PhillyInc

Phillyinc - What will happen to your current site in Nicetown?
Pizzi - The fact that there was interest by Trump as a site for a casino really highlights the site’s value, from a location and access standpoint. All we’re doing now is we need to evaluate that. There is no plan at this point in time on anything other than just to evaluate the highest and best use for us and the community.

Q - What do you think its `best use' would be?
A - All of that is sort of the kind of work we want to provide in our evaluation. As I said, there was something other than industrial use that was envisioned (by Trump). We’ll work closely with Allegheny West Foundation, too, in anything that comes of it.

Q – Where else did you look for a site?
A -- We looked in the tri-state area, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. We were looking at either exisiting buildings or sites. That is just, from a shareholders' view, something we owed shareholders. Then like a funnel we brought it down to the viable sites. I come from an economic development background, I started at the PIDC. I made it very evident to the city and state that we were not going to practice any threats of that nature. We all had the same goal.

Q – But the effect was the same as a threat to leave: a nice deal with tax breaks and loans?
A – I want to point out that the tax break was not anywhere on the top of the list of reasons we went to the Navy Yard. Much more important to us was the partnership with Liberty/Synterra. It being in the exact center and heart of our ditribution area, with access to truck and rail and I-95. And then there were the low-interest loans. Tax breaks was not a driving force. The taxes were not on the top of the list.

Q – Do you envision PIDC being interested in your current site?
A – It doesn’t normally buy real estate unless it can develop it. The real estate tracts they have brought are usually donated. And we would not donate this to them.

- Thomas Ginsberg

(For the record, other stocks Turner likes include hip apparel firms Coach Industries Inc., Under Armour Inc., and tech firm F 5 Networks Inc. He isn't a fan of Comcast Corp. because of what he calls increased competition from the likes of AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.)

PhillyInc: Are there any advantages to being located in the Delaware Valley, which isn't well-known as a hub of investing?
Turner: "Obviously New York is much, much bigger. I don't know if Boston has much going over us. We have Vanguard. They have Fidelity. Is there an advantage (here)? I think so. ... A lot of our employees live within five to 10 miles of the office. … There is less competition from people trying to convince our employees that they should go elsewhere."

Q: What's your investing approach?
A: "If a company is going to miss their earnings, you have got to get out of their way. (I believe in) letting the winners run. Google is up about, probably, 450 to 500 percent. Can it go up another 500?"

Q: What do the continual gains of the Dow and S&P 500 say about the overall state of the economy?
A: "It doesn't influence how we buy or sell stocks. They are going particularly well from a global perspective. This is a global boon. You have China growing GDP at 10 percent. India is growing. The market rally has climbed that war of worry. Obviously it was vastly overvalued in mid-2000. It's nicely undervalued now."

Q: Even Google and Apple (which Turner owns)?
A: "Google is very reasonably priced to its growth rate. We bought it at the offering price. We were very adamant. … When we first bought Apple, it was a one-product story. .. (The new iPhone) will get tremendous traction."

Q: Why are you so optimistic?
A: "Technology has underperformed the market for six out of the past seven years. This spending on technology is projected to grow two-to-three times the economy overall."

- Jonathan Berr

Like many value investors, Brandywine Global Asset Management's Scott Kuensell is a glass is half-full sort of person. After all, the 53-year-old Philadelphia native makes his living seeing hope in companies that other investors consider hopeless. That strategy has paid off with picks like McDonald's Corp., which Brandywine recently sold at a tidy profit. The company now is betting that good times will come to companies that have been stuck in Wall Street's doghouse: Dell Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Comcast Corp. Recently relocated from Wilmington to Philadelphia, Brandywine manages $42 billion and is a unit of Wall Street behemoth Legg Mason Inc. Kuensell took time out this week to speak with PhillyInc:

PhillyInc: Are there still bargains to be had at a time when the markets keep breaking records? Kuensell: "The valuations are nowhere near an all-time high. As a matter of fact, we think stocks are quite reasonably priced."

