Forever young: Even a reluctant economy can't curb the drive and ambition of these young millionaires

Entrepreneur, Nov, 2001 by Nichole L. Torres, Peter Kooiman, P. Kelly Smith, April Pennington, Mike Besack, Jenny Kee

In 1999, Rubin hit on a new game plan and a new tag line. "I heard the Internet calling," says Rubin. Global Sports Interactive was started later that year. Based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Global Sports Interactive creates and runs e-commerce sporting goods sites for companies like The Athlete's Foot and FoxSports.com. Rubin's business handles everything from technology development to order fulfillment.

The B2B approach to B2C is certainly helping Global Sports to thrive on the shaky Web playing field. "The retailers are happy because they're immediately profitable in e-commerce, and unlike other dotcoms, we don't have to spend millions of dollars promoting our online business [to consumers]," Rubin says.

Rubin, an avid sports fan, describes his workdays as "business adventures." "Global Sports is a lifelong passion for me," he says, "and I think it's that passion that keeps everything from getting stale." With $42.8 million in 2000 sales and deals to handle e-commerce fulfillment for Kmart's Bluelight.com and Northeast retailer Modell's Sporting Goods, think of him as the Tiger Woods of the sports e-commerce world.

RICHARD OWEN, 32

TODD WICHMANN, 31

REDOX BRANDS

WHEN PROCTER & GAMBLE GAVE up on Oxydol detergent last year, it looked like one of the industry's oldest brands was dead. But P&G execs Richard Owen (top, left) and Todd Wichmann saw opportunity where their bosses only saw failure. Last year, the two pals quit their jobs and persuaded P&G to sell Oxydol to their fledgling company, Cincinnati-based Redox Brands.

Initially, Owen and Wichmann thought Oxydol would strike a chord with nostalgic baby boomers, but they soon discovered their target demographic had high brand loyalty to other detergents. Fortunately, research also showed that Gen X women weren't loyal to any particular brand. Owen and Wichmann saw their niche.

"Everyone in the laundry category is focused on the same user: women ages 35 and older with kids," says Wichmann. "Oxydol is speaking to younger women. We realized there's a market for a brand that speaks their language and understands their high-energy, active lifestyle."

Oxydol's marketing campaigns feature mud-stained dirt bikers and tag lines such as "Get Dirty. We Dare You." Its label reads "Don't freak. Help conquer your most extreme dirt, not to mention laundrophobia."

Owen and Wichmann have no plans to ditch their strategy of relaunching brands with heavy name recognition (the company also bought Biz bleach from P&G last year). "We want brands that have lived and thrived with high consumer awareness," says Wichmann, who projects 2001 sales of $60 million. "This allows us to focus on relaunching the brand [without] spending tens of millions of dollars just getting it known in the first place."

JOHN JACOBS, 33

BERT JACOBS, 36

LIFE Is GOOD

IT'S NOT ALWAYS EASY TO FOCUS ON THE positive. For John Jacobs (bottom, left) and Bert Jacobs, however, positivity is a way of life. In 1989, the brothers began designing and hawking T-shirts on the streets of Boston, eventually quitting their substitute teaching jobs to take a five-year trek through the East Coast college scene to peddle their shirts. Although they slept in their van and only made enough to eat and travel to the next destination, their adventures would make for a perfect philosophy for their company.