Career Details
Mow’s first experience with entrepreneurship came from the Yangtse River Cafe, his family’s restaurant in Great Neck, New York. Every Sunday when he returned to boarding school as a teen, he would bring with him 20 egg rolls, which he sold for a quarter apiece at the school snack bar. “There was always a line of boys waiting to buy them,” he recalled.

After earning his Ph.D., Mow spent the years from 1967 to 1969 working for Litton Industries as a program manager before forming his first business in 1969, a computer-controlled instrumentation firm called Macrodata. Macrodata designed new ways to test large scale integrated computer chips. By 1974, Macrodata had annual sales of $12 million. In the mid–1970s, Mow sold Macro-data to Cutler-Hammer, a conglomerate located in Milwaukee. He remained on as chairman and CEO but had to resign after the new owners accused him of concealing $2 million worth of losses. He would later remember the years 1976 until 1981 as a “nightmare.” Mow had gone into the relationship with Cutler-Hammer thinking they would provide him with management backing while he focused on technology; instead, due to accusations that he had manipulated the financial records, he found himself forced to leave the company he had founded. Later, in 1988, a California court cleared Mow of any accusations and found that Culter-Hammer had actually been responsible for concealing the sales loss. The entire incident took a toll on Mow’s personal life — his first marriage ended during that period.
After Mow resigned from Macrodata, he felt the need to take immediate action to clear his name and to pay for the legal fees he had incurred. In 1976 he acted on the advice of some golfing friends and began exploring wholesale and retail clothing sales. He also met his future partner, Vincent Nesi, who worked in a boutique jeans store. Mow started Buckaroo International Inc., a boutique store, in 1977 and hired Nesi as merchandise manager. Success was far from immediate, as Mow had a lot to learn about the apparel business. In Notable Asian Americans he said, “I got myself a ‘school-of-hardknocks’ Ph.D. in understanding every step in composing a garment.”
In September 1980, Mow redirected his clothing company. He renamed the company Bugle Boy Industries (chosen because of his interest in the Civil War and the men who played bugles alongside battles) and asked his merchandise manager, Vincent Nesi, to step up to the position of president of sales and merchandise. Mow and Nesi narrowed their focus to jeans and casual pants. The two men operated as partners; Mow worked out of his Simi Valley, California company headquarters (headquarters for administration, operations, advertising, and distribution) and Nesi worked in the garment district of New York (the location of merchandising, product design, and sales). Because the company was private — and Mow had declared it would remain so because the Macrodata fiasco showed him what could happen if he lost control of his business — Mow and Nesi in 1994 remained the only Bugle Boy shareholders. The company opened stores in Canada in 1988, and spread to various locations in the Pacific Rim, Latin America, and Europe.

http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6317/Mow-William.html