12/5;07

Miracles 101, Again

Tri-O's oddities, observations, and opinions By Herb Kandel

Well here we are again, the time of year when we share the Holidays with family and other loved ones. And also the time we hear of Christmas miracles. Positive outcomes from dismal beginnings with unaccounted explanations as to how they occurred. Sometimes we credit a higher power and sometimes just plain luck for the intervention. But there are those who can attribute their ³miracle² to their personal efforts. Here are a few examples.

On a hot August day in 1982 Thomas Chen landed at Kennedy Airport. It was a long flight from Taiwan for the 27 year old. With little cash, he knew only one person in this new land, and he spoke no English. Fast forward 25 years: Chen is president and one of the co-founders of Crystal Window & Door Systems which booked $62 million in sales and has some 450 employees working at offices in eight states it is one of the top 60 manufacturers of replacement and new construction vinyl and aluminum window and door products in North America. How did this happen?
It took him two weeks before he landed the job for a moving company. Within a month he was studying English. First with adult classes then spending his wages on private tutoring and group classes. As his language skills improved so did his employment. As a former metal worker in Taiwan, who had never been to college, he decided to invest his savings on what he knew: welding.
He formed steel into window bars and gates in his basement apartment, then sold the safety devices to local customers in Chinatown and Flushing. He continued to read and studied business management. In 1987 he, with two partners took the plunge by starting Crystal. He also believes in "giving back". Crystal provides free English classes for employees. He also has given a local Community College an endowment to provide scholarships so immigrants can enroll in the school's English classes for free.

Then there was the lady who was a single mother on welfare. It was 1993, the flat where she lived was unheated and rife with mice. She was fighting poverty and depression. So she nursed espresso at the café at the rate of two hours a cup as she wrote in the notebook while the baby slept in the carriage. The idea for the story came to her on a delayed train while going to London three years before, it would take four more years before the idea became a book.
She submitted the manuscript to three British publishers only to receive rejection slips. A fourth publisher signed her up and it was published under her initials because they feared that boys would be put off if they knew it was written by a woman. That was how J.K. Rowling got "Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone" into U.S. print in 1998. More books followed as well as the enchanted movies. Her wealth soared like a wizard on a broomstick. It is reported that Rowling is now worth $444 million -- more than the Queen of England.

A hot cup of coffee spills in your lap. What to do?
Solution 1: Sue and collect damages just like the Grandma Vs. McDonald's.
Solution 2: Find a better way to solve the problem and profit by it.
When Jay Sorensen¹s company left town he dabbled in real estate, he "wasn't very good at it." Sorensen was doing his best to support his family and looking for more ways. The "eureka" moment came when he spilled coffee and chose Solution 2.
He observed that coffee-house customers were holding the cups between their thumb and forefingers to avoid burning their hands. Sorensen's solution? A sleeve that would fit around the coffee cups. He developed the idea, then offered it to Starbucks. They wanted exclusive rights and were stalling in making a decision. So Sorensen took it on his own. He scraped together finances to found his company, Java Jacket, hire a patent attorney, and had 100,000 coffee cup jackets made from waffled, recycled cardboard.
Sorensen returned to the cafe where he had originally spilled the coffee. While waiting for the owner he read about a coffee trade show to be held a week later. He had no money to attend. The cafe owner was his first sale. The money was used to attend the trade show, where he got 150 orders. He followed that up with hand-written notes and a sample sleeve to the other 3,500 trade-show attendees. Sales of this family-owned company is now between 20-25 million sleeves a month, to local cafes to national chains.

According to FORBES magazine "Almost two-thirds of the world's 946 billionaires made their fortunes from scratch, relying on grit and determination, and not good genes."
Or waiting for miracles.



http://www.baldwincountynow.com/articles/2007/12/05/columnists/doc4755d47be1a04155602953.txt