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Aqua-Ozone

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When a General Mills or Pillsbury president stumbles onto what seems like a fantastic idea for a new product, they have the wherewithal to bring in an army of Ph.D.s, M.B.A marketing gurus and ivy league patent attorneys in order to carry that idea to market. In a large corporation, the idea-to-market process may take years and tens of millions to play out. With General Mills, in ready-to-eat cereals, for example, long-term successes are rare, even after pumping over $30 million in advertising alone into each new product introduction.

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Stafford Harder

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The man wearing a leather Harley-Davidson jacket and responsible for 2,100 paychecks scoots into his parking spot off Tower Boulevard riding a steely gray BMW K1200 LT touring motorcycle. His photogenic smile brightens up the receptionist while he waves at her on his way up the spiral staircase at Carlson Craft headquarters in North Mankato. Another day begins for Stafford Harder, 48, Glen Taylor’s flagship field general, as he then strides towards an office embellished with miniature toy Harleys and classic Chevys, a wall-hung photo of a laguna blue convertible, and Bible verses engraved on wall plaques. A quick call later, and at his desk, he has confirmed next year’s reservation at Sturgis.

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LeSueur Inc.

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If you’d asked Mueller and Prevot in 1990, Will you ever see the day when you’ll have to turn away business because of a labor shortage? they would have answered, Never.

Yet today 550-employee strong LeSueur Incorporated sits with land in Le Sueur ready for expansion, cash waiting, booming sales, so many potential customers you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one, yet it can’t expand because workers are in such short supply.

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Kevko Inc.

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It doesn’t take much channel surfing these days to get your TV set vibrating with the metallic symphony of powerful engines. Auto racing is a growth sport as fans fade from traditional diversions like baseball and gravitate toward the vicarious thrill of seeing helmeted warriors chase each other around oval tracks.

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T Productions

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After years of knocking around the Midwest as a laborer, Bill Thomas found a better niche in New Ulm.

With native artistic talent, a dash of casual entrepreneurship, a skilled crew to help and some solid sales connections, his two-year-old company now supplies screen-printed T-shirts and sweatshirts to a national market. Thomas is responsible for the graphics, which range from his original designs to illustrations furnished by customers.

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Tom Rosen

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Tom Rosen, 51, stands tall in a tasseled cornfield. He’s a great big mountain of a man, 6’5″, 250-plus, who towers over a crowded room both physically and professionally. Success didn’t stunt his growth. The family business he guides, Rosen’s Diversified, Inc. (RDI), grossed $550 million in 1998, which makes it Minnesota’s sixteenth-largest privately held business. Of businesses headquartered in south-central Minnesota only AMPI ($1.1 billion) and Taylor Corp. ($950 million) are larger.

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Orthopaedic & Fracture Clinic P.A.

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Please forgive Dr. Wynn Kearney, Jr., senior partner and president at Orthopaedic & Fracture Clinic P.A. (OFC), if he seems preoccupied with the future.

For thirty years his specialty has been in a state of constant flux, and the next thirty won’t be any different. He doesn’t know yet whether OFC’s Mankato office will expand on-site, out to land on the outskirts of Mankato, or over to Immanuel St. Joseph’s Mayo Hospital. And there’s more: demand for OFC’s services has increased so much it recently had to thoroughly and tirelessly search for a new physician with the “right stuff.” Other exhaustive recruitment forays are on the horizon.

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Winland Electronics, Inc.

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W. Kirk Hankins likes to say Winland Electronics, Inc. had three beginnings, one in 1972, another in 1984 and a third in 1995.
Today the Mankato company is recognized as one of Minnesota’s fastest growing electronics manufacturers, guided by a master plan that many of its 125 employees had a hand in crafting. It’s set impressive sales and profit records for three consecutive years, streaking ahead at 40 percent annually, and netting $856,000 on revenues of $18 million in 1998. Earnings per share tripled in that period and more money than ever is being spent on research and development, according to Hankins, who is chief executive officer and chairman of Winland’s board.

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Rick McCluhan

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If a draw on his slow-burning Macanudo and a sip of his Beaujolais Nouveau doesn’t get your blood moving, his in-your-face pragmatism towards politics definitely will. Rick McCluhan, 42, born of a full-blooded Sicilian mother and Scotch-Irish father, carries a zest for life, business and politics that few southern Minnesotans can match.
From his Sicilian mother’s genes he seems to have inherited a blunt pragmatism and a fondness for pasta, cigars, and wine. It was the Sicilians’ neighbors, the Romans, after all, who coined the phrase II vino veritas: In wine there is truth.
On his Dad’s side, his heritage extends back to the feisty Protestants of Northern Ireland, who bred such Revolutionary War patriots as Patrick Henry of “Give me Liberty or give me death!” fame. All three U.S. Presidents with a Scotch-Irish past began or greatly inflamed wars: Polk (Mexican), McKinley (Spanish-American), and Johnson (Vietnam).

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