His customers don't stick to the point.

• Position: People

Walter Triplette got a long way on a bad ankle. Thirty two years ago, he injured one of his, ending his soccer career at IJNC Chapel Hill. So he took up fencing. One thing led to another, and today Triplette is known more for his fencing equipment and medieval armor than his thrusts and parries.

He owns Triplette Competition Arms Inc., near Elkin, where he makes and sells fencing weapons, masks, tunics and armor. He holds patents for, among other things, a chemically treated mesh fabric that electronically registers hits in matches. He supplies 90% of the equipment for UNC's fencing team.

Triplette Competition Arms operates from a 32,000-square-foot building on his 60-acre family farm, and though he doesn't disdose his revenue, he says he keeps about $1 million worth of armor parts, weapons and other items in stock. He's also building a small village that will include two castles, where he hopes to attract tourists and re-enactors smitten by medieval fantasies.

Triplette, 51, graduated from Carolina in 1974 with a degree in philosophy. To help pay his way through school, he worked as a mechanic at a bicycle shop called Carolina Bike Ways. He bought it his senior year. After graduating, he opened cycling shops in Durham and Winston-Salem. In 1975, a former Carolina fencing coach who had moved to Duke asked him to join his staff.

While coaching at Duke, he began selling fencing equipment made by others. He decided he could make more money -- a fencing outfit costs about $400--by making it himself. "I traded in my Gremlin for $2,400 and started the company with that." In 1980, he sold the bicycle shops and moved to Elkin, where he had grown up.

He employs 24, including 12 seamstresses. He says the company ships 100 to 200 orders a day. About a quarter of his sales come from theatrical groups and members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, which re-enacts battles, jousts and other aspects of medieval life.

Triplette still fences and teaches up to 25 students, who find out about him through word of mouth. But now age, not his ankle, dictates his pace. "I'm going to start moving into the old codger division soon."

Pete and Barbara Turner don't often tire of each other's company. And that's good. They are the company. They've been partners in business and marriage for 25 years, the last 10 in Red Springs as the owners and work force of Turner Master-. craft, which makes handcrafted pens and other items from exotic woods.

"A lot of people ask...