As a boy, Brad Wolansky '86 and his family celebrated an annual fall event that rivaled Christmas for busyness and drama. "Schoolbag season" was the frantic rush to monogram schoolbags for customers of their luggage store, founded by Wolansky's grandfather in 1936.

"He sold anything he could find to sell. Like many startup businesses, he ran it by the seat of his pants," says Wolansky. "It was firmly rooted in Staten Island. It was a fixture in the community."

Today, as vice president for global e-commerce at Orvis, the high-end outdoors and sporting-goods retailer, Wolansky oversees a retail environment far different from his grandfather's.

While Orvis' more than $300 million in annual sales come about equally from catalogs, stores and the Web, Wolansky embraces the culture of innovation and change in e-commerce. He has overseen improvements to the company's highly regarded Web site — live chat, Bill Me Later and natural search optimization — that have yielded "millions of dollars in incremental sales," according to Orvis.

Recognizing that the online experience affects the brand experience, Wolansky and Orvis offer way more that just boots and shotguns. The joint Orvis / Cushman & Wakefield brokerage offers a 250,000-acre ranch for sale in New Mexico for $115 million, and the Orvis travel site offers destination vacations, such as a fly-fishing trip to Kamchatka.

"It's done first of all to generate sales — it's a business," he says. "It also helps to create the Orvis lifestyle."

— Michele Pavitt