Q: Even in the tech sector?
A: "Tech stocks in our opinion are the most attractive. As value investors, often times we gravitate to stocks that have hit bumps in the road." (such as Dell Inc. and Intel Corp.)

Q: Will Dell, which recently reported better-than-expected results, improve now that founder Michael Dell has returned as CEO?
A: "Nothing is perfectly analogous, but when Steven Jobs returned to Apple, good things happened."

Q: Isn't competition with Advanced Micro Devices still hurting Intel?
A: "It looks like the price war is subsiding. (Competition) is not nearly as cutthroat as it was 15, 18 months ago. When we bought Intel, the crowd was proclaiming AMD as the new king." [Editor: Intel shares are up 11% this year while AMD has plunged almost 30 percent.]

Q: Have any of your picks turned out especially well?
A: "When we bought McDonald's, the news couldn't have been more negative -- mad cow disease, the super-size movie, CEOs dying in office. … There was a host of things. The company was expanding at too fast a rate. (Since then) they terminated relationship with franchisees who didn't know how to use a mop."

Q: What about Wal-Mart?
A: "That's one of our largest holdings. Most of the press is negative about Wal-Mart at an array of subjects. ... The opportunity for Wal-Mart is that (higher-income shoppers) only buy soap and paper towels and garden houses. They are not buying furnishings and apparel."

Q: Do you agree with Wall Street's negative view of Comcast?
A: "In our opinion, Comcast had a entered sweet spot where cash generation is going to grow significantly. … We're particularly excited about the opportunity that the company has in the small and mid-size businesses. They haven't even scratched the surface."

- Jonathan Berr

Last week, we conducted an unscientific survey of people visiting this site and asked this question: "Who is the most admired and effective CEO or top exec in Philly region?" People could vote for more than one person, or write in a name. The software from Poll Daddy.com prevented (using cookies) people from voting more than once if they voted from a single computer, but it did not prevent people from voting more often using different computers each time, if they were so ambitious. At least one write-in nominee got multiple votes apparently using several different computers around an office (tsk, tsk, Kevin).

Anyway, we recorded nearly 400 votes. Here's the result:

Others in the top rank were:

Coincidentally last week, the consulting firm DeMarche Associates Inc. released its own methodical analysis of CEOs ranked on the basis of companies' earnings performances. Four Philadelphia-area executives made the list of 163 people nationwide. Interestingly, our readers only mentioned one of the four, Alfred P. West Jr., of SEIC Investments. (The others were Nicholas Debenedictis of Aqua America, William Carey of Central European Dist. Corp., and James Maguire Jr. of Philadelphia Consolidated Holding Corp.) The DeMarche ranking only looked at CEOs of publicly traded companies. Three of the top five in our survey run private nonprofit entities.

See PhillyInc's entire survey list here. (jpeg 150k)

Click on the link below or here for the Scullion Q&A.

PhillyInc: How is Philadelphia's real estate market holding up in the housing downturn?
Long: "Compared to the rest of the country, the Philadelphia market is holding up pretty well. Our sales were down from the previous year but the previous year was one of the hottest in history."

Last week, we asked PhillyInc readers whether this year's Philly tourism-promotion commercial, with its cool theme and hip-looking actors, is better than last year's comic musical-theme commercial. This year's campaign reportedly cost a little less and we wondered whether the city got its money's worth. Well, by a significant margin, the favorite was this year's spot:

A list of all Philly locations shown is the film is here, courtesy of GPTMC.

We also would emphasize that the No. 2 choice was "neither so good." (See last year's spot here on YouTube.) Not sure what that means. There were relatively few total votes (just 95). Here's the full results:

In any case, we used the opportunity to ask the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp., a nonprofit city-chartered agency, about the way it makes commercials and how it chooses themes. The Q&A is below.

