How a sharpened focus on the market let Terri Alpert carve out new niches for her two catalog businesses, Uno Alla Volta and Cooking Enthusiast

By Mark Del Franco

Alpert left her Wall Street job at Morgan Stanley on maternity leave and eventually founded Professional Cutlery Direct. “I knew about high-end financial products and derivatives and could build technology around that,” she says. “I wanted to see if I could create a real company from $10,000 or less. That was the goal originally. But basically, I wanted to learn things on the cheap. I’d put those learnings into whatever I’d end up doing next.”