Entrepreneur of Year Runners-up: Peak Performance and Mills Menser
Mark Dempsey and Bob Schaal were working as physical therapists at Health South, a national provider of physical therapy services, when they saw a business opportunity: The big physical therapy companies were ignoring markets outside the major metropolitan areas.
They opened three Peak Performance Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine clinics in 1999: in Columbia, near Columbia Regional Hospital; in Fulton; and in Jefferson City. A month after celebrating its 10-year anniversary, Peak was chosen as runner-up in the competition for CBT’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Peak expanded into even smaller communities, such as Ashland, Centralia, Fayette, California and Marshall. After starting with nine employees, the company now has 82 full- and part-time workers and operates 11 clinics in central Missouri.
Peak also bucked the trend in the physical therapy business of investing heavily in facilities and the latest equipment. The company says it invested in its employees, making sure everyone was well-qualified and would be a good fit in the community.
In the past three years, net revenue increased an average of 7 percent per year while total expenses were rising about 6 percent per year over the same period. The number of visits increased 11 percent between 2007 and 2008 to nearly 60,000.
In 2004, Schaal left the company to become president of the physical therapy division of a health-care management company in Kansas, and Peak Performance managers Shaon Fry and Todd Ankenman became co-owners with Dempsey.
Peak Performance opened a second Columbia location in 2006, moving into the new Wilson’s Total Fitness building when it opened on Forum Boulevard. And in 2007, the company purchased a practice for the first time, Peters Rehab on Chapel Hill Boulevard.
Later this year, Peak Performance will open a clinic at the Providence Urgent Care center.
Menser runner-up for CBT Young Entrepreneur of Year
Buchroeder’s is the oldest retailer and largest jeweler in Columbia, but its young owner attributes the company’s recent growth to unconventional thinking.
Mills Menser began operating Buchroeder’s for his father in 2005 while attending evening finance classes at Columbia College. He bought the jewelry store in July 2007.
When he started running Buchroeder’s, the company was losing money. In three years, annual sales grew 28 percent and the jeweler was profitable again.
In 2008, generally a terrible time for retailers, Buchroeder’s posted its largest annual sales growth in company history.
Menser, 25, said he operates on the premise that money is made when you buy, not sell. He rejected traditional jewelry-purchasing methods that had gone virtually unchanged for decades and found ways to substantially lower the cost of goods. He started buying directly from one of the industry’s largest diamond miners and cutters rather than through brokers.
Menser also bought inventory from brokers in financial distress, estates and individuals through his wholesale buying company, the Diamond Banc, located on Ninth Street downtown. The creation of the spin-off business in April 2008, Menser said, was a response to the deteriorating economy and soaring gold prices.
He also created flexible financing options and his own jewelry insurance policy for customers, and added a fee to cover processing charges from financing companies.
Menser launched an online sales division in 2008 and recently opened a Jefferson City branch of Diamond Banc.
Menser also is a co-owner of On the Rocks, a bar in the Menser building on Broadway, a few doors down from the jewelry store.