Cover Story - Connect Business Magazine

January 1, 2004 Daniel Vance

Lorin Krueger – 2004 Business Person Of The Year

CEO Lorin Krueger of $20 million Winland Electronics is every bit Noah.

They laughed and laughed at Noah when he took on ark building. It seemed such a hopeless project, that of building on dry land so far from coast and port. But Noah had faith he was doing the right thing. After its construction, he immediately marched his tiny band inside and boy did it rain, and rain, and rain. The rain seemed as if it never would stop, cats and dogs, day and night, buckets all over. Though the storm clouds roared as pounding timpani and lightning shot its deadly arrows, and others outside the ark were lost, the tiny band never lost faith. In due time, he and his few, having survived, marched off the ark two by two to multiply profitably. It was a miracle.

Cover Story

November 1, 2003 Daniel Vance

Al Annexstad

The kid’s dad died young. Suddenly he and three siblings were baptized into a single-parent home and mom had to sell the farm. To make ends meet, she labored in a hot kitchen preparing meals for other people’s kids. He was a youngster at risk. Fatherless poor kids from large families often gravitate to the wrong side of the tracks.

But not an Annexstad, and not in St. Peter.

Cover Story

September 1, 2003 Daniel Vance

Bob Gallaway

Trivia few could answer:
Name the largest business headquartered in Mankato.

Think you know? In terms of revenue, the correct answer since 2000 has been Ridley Inc., the $500 million, cash-rich corporate mammoth sitting high and dry on Riverfront Drive next to the railroad tracks and flood wall.

Cover Story

July 1, 2003 Daniel Vance

Louise Dickmeyer

It seems almost aeons since your five-year run as executive director of Valley Industrial Development Corp.* ended. So much has changed since 1997. You then became national marketing director of Scholarship Management Services (SMS) before joining the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce (MRCC) in 1999. You left there in January 2003 as its chief executive officer and president. You have earned a Masters from Regis University of Denver, Colorado.

And now you’ve returned home.

Cover Story

May 1, 2003 Daniel Vance

Ed Bosanko

Historian Steven J. Keillor* writes in his book Cooperative Commonwealth that the cooperative was a widely used form of business organization in rural Minnesota through World War II because “business was distant” then. Rural residents and farmers organized cooperatives, such as the creamery, to provide goods and services to areas off the beaten track from big-city suppliers. Ownership in a co-op also gave these rural denizens a measure of local control over their economies.

Cover Story

March 1, 2003 Daniel Vance

John Linder

Only four persons from the nine-county area around Greater Mankato have been inducted into the Minnesota Museum of Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Of the four, three are Linders. Our cover story, John Linder, isn’t in the MMB Hall of Fame—yet, but he is creating lots of radio waves in our state’s broadcasting industry.

His waves aren’t tsunamis: they’re more a never-ending, behind-the-scenes ripple.

Cover Story

January 1, 2003 Daniel Vance

Dan Gislason

Dan Gislason digs the Icelandic countryside. It’s a winter wonderland of crystal-clean waterfalls and gargantuan glaciers, an arctic canvas of white and lipstick red homes nestled against pastel-green Ansel Adams ridges. Iceland is a cornucopia of mentally stimulating sights and refreshing sounds—the rushing waterfall, the flapping gull, the gentle spring wind melting ice. Rural Iceland would have been a natural fit for Dan today if his ancestors hadn’t left there in the late 1800s.

Cover Story

November 1, 2002 Daniel Vance

Al Fallenstein

You can hear his high-tech tank approaching now: an Everest & Jennings electric wheelchair on commercial carpet emits a distinctive, high-pitched whirr, signalling “General” Al Fallenstein’s double-time advance to the front lines. While surveying the foxholes at 1725 Roe Crest Drive through powered-up binoculars, he really does seem like a field general leading troops into battle. And in response, the troops stiffen their resolve upon seeing his courage. All that’s missing is a tattered American war flag and a bugler’s charge.

It’s likely Al Fallenstein has never thought of himself as a corporate leader, or an inspiration, but nonetheless he is both and more. If what Napoleon said is true, namely, that “in war, the morale is to the material as three is to one,” then it’s no wonder the 85-division Taylor Corp. army has won so many corporate battles.

Cover Story

September 1, 2002 Daniel Vance

Mark Davis

Cows are boring, really.

They eat grass, mull around, and moo.

Milk is white, also boring. If it weren’t for the containers that hold it, milk would be a series of boring white puddles. It can’t even moo or chew cud. It’s Plain Jane, ho-hum, blah, vanilla, and boring, boring, boring.