Troy Carter — Founder, chairman and chief executive of Atom Factory, an entertainment and music management company based in Los Angeles.
"Australia is steady, India is strong — Europe is slowly falling asleep," said Marlies Janssen, the Dutch chief executive of Retail D'sign Factory, a design and purchasing company based in Shanghai that specializes in vacuum cleaners and kitchen blenders.
"Before this downturn, we had forgotten how quickly companies can fail," says Bruce Weindruch, founder and chief executive of the History Factory, a Washington marketing consultancy that looks after companies' legacies.
If you've had a chance to read Rebecca Mead's piece in the magazine this week about Alloy Entertainment, take comfort in knowing that not all young-adult novels are pumped out of a factory where executives pitch titles like "I Did the President's Daughter" at breakneck speed.
"Paying $100 million in a golden parachute amazed even me," Mikhail Prokhorov, a former part owner and chief executive of the Norilsk factory, wrote in a post on the Web site of the Echo of Moscow radio station.
"He was always in character — you never saw the real Robin," said Jamie Masada, founder and chief executive of the Laugh Factory.
Drew Vogelman is chief executive of a guitar case maker, the Merrill Lynch ad tells us, showing Vogelman standing on his factory floor.
One executive of a major British company told me he was so concerned by this he was ordering every one of his factories to be energy self-sufficient.
"It's such a simple theory to say that everyone knows you make more profit growing bananas than potatoes," said an executive of one metal working factory who used a farming analogy to question the central government's energy reforms.
She added, "It gives manufacturers the excuse they're looking for to say, 'We're not to blame.' " Scott Nova, the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a factory monitoring group based in Washington, was also at the meeting.