In an interview with PhillyInc, DeSilvis, a French-speaking former Xerox Corp. (NYSE: XRX) and Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI) executive, pointed out that the U.S. government is eager to foster more trade with Brazil following President Bush's recent visit there. But that's not going to be easy because the two countries are separated by cultural barriers which are almost as formidable as the geographic ones. Even DeSilvis isn't immune. Brazil's sewer system doesn't allow people to flush down toilet paper and place their material in little trash cans in bathrooms. One time, while visiting a potential client, she got confused and later learned much to her horror that she put per paper into a decorative urn. "The stupid little things are what embarrasses you," she said. Interview below.

Hambrick, who declined to name any of the participants in his study, is trying to prove a point that companies headed by narcisstic CEOs have higher highs and lower lows than those headed by humbler types. The professor of management at Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business based his conclusion on some interesting metrics, such as the size of the CEOs photo in the annual report and how often they refer to themselves using the first person singular "i" or "me" in media interviews. We chatted on Friday July 13 about all his study:

Herr, though, isn't just a spokesman. He's also president of the Herr Food Inc., the privately owned business founded by his father James Stauffer Herr in 1946. Despite fierce competition from multi-national food companies, Herrs chips are the top sellers in the Philadelphia area, a position he said the company works hard to maintain. In an interview with PhillyInc, Herr talked about working in the family business where his older brother JM Herr is the chief executive and his father remains an advisor. He also spoke of how the family's religious faith guides the company. By the way, his favorite chips are natural kettle chips with sea salt and the Red Hots.

PhillyInc: Lots of families who run businesses wind up squabbling with one another. What's your family's secret for getting along?
Herr: "We do place a fairly high value on relationships. I guess it goes back to when we were growing up. ... There were five brothers and sisters. Whenever we got into a fight or something like that, we had to take time out. We had to apologize. We had to ask the other person for forgiveness. We learned it was easier not to get into these fights." (continued)

The 69-year-old employee Pinckney, whose official title is special plant project coordinator, makes sure the quality and taste of the company’s ice cream is consistent. He makes sure that the chocolates are sufficiently chocolaty and that swirls of flavor are in both the bottom and the top of the container. He’s been at Turkey Hill for 14 years, but he dates his ice cream expertise to his childhood growing up on his family’s New York dairy farm. The 650-employee Turkey Hill, owned by Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), is run by Quintin Frey, grandson of the founder.
In an interview with for PhillyInc, Pinckney dished – pun intended – on his career, ice cream and his way of staying trim.

PhillyInc: Can you pick a favorite flavor or is that like asking you to pick a favorite child?
Pinckney: They are mostly all my favorites. … I like our black raspberry just for the flavor and the taste of it, and butter pecan. … From a professional standpoint, I prefer vanilla because you can get a true sense of all of the other dairy products.

When Holtec International Inc. Chief Executive Krishna “Kris” Singh founded his company in 1986 to develop technology to increase the amount of spent fuel rods that can be stored in nuclear power plants, he figured customers would flock to him. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
“I am not a natural salesman,” Singh, 60, told PhillyInc. “In the early years of Holtec’s business, I struggled with it.”

Eventually, he overcame his weaknesses as a salesman and convinced the nation’s nuclear power industry that Holtec could help them address the problem of storing radioactive spent fuel rods. Sales at the closely held Marlton-based company then took off, as did the profits, which Singh declined to disclose.

The company, which Singh says has an order backlog of $3 billion, has about 300 employees. Holtec says its technology is used in reactors in the U.S., Canada, China, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, Korea, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Taiwan.

Earlier this month, Holtec grabbed headlines when it won a 200 million euro ($269 million) contract to design, license, establish and commission a fuel storage facility at the Chernobyl facility in Ukraine, the 1986 site of the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. The company plans to employ 60 to 80 people in Ukraine and is looking to buy and office building in the country's capital of Kiev.

