of DataCore. Yowell retained the remaining 49%. Sweeter still, he received compensation “in the low eight figures.” For those who are slow at math, the very lowest possible “eight figure” is $10 million, not bad for a guy still in his thirties. In addition, KnowledgeBase will likely buy out the rest of Yowell’s holdings within the next few years.

     Terry Matlack had a big smile in his 1997 Ingram’s photo as well he should have. At the time, he was president of Ameritel Pay Phones, Ingram’s 11th fastest growing company in 1997. Although it was not obvious to everyone at the time, the pay phone business had dinosaur written all over it. This was not a worry to Ameritel, as it had a lock on the one enduring niche within that industry, the collect call-only pay phones installed in the 1,000 prisons of Ameritel’s bailiwick.

     Matlack’s smile, however, derived from a more immediate future and a more tangible payoff, namely that Ameritel was on the verge of being sold to a California company. The young Matlack did well and has since turned his energies to helping other companies grow. Matlack is now Managing Director of Tortoise Capital Advisors and a general partner at Kansas City Equity Partners.

     Like Ameritel, SKC is also in the telecommunications business. In 1997, when the company was ranked 23rd on the Corporate Report 100 list, the company was known as “SKC Communication Products.” Like all successful companies, SKC adapted both its services and, as appropriate, its name, and the company has continued to grow.

     Why SKC deserves mention is that it is the next highest ranked 1997 Corporate Report 100 company—after J. M. Neil—to make the 2007 list. This speaks volumes regarding J.M. Neil’s and SKC’s remarkable stability, while it may seem a sign of instability that there are not more companies that appear on both lists, and it is, but it is this very instability that makes free enterprise so productive.