Mow is at least as concerned with providing his family and himself with life's
amenities. The Mows live on a 1.4-acre, 9,000-square-foot estate on the
Westside with their children. Mow drives himself to work in a brand new
black Bentley Turbo-R that set him back at least $175,000. At work the
Bentley is housed with three Ferraris in a private four-car garage in the
basement of the administrative building below his office. Mow is a man who
sees nothing wrong with enjoying the things money can buy.
"Desire is an important motivation," he says. Nor are the uses of money
confined to frivolous pleasures. Even when the banks were closing in during
Bugle Boy's early years, Mow kept his two daughters in very expensive
Westlake Girls' School. He recently gave $300,000 to Genevieve to help her
and her husband make a down payment on a house in Benedict Canyon.
But when it comes to production and administrative costs Mow is a relentless
cost cutter. He pursues costcutting with religious zeal. "If I can cut a few
cents here and a few cents there and save a dollar from the cost of making a
pair of pants that sell wholesale for $12.50," he says, "that's my profit." The
results have been remarkable. For the fiscal year ending last April BBI
earned an exceptional 10% pre-tax profits on sales of $480 million while
achieving a whopping 70% sales growth over 1989. For '91 Mow expects 20%
growth, and 35% for fiscal '92 when sales are expected to reach $900 million.
"This is our year for consolidating," Mow says. And there has been a great
deal of growth to consolidate. Only eight years ago BBI sales were only $2.6
million.
"Bugle Boy is much more than Bill Mow," its founder says with a humility that
is at once rhetorical and genuinely felt. He is speaking about his duty to the
company as distinguished from his duty to himself. "Bugle Boy has become
more than I ever imagined when I started it." He tells about the time he
wandered into a store in Topanga Canyon that sells Bugle Boy pants and
started talking to the sales clerk. When the clerk asked what he did, Mow
told him that he owned Bugle Boy. "That stopped the conversation. He
thought I was lying. After that, I don't tell people I own Bugle Boy."
ow Chao Wei was born in Hangchow in western China near
Chungking on April 18, 1936. He is the fourth of six sons. "That's why I've
never been able to understand women," Mow jokes of his family's
remarkable lack of daughters. His father, Mow Pan Tsu, was a soldier of the
Nationalist government since he was 19. "He was fighting warlords," Mow
says. Despite Pan Tsu's lack of education he distinguished himself so well
that at the age of 28 he became the youngest general in the Chinese army.
His own father had been a seaman working on English boats. Before Mow
was born, Pan Tsu had been promoted to general of China's new air force and
sent to Hangchow to head the air force academy. Like Pan Tsu, Mow's mother
was from a family that had immigrated to Shanghai from a small village.
Soon after Mow Chao Wei's birth war broke out with Japan. When the future
Bill Mow was two, the family moved to Chungking where it lived lavishly, as
befitted a general's family, in a large house guarded by a squad of soldiers.
In 1942 father Pan Tsu was sent to the U.S. as a diplomat for the Nationalist
government. By the time the war ended the family was living in Chentu. In
1946 when Mow was in the third grade the family undertook the long boat
journey down the Yangtse River to Shanghai. Even today Bill Mow recalls the
beauty of the downriver journey, exhorting me to make a similar one should
I find myself in China. The journey was so long the family didn't actually get
established in Shanghai until 1947. The Mow boys were sent to one of the
best schools in a city known for its fine schools.
In 1948 the Communist threat forced the family to move to Taiwan. It
returned to Shanghai in March 1949 in time to board the last Pan Am flight
to the U.S. before the city fell to the Communists. Mow, 12, had just started
sixth grade. The family first lived in Washington D.C. where Pan Tsu was
stationed. Without being able to speak more than a word or two of English
Mow started in the sixth grade at the Oyster School. "I still remember my
first day," Bill Mow says. "I couldn't believe my eyes when they stopped
class at ten in the morning to give us milk and cookies. I thought it was a
wonderful place." Thanks to his math proficiency the teacher let him
graduate that June.
PAGE 6
ow Chao Wei was born in Hangchow in western China near
Chungking on April 18, 1936. He is the fourth of six sons. "That's why I've
never been able to understand women," Mow jokes of his family's
remarkable lack of daughters. His father, Mow Pan Tsu, was a soldier of the
Nationalist government since he was 19. "He was fighting warlords," Mow
says. Despite Pan Tsu's lack of education he distinguished himself so well
that at the age of 28 he became the youngest general in the Chinese army.
His own father had been a seaman working on English boats. Before Mow
was born, Pan Tsu had been promoted to general of China's new air force and
sent to Hangchow to head the air force academy. Like Pan Tsu, Mow's mother
was from a family that had immigrated to Shanghai from a small village.