Notably, Singh said he takes $1 from his salary each year and has his company donate the rest to his charitable foundation. Singh’s foundation has donated $20 million to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Applied Sciences and Engineering, to create the Krishna P. Sing Center for Nanotechnology. It was the largest gift in the history of the engineering school, where he got has Phd.

PhillyInc: For people who haven’t heard of Holtec, can you briefly describe it?
Singh: Our company is essentially an energy technology company. … Our main focus is to develop equipment so power plants can operate more efficiently and more safely …. Most of our revenue comes from commercial nuclear power.

Parkway Corp. Chief Executive Joseph Zuritsky, whose father Herman founded the company in 1936 and whose son Robert is president, has watched his nearly 40-year interest in koi fish morph from fascination to hobby to a side business called Quality Koi Co.

Quality Koi is based on a 43-acre converted asparagus farm in Carneys Point, N.J. It has 28 ponds measuring 50 feet by 150 feet, and four larger ponds between a quarter of an acre and 1 acre each. Zuritsky, 67, said he speaks on the phone with Matt McCann, who manages the operation, about twice a day and visits the farm in person about every 10 days.

In an interview with Jonathan Berr for PhillyInc, Zuritsky said he can indulge his interest in koi because he’s confident in the management team at Philadelphia-based Parkway, which very much remains a family affair. His daughter Anna Z. Boni is vice president for risk and claims management. His sister Etta Winigrad is a senior vice president and Etta’s son Jake Winigrad also is a Parkway vice president.

Parkway has 100 locations with 30,000 parking spaces in nine markets including Philadelphia and also designs and develops parking garages and commercial properties.

PhillyInc: What lessons did you learn about business from your late father?
Zuritsky: He was not the typical full-time entrepreneur. He gave me room to grow. (For the next generation) I gave them space. I let them learn on their own as I have done.

Anyone who has owned a radio or television in the Philadelphia area in the past 25 years knows Jerry Robbins, or at least thinks they do. His commercials, which feature his velvet baritone honed from years of work on the stage, have transformed him from jeweler to brand icon. But the 70-year-old jeweler is also the chief of Leo Robbins & Sons Inc., the company founded by his father Leo in 1949. (His family has roots in the jewelry business even before that.)

Though semi-retired, he still shows up to work. Now, he's in the process of figuring out how to pass the torch to his three sons. The next generation in the business also includes a daughter-in-law, a former daughter-in-law, and even a 21-year-old granddaughter. He recently spoke with Jonathan Berr for PhillyInc about his career, though he declined to divulge how the diamond stud stays in his beard.

PhillyInc: What's the secret of working with your family?
Robbins: It takes a lot of work. ... We consider [the business] a golden goose that lays golden eggs and we try to get everyone in the family that's working in the business to understand that.

(More below. But first, here below - and here - is a hilarious clip of the Rockin' Robbins Mascot in reheasal.)

When it comes to funding new businesses, the Delaware Valley is a pretty languid place, according to Jeffrey Babin, a lecturer on entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and an angel investor himself at his firm Antiphony Partners LLC. Data from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC shows that the Philadelphia area attracted $195.8 million in funding from venture capital funds in the second quarter this year. That was below the $278.7 million a year earlier and less even than the quarterly median of $205.3 million over the preceding decade. (See data here.)

These figures are near the middle of pack for major U.S. venture markets and far below areas like Boston and San Diego. That's something Babin calls concerning for the region and Wharton, which not only wants to train people to start businesses but also keep them here.
Babin, who funds small startups in the hopes that they may become the next Google and serves as program advisor to Wharton's Venture Initiation Program, discussed the region's advantages and obstacles in an interview Jonathan Berr for PhillyInc.

PhillyInc: How has the entrepreneurial climate in Philadelphia changed?
Babin: The balance of power has shifted more to the entrepreneur. ... We still have a fair bit of money that people need to invest.

Mark S. Schweiker of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce says businesses are pivotal to the city's anti-violence efforts and blames the media for missing it. On the other hand, health-insurance company CEO William George says businesses could be doing even more to combat violence.

