Newsmakers
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Simplest Taste
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Dot-Mom
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after the New England Patriots upset the heavily favored St. Louis
Rams 20-17 in Super Bowl XXXVI, Patriots owner Robert Kraft
(MBA ’65) thanked the team’s fans “for helping
us bring this championship home” and observed that “our
team symbolizes what’s going on in America, with everyone
banding together. This is the year of the patriot, and the Patriots
are world champions” (CNN/SI, February 3, 2002).
A season-ticket holder for more than twenty years until he bought the team in 1994, Kraft is revered for keeping the Patriots in New England when it was feared that the team might be sold and moved outside the region. Now, he and his son Jonathan Kraft (MBA ’90), the Patriots’ vice chairman, have established the Pats as a solid NFL franchise and likely contender for years to come. “When we bought this team eight years ago, we wanted to win off the field as well as on the field,” Kraft told the Boston Globe (February 6, 2002). “To see people of all backgrounds cheering for the team, we’ve accomplished part of our dream of being able to bring the community together.”
The organization’s senior vice president and COO, Andy Wasynczuk (MBA ’83), has also played a key role in the Patriots’ emergence through his adept handling of players’ salary and contract issues, day-to-day operations, and the construction of a new stadium, where the Pats will play next season. “In the background, but really in the forefront of success, is the person getting endorsements for NFL Executive of the Year — Andy Wasynczuk, the team’s chief operating officer,” declared the Boston Globe (January 18, 2002). “Wasynczuk has done it all for this organization.”
The Simplest Taste
After
combining two names, one from each side of his family, Stanley
Marcus (MBA ’27) went on to make “Neiman Marcus”
a household name. It was a pairing that would prove as successful
as the company’s “his-and-hers” holiday gift offerings
— such as matching camels, or submarines, or airplanes —
for couples who have everything. Marcus, who died last January
at 96, was fond of saying, “I have the simplest taste: I
am always satisfied with the best,” the New York Times
(January 23, 2002) recalled.
After HBS, Marcus took that philosophy back to Dallas to his family’s single store, eventually parlaying that one emporium into an empire of stores nationwide. Neiman Marcus introduced a number of innovations such as weekly department store fashion shows, personalized gift wrapping, a national advertising campaign (unheard of for a store not based in New York), and a catalogue that helped add cachet to mail-order shopping.
Although he mixed easily with the wealthy and famous,
and came to be considered an arbiter of correctness, Marcus never
forgot his business roots, declaring that “no man is too
big to go out and make a sale.” Known to all his employees
as “Mr. Stanley,” he put an “emphasis on quality,
luxury, and rarity that appealed to newly rich customers who were
uncertain in matters of taste,” the New York Times observed.
Asked once to define elegance, Marcus explained, “It’s
the antithesis of sumptuousness. It’s understanding that
what is right for one occasion at eight o’clock in the morning
is wrong for eight o’clock at night. If you visit airports,
particularly, you see the antithesis of elegance….I think
a sense of appropriateness
is probably the best qualification for elegance” (Los
Angeles Times, January 23, 2002).
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Gold Mettle
Three
years ago, the 2002 Winter Olympics looked like a downhill skier
who had taken a really bad fall — tumbling out of control,
in danger of serious injury, and with an uncertain future at best.
Members of the International Olympic Committee had accepted cash
and gifts from Salt Lake City bidders interested in landing the
Games, and to make matters worse, the local organizing committee
was in financial and organizational disarray. The scandalous situation
made news around the world.
Searching for a savior, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee
(SLOC) snapped up Mitt Romney (MBA ’74/JD ’75),
who was hired after the SLOC reportedly took just one day to review
some 42 other candidates. Romney, the former CEO of Bain Capital,
immediately cut costs and eliminated perks to reassure potential
sources of funding, both private and public, that their money
would be well spent. As a result, the necessary government and
corporate support was forthcoming, morale among organizers and
volunteers was boosted, and the XIX Winter Olympic Games in February
were a rousing success. Romney’s star has
risen accordingly and with it, speculation about his political
future.
At the Games’ closing ceremony, Romney told the
assembled athletes, “You Olympians came here representing
78 different countries, but today you are heroes of the entire
world. You may have been here to pursue your own dream, but you
also brought the Olympic spirit to us” (Boston Globe,
February 25, 2002).
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Back on Course
Stephen
Julius (MBA ’88), who is English, and Stephen Heese
(MBA ’88), his Yank buddy, were classmates at HBS, divided
by a common language perhaps, but united in their love of quality
boats. Last year, the two men took the helm of Chris-Craft, the
128-year-old company whose products at one time had been the epitome
of yacht-club chic. Some years ago, however, the famous brand
lost its bearings, drifted from its proud heritage, and wound
up indistinguishable from the mass-market fleet.
Today, with its two new skippers, the Sarasota, Florida, firm has made a course correction to quality and style. At the New York National Boat Show last January, Julius and Heese “practically elbowed each other in their eagerness to point out their boats’ teak decks, retro curves, and perforated steel dashboards and to show, running their hands over the hulls, that the smart stripes are painted on, not made from adhesive tape,” the New York Times (January 13, 2002) reported. In describing the company, Julius (“in his stiff British accent”) proclaimed, “It’s a classic American brand. It is even, I would argue, a national asset.”
The partners have eliminated four boats from the company’s
line, despite the fact that those models produced 70 percent of
the firm’s revenue. “They were practical, but ugly,”
noted Heese, who expressed distaste for the “fiberglass bathtubs”
that are all too common these days. Chris- Craft plans to launch
a new model range of boats up to sixty feet long and with them,
a new attitude that recalls the elegance of yesteryear. As Julius
told a group of salesmen at the boat show, “I don’t
want to hear the word price — I don’t want to hear the
word discount. I don’t want to hear about how many cup holders
these models have.”
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Dot-Mom
For
a time, iVillage.com and its CEO, Candice Carpenter Olson (MBA
’83), were on top of the world. The Web site was wildly
popular with both women and Wall Street; by 1999, the company
was worth more than $2 billion. Then came the dot-com implosion,
and although iVillage survived and remains in operation today,
Olson decided to step down as chief executive.
With two young children at home, “I personally came to the conclusion that being a CEO is hell,” Olson told the New York Times (February 7, 2002). “It wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I started realizing that all my instincts were about wanting to take care of a family in a traditional way.” And that is what she is now doing. Long a single mother with two daughters, last year she married Random House CEO Peter Olson (MBA/JD ’76); the new family of four now lives in Manhattan, with Olson delighted to play the role of Mrs. Mom. She has written a self-help book based on her own transitional experience called Chapters: Create a Life of Exhilaration and Accomplishment in the Face of Change.
Olson is well aware that her embrace of home and hearth
may seem controversial for a woman of her talents and achievement.
“I was raised to avoid the dependency thing at all costs,”
she acknowledged. “And what I learned was that the only thing
worse is independence.” Whether opting for domesticity or
anything else in life, what’s important, she noted, is to
be able “to choose for yourself” because “then
you feel free.”
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