Macy's

"For Brendan Paddick, the Columbus sale turned his US $ 12.5-million personal investment into just over US $ 200 million. Yet he struggled in the year or so after, finding himself with little to do after a decade of heavy work and extensive travel. “We were in acquisition mode, refinancing mode, and then sale mode for two years. So you went from literally hundreds of emails a day on the deal and diligence and answering questions and dealing with the investment bankers and would-be purchasers to, you know, the deal is done and the next morning it’s like, ‘Oh look, menswear is 20 percent off at Macy’s.’” He laughed, then added: “It was very difficult for me personally to go from such a well-defined sense of purpose to almost no sense of purpose. Great, so I got way more money in the bank than I did last week. But what’s my role here?”"

"LensCrafters was founded in 1983 by Dean Butler, a Michigan entrepreneur, who had set his mind on changing the world of opticians. Why wait days to deliver complete glasses after the visit? Just add a lab to the store and the processing can be done immediately. The idea had come to him when he was a manager at Procter & Gamble, helping a colleague who had resigned to take over the family's optical shop. With a few television spots, he had managed to quadruple sales every month, demonstrating how backward the sector was from a commercial point of view. There were prairies to conquer, given that the American market for opticians had just been liberalized and most of the sales were covered by health insurance. Visiting the labs, he realized that the operations to make a complete pair of glasses lasted no more than twenty minutes, yet customers were made to wait for days. "It all happened by chance, I saw an incredible opportunity. How was it possible to wait weeks when you could deliver finished glasses in less than an hour?" he tells the website of the University of Michigan. Butler opens his first store in Kentucky, in the Florence shopping center, across the Ohio River, in the great suburbs of Cincinnati. The idea exploits the boom of the "malls," the new agoras of Americans, the indoor squares where they go shopping and eat fast food, where love stories are born, where grandparents are taken to cool off in summer and to warm up in winter. The concept of glasses prepared on the spot is perfect for American customers, who while waiting go to eat at McDonald's, go shopping at Macy's, or take children on the indoor colorful rides. LensCrafters was thus born, the first chain of stores that assembles your product within an hour. Butler then sold the chain to the US Shoe Corporation conglomerate, remaining CEO."