The first edition of the event, held in 2002, featured affordable apartment investor Daryl Carter and medical device exec Ray Cohen among the five inaugural honorees.
Both have gone on to bigger things. Carter last month made his largest-ever local purchase (an $87M buy in Anaheim) as head of Avanath Capital Management, while Cohen last week saw his latest firm, $2.2B-valued Axonics (Nasdaq: AXNX), raise some $175 million in a stock offering.
Don’t bet against Anthony Geisler and his Xponential Fitness for the long haul, either. Despite the challenges facing the fitness franchisor during the pandemic, it now has a larger footprint than it did in early 2020; see our front-page feature for more.
Geisler, one of five EIE winners profiled in this week’s edition, told CommerceWest Bank’s Ivo Tjan during the virtual event that his chains have seen two new types of customers emerge the past year: “orphan members” whose old gyms closed for good during the pandemic, and “COVID resolution people” who used the pandemic to re-dedicate themselves to becoming fitter.
Geisler tells our Kari Hamanaka that any new fitness concept Xponential adds to the fold would be a totally different concept to what’s already in the company’s nine-brand portfolio.
That takes indoor cycling studio GritCycle, co-founded by Marissa Wayne (daughter of The Duke) out of the running. In fact, that Costa Mesa-based firm late last year got a new local ownership team—Jon and Gail Gray, described as “longtime loyal riders-turned-owners.”
Jon Gray also owns and runs Costa Mesa’s Orange Coast Auto Group, which counts a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram dealership along Harbor Boulevard.
His dealership was profiled by the Business Journal last December, when it partnered with Irvine auto tech upstart Digital Motors Corp., whose CEO, Andy Hinrichs, was an EIE Award winner in 2018, while helming another auto-focused tech startup, AutoGravity.
The old HQ of AutoGravity, replete with an indoor slide to connect floors, is now used by Smart Energy Water, whose CEO Deepak Garg is one of this year’s EIE winners. See page 6 for more on Garg and SEW, and page 18 for more on the Gray’s philanthropic efforts at their new fitness chain.
When it was announced last week that Bill and Melinda Gates, who run the world’s largest private foundation, were divorcing after 27 years of marriage, national reports were quick to point out other splits of the super-rich that were far from amicable.
The made-for-the-tabloids maneuvering of Bill and Sue Gross during their breakup, finalized in 2017, was oft-cited as one such proceeding that went poorly. Forbes succinctly called it a “messy split.”
That didn’t dissuade the Bond King from getting back into the marriage game. Late last month, he and longtime life partner Amy Schwartz tied the knot in Indian Wells.
The Laguna Beach couple’s ceremony was held alongside that city’s Vintage Club. The duffers drove a golf cart adorned with a “Just Married’ sign, according to reports.
