private-company
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Horizon Brands Built a Retail Machine. Then AI Put Its Claims to the Test
Horizon Brands turned backup cameras, jump starters, baby monitors and LED lights into a portfolio built for big-box shelves. Its next lesson is harder to package: in consumer AI, the claim needs engineering as rigorous as the product.
The Grocery Chain That Built a Moat Out of Being Local
Stater Bros. cannot outscale Walmart or Kroger. Its answer is a dense Southern California network, staffed counters, local memory and the stubborn belief that a grocery store can still feel like part of the neighborhood.
Markwins Beauty Brands
The name is quiet. The products are everywhere. Markwins built a global beauty portfolio by treating affordable makeup as an operating-system problem - brands up front, factories and distribution behind them.
MGA Entertainment
The largest privately held toy company in the world was built on brass giftware, a $750 immigrant bet, and the radical idea that the fun is in not knowing what is in the box.
Cox Enterprises
Cox Enterprises is a privately held, family-owned conglomerate based in Atlanta, Georgia, that traces its roots to a single Ohio newspaper bought by James M. Cox in 1898. Over more than a century it grew into a roughly $23 billion-a-year business spanning broadband and cable (Cox Communications), automotive services and marketplaces (Cox Automotive, which owns Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book and Manheim), and media (Cox Media Group and Axios). Still controlled by the Cox family and led by fourth-generation CEO Alex Taylor, the company reinvests its cash into new bets such as greenhouse agriculture, advanced plastics recycling and healthcare, while pursuing an aggressive Cox Conserves goal to be carbon and water neutral by 2034.