Making The Most Of A Second Act

BusinessWeek:

The Entrepreneur: Doug Ducey, 44

Background: Ducey made his name in ice cream. As the CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, he helped its founder, Don Sutherland, expand the brand from a single shop in Arizona to more than 1,400 stores worldwide, with annual sales of nearly $500 million. In May, 2007, Ducey and Sutherland merged the outfit with Kahala, a privately held franchising powerhouse, in a multimillion-dollar deal. Not long after the deal, however, Ducey left the newly combined company.

The Company: Ducey’s next act was to join iMemories, a Scottsdale (Ariz.) company started in 2006 that converts home movies, photos, and slides into digitally remastered DVDs. In 2008, Ducey helped launch iMemories Online, the company’s Internet-based technology that allows customers to store, customize, and share their home movies online.

Revenues: NA

His Story: My 12 years leading Cold Stone Creamery were incredibly exciting - who wouldn’t want to be part of one of the fastest-growing brands in the country? Once we achieved household-name status with stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Guam, Japan, and South Korea, I was looking for the next opportunity for expansion. A merger of Cold Stone and Kahala seemed the perfect recipe for future success. We planned for total integration in 90 days. However, nine weeks into the integration, Kevin Blackwell, the past Kahala CEO and current chairman of the merged company, told me that he ‘was bored’ and wanted to ‘be more involved.’

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