Forbes Magazine - Victories in Capitalism
International - July, 2005 - As a budding industrial designer, Dosho Shifferaw, a young immigrant from Ethiopia transplanted to California's Bay Area, couldn't stop experimenting with his ideas. Working on the structure for an ergonomically correct chair he had drawn up, he tried bending a polymer rod into shape over his shoulder and invented an industry.
"The chair wasn't going anywhere, but I could feel my muscles burning," he says, after tugging and pulling on the steel rod. "I thought, wow,this is a great workout." With that, BowFlex was born, an exercise machine that uses rods, rather than weights, as resistance.
Even though Shifferaw was certain BowFlex was a terrific idea, he found no takers as he presented his device to different manufacturers in the early 1980s. Working as a cab driver to support himself, he was in no position to fund the plan on his own, and he was about to give up - until a friend suggested he contact the Minority Business Development Agnecy (MBDA). Representatives from the agency worked with Sifferaw and taught him what he needed to know about writing up a business plan, setting up a company and attracting investors. "That was the beginning of my dreams turning into reality," says Sifferaw. Today, BowFlex, Inc., which is now owned by The Nautilus Group, has sold more than $1 billion worth of rod-based exercise equipment.
All of which is just one more success story in the long and golden legacy of the Minority Buiness Development Agency. As part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the MBDA is an entrepreneurial organization serving entrepreneurs, and is committed to wealth creation in minority communities. "For minority entrepreneurs, we can make the difference between a dream that succeeds and a dream that turns to dust," says Ronald N. Langston, the agency's national director. "Our Mission could not be more important." Langston further notes from an MBDA-commissioned study by the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth that "the success or failure of minorit-owned businesses will increasingly drive the success or failure of the overal economy." In short, "As minority enterprises grow America," say Langston.
