Through friends he met in Hong Kong, he landed a job at a Japanese steamship company and was sent to Newport Beach, Calif., for training. He was transferred to Houston, where he spent a few years in sales. That's also where he met E-Merge President Greg Norton, who worked for a Japanese manufacturing company. I was a shipping guy. He said he was moving back to Buffalo, he grew up here.
Buffalo is closer.
Site unseen, Madden moved to Buffalo in November 1994 and found the city was not very unlike his hometown of Boston. Both cities are on the water, both are immigrant towns with similar ethnic and racial make-ups and both are filled with old architecture. And having grown up playing hockey, it didn't hurt that Buffalo had a professional hockey team of its own. Madden later met his wife here and the couple bought a house in the city on Bidwell Parkway. Deciding to remain in the city was an easy decision.