And so it goes. In the last couple of years, many horrific slayings in Philadelphia, a rising homicide rate and an intense debate over gun-control laws have led officials, residents and activists to scour the community for solutions. The city business establishment says it has joined in efforts to tighten gun laws and improve the job situation. That claim has been questioned by former Philadelphia Managing Director Phil Goldsmith and Inquirer columnist Monica Yant Kinney. In our unscientific, anecdotal online survey on the topic, most respondents indicated they think businesses need to focus on prospering and creating jobs, period. (See all our previous posts here.)

Now we've conducted Q&As with two thoughtful leaders on the topic: Schweiker of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber, and George of Health Partners, a nonprofit health plan. These CEOs don't seem to disagree in substance as much as in tone and focus. Each insists they are not adversaries on the topic. In fact, their approaches strike us more as complimentary than contradictory, maybe even the foundation for some new efforts.

Both Q&As are published in full below. Or you can jump straight to the Schweiker Q&A or the George Q&A. Shorter versions are appearing in print today and tomorrow in The Inquirer's business section. Please, feel free to comment, pontificate or criticize (politely, please).

Bowling is in Jon Perper's blood. His late father Irvin built Playdrome Woodcrest in 1960 and Jon started working at the alley when he was 13, working his way up from porter to assistant manager. He has expanded his family's bowling business, adding Playdrome Cherry Hill (then known as Erlton Bowl) in 1980. The 52-year-old resident of Mount Laurel now owns another alley in Allentown and manages others in Devon, Pa. and Pennsville, N.J.

But as his career took off, the bowling business changed. Alleys could no longer rely on league bowlers for their revenue and began catering to casual bowlers, who may not know a strike from a split. He believes entrepreneurs today need more capital and have more difficulty getting it than he did. Further complicating the picture for Perper is New Jersey's very controversial smoking ban, passed last year, which he says puts him at a competitive disadvantage to Pennsylvania alleys.

In an interview with Jonathan Berr for PhillyInc, Perper discussed his career, his regrets about not going to college, and his plans to make his flagship location in Cherry Hill more attractive to families.

PhillyInc: What was the biggest lesson you learned from your father?
Perper: [My dad taught me that] even though you might slave away ... the bottom line is that it didn't matter how hard you work. It mattered what the customer saw when they walked in the door. He really knew how to talk to people. He always tried to focus on resolving the issue and not dwelling on problems.

Though Jennifer Wilson has been in business for less than a year, she has shown a knack for public relations. When NJ 1015's "Jersey Guys" spoke about how they needed a cake for an event they were hosting in Atlantic City, the owner of Red Carpet Cakes offered to provide them one -- free. Several months later, she rang up WMMR's "Preston and Steve" team and offered to bake them a "gadzooks" cake named after the morning team's catch phrase.

The result was public relations gold. The 27-year-old Cherry Hill native got tons of free publicity and a jump in orders at her Mount Holly bakery. She even heard from some soldiers based in Iraq, who wanted the gadzooks cake delivered to them. (Alas, not possible because it needs to be refrigerated.) Then there was the request for a birthday cake designed with a picture of mooning hippies in a green Volkswagen bug with the words "Happy Butt Day" written on it.

In an interview with PhillyInc, Wlson discussed the trials and tribulations of balancing family life with the demands of running a business 13-hour days, six days a week. Plus, she offers some insight on how she's lost weight even while surrounding by delicious baked treats.

PhillyInc: Why did you locate in Mt. Holly ?
Wilson: There was an opportunity here for a bakery. Every other area is saturated with bakeries and grocery stores.

For leaders in the Latino community such as Will Gonzalez, these are challenging times. Not only is the public demanding immigration reform, but economic problems such as the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market threaten to eat away at the economic gains Latinos have made in recent years. Gonzalez runs Ceiba, a coalition of five Latino community groups founded in 1991. Gonzalez, 45, has been the leader since 2001. The group is named after a tree native to Caribbean noted for its resilience. In an interview with PhillyInc, Gonzalez, who also is an attorney, spoke about his background, the gains made by Latinos and the work that still lies ahead.

