How a Small Business Becomes a Big Business

It didn’t start with an ambitious business plan, venture capital or a new app. Actually, it started with a young Abt, David Abt. He was a 31-year-old in 1936, the year he borrowed $800 dollars from his new wife to open a store selling radios. He called it Abt Radio.

Flash forward 74 years. Abt Electronics, as it is now known, has 500 employees and 200 delivery trucks in one location, a 350,000-square-foot store on 37 acres in Glenview, Ill., a suburb north of Chicago. The store sells a range of goods like refrigerators and plasma TVs (you could argue that the Web site is a second store, a national one at that).

By JAY GOLTZ

Full Story: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/how-a-small-business-becomes-a-big-business/?ex=1308632400&en=7264fbeb50d69db8&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=BU-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M181-ROS-1210-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click

(Many thanks to Cary Griffin, Senior Partner –
Griffin-Hammis Associates, LLC http://www.cequick.com/myeln/griffinhammis/default.asp for passing this along.)