Profile of Success: Booting It Up

CS: Was this your first foray in the catalog business?

TP: No. Out here in Seattle, I started a Seattle alumni association for the University of Florida. The Gators are about as far from home as we could get, so we needed stuff to wear to our football games and when we would watch them on TV.

So I started a mail order catalog, Club Gator, to sell University of Florida sweatshirts, T-shirts and gift items to other alums who were out of state. I was putting together a compiled list to go forward with that when, through our research, I discovered it wasn’t going to work because 75 percent of alums still live in Florida and can get their Gator goods pretty quickly and locally.