PhillyInc: Why did you become a community activist?
Gonzalez: Knowing that but for others that I would not have been in a better position. I know there are the traditional heroes that they have holidays for, but there are a lot of people at the grassroots level .... Today, there are so may people challenging the system.

To say that Rob Rush and his friends are devoted to the cheesesteak may be an understatement. On their Web site Cheese-steak Town (www. cheesesteaktown.com), they write under aliases such as "The Big Cheese" (Rush), "Fried Onion" (talent agency owner Kenny Fine), and the "Ozzard of Whiz" (lawyer and cartoonist Andy Stein), waxing poetic about D'alessandro's unpretentious lunch counter" in Roxborough, and pay homage to South Philadelphia's Pat's King of Steaks as the "sacred temple and the holy shrine of the Philadelphia cheesesteak."

Rush says Cheesesteak Town gets about 1,000 hits a day, which the ebullient 55-year-old describes as "shockingly high" because the site hasn't been heavily promoted. Yet, Cheesesteak Town has caught the attention of city tourism officials. And of the Roller Derby Hall of Fame, which asked the site to help promote its "Hall of Fame Weekend" last month. Web site users can write reviews, and vote for their favorite cheesesteak joints. They also can vote in photo contests for "Mr. Cheesesteak" and "Miss Cheesesteak." (For people more versed in cheesesteaks than Web production, these sorts of things are called user-generated content. This stuff, the theory goes, tends to keep Web users on sites longer, makes the site more attractive to advertisers and users more receptive to targeted marketing messages.)

In an interview with PhillyInc, Rush discussed his numerous careers, his devotion to the cheesesteak, and his plans for the Web site.

Question: Who are you, and why did you start the site?
Answer: I did it with a few friends of mine. It's three of us who run the thing, and we have a crew who helps us execute events and do press. I am a professional rock musician, and write for a British rock paper, The Beat.

For Flying Fish Brewing Co. owner Gene Muller, beer isn't just a beverage, it's a way of life. Before he started the Cherry Hill-based brewery in August 1996, he would take vacations to the West Coast to try new beers. He went to school to become a brewer after leaving his job as an advertising creative director for the Albert Einstein Health Care Network, figuring he would get a job making someone else's suds.

Then while on a long road trip through Arkansas, Muller was inspired to start his own brewery. He canceled plans to move to New Mexico and instead set up shop in South Jersey, where has managed to attract a loyal following among the beer-literate residents of the Delaware Valley.

The company, which employs 16, has had its share of growing pains. It recently completed a strategic plan to keep it on track. He said the company was profitable but declined to give specifics. Flying Fish plans to install a $500,000 bottling line in December that the company says will increase capacity by 25 percent. It will let the company brew new types of beer and put its product in bigger bottles.

Muller told us: "Please get my title correct — it's president and head janitor." Then he held forth on the virtues of the beer business and demands of quality control (a.k.a. drinking the beer).

Q: Why did you decide to open a brewery?
A: That was a moment of weakness, I think. I was actually looking to move to New Mexico and on the long ride back through a particularly boring part of Arkansas, we came up with the idea for the brewery. All of our contacts were in the Philadelphia area, so we decided to do it here.

After living in southern California for six years, Philadelphia native Jim Sheward had had enough and jumped at the chance to move back to the Delaware Valley when he and partner Paul H. Russell decided to start the software and computer services company Fiberlink Communications Corp., a provider of software and services that allow companies to protect data on laptops from hackers while employees are working away from their offices.

That was 1994. Since then, the Blue Bell, Pa.-based company has attracted some big-name investors such as Goldman Sachs & Co. and General Electric and now employs about 230 people. Its customers include Continental Airlines and the accounting firm Grant Thornton. In an interview with PhillyInc, the 48-year-old Sheward, who is the company's CEO and a resident of Villanova, discussed his company's strategy and the obstacles faced by tech entrepreneurs in the region.

