Need seed money? This Budd's for you.

• Position: Lofts Seed Inc. CEO Richard Budd

Washing floors by night and selling janitorial supplies by day wouldn't seem like the most auspicious start. But for Richard Budd, it was the seed for a three-company family tree.

In June, his family added its newest branch, buying Somerset, N.J.-based Lofts Seed Inc., the world's largest seller of turf-grass seeds. Budd became CEO - a title he already holds at the other two companies, Winston-Salem-based Budd Services Inc. and Budd Seed Inc. Combined employment is 3,200, and revenues are "well in excess" of $100 million, he says.

The acquisition makes him king of seeds. Lofts breeds 25 kinds in Albany, Ore., and sells about 100 blends to chains such as Home Depot, golf courses such as Augusta National and even the White House for its putting green. It's big business - Pebble Beach Co., for instance, spends $98,000 a year on Lofts seeds for its four courses.

Budd, a Woodbury, N.J., native, started small. Scared to tell his mother he'd flunked out of Western Maryland College in 1961 - "I don't think she knows it yet," he says - he moved to Winston-Salem, where his brother Dave was on the Wake Forest basketball team. He enrolled at what's now High Point University and graduated with a business degree in 1963. He then got a job with Twin City janitors and janitorial-products suppliers Weaver Maintenance Supply Co.

He made $1.25 an hour swabbing decks, plus commissions on selling its soaps and vacuum cleaners. But the company couldn't deliver on his first big sale - its...