Masters of Reinvention

“Many people — including some in my own organization — honestly believed no one would ever again shop in stores,” Sacher says. “And I was being pressured to scrap my catalog and concentrate on the Internet. Venture capitalists were showering start-up companies with names like guy.com and male.com with tens of millions [of dollars], while I had to beg the bank for a few million, even though I had been in business for 15 years and making a profit.” Sacher adds, “Thankfully I didn’t take on any venture capital deals that required unrealistically rapid growth.”