Cable vision.

• Position: Communication Cable Inc. - On the Market

Jim Fore and Charles Wellard's knack for finding bargains would impress even the savviest yard-sale prowler. But these guys aren't nosing through estate sales. They buy old cable-making equipment from failing companies - at discount prices.

Fore is chairman and president and Wellard is executive vice president of Communication Cable Inc. (CABL-NASDAQ), a Siler City-based manufacturer of electronic cable. Most of its sales - 85 percent - come from coaxial and multi-conductor cables. Its 500 industrial customers use the cables for computers and medical equipment and for televisions and other telecommunication systems.

The 6-year-old company's sales have leaped from $1.6 million in 1986 to $25.1 million in 1990. It ranked 18th on Inc. magazine's 1990 list of the fastest-growing small public companies. The rapid growth hasn't come at the expense of profits. After losing $81,000 in 1986, the company earned $1.9 million in 1990.

"You've got a couple of guys who've spent their lives in the cable business," says Mike Mead, vice president of research for Legg Mason Wood Walker in Baltimore. "They've been able to purchase company assets at very low, reasonable prices, by all appearances. They've started a business in an industry that is capital-intensive with relatively low investment."

Wellard founded a manufacturer of electronic components in 1961 and sold it to Meriden, Conn.-based Insilco Corp. in 1968. He and Fore then spent 15 years building Insilco subsidiary Computer Circuitry Group, in Research Triangle Park, into a $70 million maker of electronic hardware for computers and related equipment. In 1984, Wellard retired. Fore quit to start his own company and persuaded Wellard to join him.

"We saw this opportunity," Fore says, and they couldn't pass it up. They bought the assets of bankrupt Communication Cable, based in Attleboro, Mass., from a Connecticut bank with Wellard's $450,000 personal check. They spent $100,000 hauling 60 tractor-trailer loads of equipment to a Siler City plant they were able to buy on short notice. An industrial revenue bond issued by Chatham County allowed the company to pay Wellard back and finance the $400,000 plant.

Fore and Wellard spent the next year refurbishing and modernizing the machinery and training employees. But they kept their eyes open for acquisitions. "When we started this corporation, we didn't start it to stay a small corporation," Fore says. "We knew what we had done before, and we set out to do...