page_title: Business career of Mitt Romney
section_title: Back at Bain Capital for the rest of the 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Business career of Mitt Romney / Back at Bain Capital for the rest of the 1990s
caption_attribution_description: English: Brookstone Outlet Store, Kittery Maine
context_page_description: The business career of Mitt Romney began shortly after he finished graduate school in 1975. At that time, Romney entered the management consulting industry, and in 1977 secured a position at Bain & Company. Later serving as its chief executive officer, he helped bring the company out of financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded and led the spin-off Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. The fortune he earned from his business career is estimated at $190–250 million.
context_section_description: After Romney and Bain took over Brookstone in 1991, they replaced Brookstone's CEO in 1993, shifted to more Brookstone-branded items, moved more catalog content onto the company's website in 1996, and, instead of selling gifts began offering more practical items.  Brookstone survived while its competitor, Sharper Image, declared bankruptcy.
  In July 1992 (while Romney was still rescuing Bain & Company), Bain Capital acquired Ampad from Mead Corporation, which had acquired the company in 1986.  Mead, which was experiencing difficulties integrating Ampad's products into its existing product lines, generated a cash gain of $56 million on the sale.  Under Bain's ownership, the company enjoyed a significant growth in sales from $106.7 million in 1992 to $583.9 million in 1996, when the company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.  Under Bain's ownership, the company also made a number of acquisitions, including writing products company SCM in July 1994, brand names from the American Trading and Production Corporation in August 1995, WR Acquisition and the Williamhouse-Regency Division of Delaware, Inc. in October, 1995, Niagara Envelope Company, Inc. in 1996, and Shade/Allied, Inc. in February 1997.  Ampad's revenue began to decline in 1997 and the company laid off employees and closed production facilities to maintain profitability.  The Ampad transaction is one of Romney's few regrets from his Bain years.
  In 1994, Bain Capital  acquired Totes, a producer of umbrellas and overshoes.  Three years later, Totes, under Bain's ownership, acquired Isotoner, a producer of leather gloves.  Totes Isotoner is now the largest supplier of umbrellas in the world.
  Bain Capital, together with Thomas H. Lee Partners, acquired Experian, the consumer credit reporting business of TRW, in 1996 for more than $1 billion.  Formerly known as TRW's Information Systems and Services unit, Experian is one of the leading providers of credit reports on consumers and businesses in the US.  The company was sold to Great Universal Stores for $1.7 billion just months after being acquired.
  Other notable Bain investments of the late 1990s included Sealy Corporation  (the manufacturer of mattresses), Alliance Laundry Systems, Domino's Pizza, and Artisan Entertainment.  The Sealy and Domino's Pizza investments have been ranked by TheStreet.com as two of the five Romney-era investments by Bain Capital that had the biggest impact on American consumers; the other three were Staples and Sports Authority in the 1980s, and Brookstone in 1991.  In 1997, when Bain invested in Sealy, the company already had a 23% share of the $4 billion mattress market, and Bain decided to make all parts of the mattress in a constant flow instead of in batches (thereby producing only the amount ordered by consumers and consequently reducing inventory), while redesigning the core mattress; Sealy's earnings increased by half in three years.  Bain bought 93% of Domino's in 1998, and installed personnel who substantially boosted profits.  As for Bain's purchase of film studio Artisan Entertainment in the late 1990s, Romney refused to get personally involved with it, because of its R-rated films.
  Much of the firm's profits were earned from a relatively small number of deals, with Bain Capital's overall success and failure rate being about even.  One study of 68 deals that Bain Capital made up through the 1990s found that the firm lost money or broke even on 33 of them.  Another study that looked at the eight-year period following 77 deals during the same time found that in 17 cases the company went bankrupt or out of business, and in 6 cases Bain Capital lost all its investment. But 10 deals were very successful and represented 70 percent of the total profits.  Bain Capital has publicly asserted that 80% of their 350 companies and 100 start-up investments grew as a result of Bain investments.
  Romney took a leave of absence from Bain Capital from November 1993 to November 1994 in order to run for the U.S. Senate.  During that time, Ampad workers went on strike, and asked Romney to interve
caption: A Brookstone outlet store in Kittery, Maine
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