Q: Why did you decide to locate your business in the Philadelphia area?
A: I was living in California at the time. Paul Russell was living in Bucks County and working in Philadelphia. We started bi-costally (but the Philadelphia area) was a place where I felt comfortable and where my partner was already living.

Subaru of America Inc. chairman, president and CEO Tomohiko Ikeda hasn't had much time to get homesick for Japan since arriving in Cherry Hill to run the automaker's U.S. division. Ikeda is executing Subaru's goal of expanding its U.S. market share from its current 1 percent. It has opened offices in Los Angeles and Dallas, and is working on increasing dealerships from 599 to 625.

On his second tour here after serving as a vice president from 1998 to 2002, Ikeda faces a daunting situation. Although Subaru recently posted record sales, the overall auto market is lackluster. U.S. new-vehicle sales were probably 1.2 million in November, virtually unchanged from a year earlier and down 2.5 percent from October, according to Edmunds.com.

To be sure, Subaru's consumers are loyal. Consumer Reports rates the company's cars second in terms of reliability behind Honda and ahead of Toyota, which is one of the investors in Subaru's parent company, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. Consumer Reports recommends all of the company's models.

The company is in Cherry Hill because that's where Subaru's first distributors, Malcolm Bricklin and Harvey Lamm, had set up their company, Subaru in America, in 1968. It is now wholly owned by Fuji.

Ikeda, 54, who drives a dark-gray Tribeca, has made the most of his time in the Philadelphia region. His wife, Yuriko, earned a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania during his last posting in Cherry Hill. She has accompanied him again to the United States. Their son Tenchi, 20, remains in Japan.

Ikeda spoke to us about Subaru's plans to meet the growing demand for environmentally friendly vehicles, its U.S. expansion plans, cheesesteaks, and Impressionism.

Q: Subaru has had trouble meeting sales targets in the past, but recently reported its best sales in 20 years. Does that mean it's on the right track?
A: Actually better this year. Last year, we sold over 200,000 units. It's the best sales in our history, over 200,000. Our target was a little below 200,000, because some products are discontinued, like Baja. (Also, this is a changeover year, when we've introduced four new models.) Our targets were down. Even so, the market is not good ... [because of] oil and the green issue.

Entrepreneur Linda Rosanio learned her earliest lessons about business from her parents, Anthony and Nancy Catelli. In 1946 her late father founded what’s now known as Catelli Brothers Inc., the Collingswood-based provider of lamb and veal products, her mother, who is now 80, kept order in a house with seven children.

The training has served her well. Rosanio, 52, heads the Star Group of Cherry Hill, one of the largest advertising and public relations agencies in the Delaware Valley, where business is soaring so much that it hired 100 people last year alone. In addition, she also owns Catelli Ristorante in Voorhees, which Zagat readers call one of the top in the region for Northern Italian cuisine. Rosanio also is active in civic causes, serving on the boards of the Pennsylvania Ballet, The American Red Cross Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter and the Garden State Discovery Museum.

In an interview with PhillyInc, Rosanio discussed her family, her business interests and her take on the local and national economy.

Q: What did you learn about business by growing up in such a large family?
A: We had to learn how to work together. I have numerous partners. I am able to let them do their thing. You have to be able to have other people have the limelight and do what they do. I learned that from being able to share with my siblings.

When Vijai Gupta arrived in Canada from his native India in 1959 to study chemical engineering at McGill University, he soon realized there wasn't a morsel of Indian food to be found. He quickly became a gastronomic adventurer, sampling cheap delicacies he could afford on a student budget that he had never tried before, such as Hungarian goulash.

