Vital Statistics
Age. 31.
Where born: Salt Lake City.
Family: Wife Cynthia Kofford, daughter Whitney, 2 1/2 and son Max 1.
Education: Attended the University of Utah, master's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, Sloan School of Management.
Primary products: A publicly traded chain of bookstores offering discount prices on newly released books, tapes, compact discs, videos, computerized software and other items for LDS consumers. Also, traditional/mainstream titles including self-improvement books, fiction, children's books, cartoons and videos.
Primary markets: Stores in Utah Arizona, Texas and California.
Number of employees: 35.
Annual sales: Approaching $4 million.
Personality Profile
First "real" job: Stuffing envelopes for Vox Box; delivering newspapers.
Management style: To paraphrase Joseph Smith, "Lay down good policies and principles and let people manage as if it is their own company."
Strategy for success: "Give the customers what they want."
A memorable failure: When working on Wall Street, one of the trading strategies I worked on lost a quarter of a million dollars."
Heroes: John Gault and Sun Tse.
Leisure time and hobbies: Reading to my kids. I used to devote a lot more time to book collecting.
Favorite book and movie: "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. "Chariots of Fire."