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

“Things were looking good at that point, too,” says Alpert, founder/CEO of what are now two jointly operated companies, Uno Alla Volta and Cooking Enthusiast. “We could have easily rested on
our laurels.”

In just a few years of existence, by the late ’90s, Professional Cutlery Direct had made the Inc. 500 list three straight years. “We had our strongest financials ever and had been profitable every year since our inception,” Alpert reflects. But she realized that things had to change fairly quickly.