Fast-forward to the 1970s. His wife, Jyoti, wanted to start a home-based business to use her nutrition degree while watching over their two children, Anjali and Anuj. So in 1979, while living in Houston, the couple founded JYOTI Cuisine India, named after his wife, and began outsourcing the canning of foods based on Jyoti's recipes. A year later, Gupta, then a scientist at Atlantic Richfield Co., was transferred to the Philadelphia area and brought the food business along. In Their food business took off and by 1997, they moved from his house to the site of a former mushroom cannery.

The road to profitability hasn't been easy. JYOTI was sued after people found pebbles in with their chickpeas and other beans. To solve the problem, Gupta invented bean-cleaning technology that since has been patented and licensed to other food processors.

Last year, Gupta said sales at his Berwyn, Pa.-based company rose 50 percent to $3 million. (It's now owned by the couple's holding company, Gourmail Inc., with Jyoti listed as president.) Now the company, called JYOTI Natural Foods, which provides vegetarian meals to US Airways and British Airways, is launching its first meat product, chicken curries to compliment its vegetarian products.

Q: When you arrived in Canada as a student in 1959, was there any Indian food to be found?
A: There were no restaurants, no Indian grocery stores, and so on. ... I would go all over Montreal to find cheap, good food like Hungarian goulash, for $1.25 (for) the whole meal. ... I went to an Italian restaurant and tried to put some sugar in a cup of tea. ... It turned out it was Parmesan cheese.

As a teen-ager, Kirk Harman loved watching buildings go up. Today at 52, he is riding a boom in casino construction as president of the Harman Group of King of Prussia, the only structural engineering firm in Pennsylvania with significant gaming experience.

In 2001, his firm landed the coveted Borgata Casino Hotel & Spa project in Atlantic City, a towering Las Vegas-style mega-casino. Now its credits include the Mount Airy Casino Resort in the Poconos, Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs in Wilkes Barre, the parking garage at Harrah’s Chester Casino and Racetrack, and the Majestic Star Casino and Valley View Downs, both in Pittsburgh.

Harman has landed the Foxwoods and SugarHouse accounts in Philadelphia. In New Jersey, it is working on the $2.5 billion Revel Entertainment Group casino on the Boardwalk and is wrapping up work on the new hotel towers at the Borgata and Trump Taj Mahal.

A graduate of Lafayette College and Drexel University, Harman started a firm with Jim Cagley in 1984, then in 2004 bought out Cagley and created the Harman Group, now with three other shareholders -- Janis Vacca, Malcolm Bland and Cliff Schwinger.

Q: Why did you get into this line of work?
A: When I was in high school I worked for a residential contractor in the summers, and I was completely thrilled with the whole prospect of building things. Although after a couple of summers digging ditches and cleaning out completed homes and all that labor-type work, it was clear it’d be a really good idea to go to college and do something in the construction process.

GSI Commerce Inc. chief executive and founder Michael Rubin made his first business deal before he could shave, at 12, and owned a chain of ski stores by the time he graduated high school in 1990.

Then he really got to work. Skipping a college degree, Rubin, raised in Lafayette Hill, started KPR Sports International Inc. (his parents initials), a maker of off-priced athletic footwear and apparel. He grew it into a $100 million publicly traded company, renamed it Global Sports, sold off the sportswear side, then renamed it again to GSI Commerce at the height of the dot-com bubble.

Shares in his King of Prussia, Pa.-based company that designs, builds and runs Web sites for retailers closed at an eight-year high last October, but since have slipped on concerns about the economy. Its clients have included Toys "R" US, the NFL and Gordon's Jewelers. It employs about 3,500 in nine states, Spain and the U.K. Last week, it announced a deal to acquire e-mail-based marketing firm e-Dialog Inc. of Lexington, Mass., for $157 million.

Q: You started a ski store at age 12. How did you persuade your parents to support you?
A: I always had a passion for both business and skiing. For me it was a natural. ... (My mother) said it wasn't the best idea (she) ever heard. So, I went to my father, who said he would be supportive as long as I did well in school.