Raleigh entrepreneur weaves from software to soft wear.

• Position: Rick Mitchell

Raleigh entrepreneur weaves from software to soft wear

Lyle & Scott used to let its products speak for themselves. Now it's got Rick Mitchell to do the talking.

L&S, a 115-year-old, Scotland-based maker of luxurious sweaters and top-quality golf shoes, hired Mitchell, 42, as its CEO on February. He moved the U.S. office from New Jersey to Raleigh, where it employs 14. (Lyle & Scott, with annual U.S. sales of $10 million, is owned by the London-based conglomerate Courtaulds PLC.)

What does a former washing-machine salesman know abot $1,000 cashmere sweaters -- except to send them to the dry cleaner? "I'm a sales and marketing guy," Mitchell explains, "and that's what this company needs."

He started his career selling appliances at Sears in Durham. "Those five years are the foundation of my experience," says the Burlington native, who studied math at Elon College but never graduated. "Ihad the ability to walk up to someone I'd never met and talk to them about anything."

He even wooed his wife-to-be over a washing machine (and sold her one, too). He spent the next eight years spinning from job to job, working as a clothing manufacturer's sales rep, an insurance agent and a Montgomery Ward appliance salesman.

He started a chain-link-fence company in Durham. When it was too cold to install fences, he waxed cars and put up TV antennas. "I've paid my dues," says Mitchell, who worked hard but didn't make that much money. "When anybody says to me, 'You're lucky,' it makes me want to get a little hostile."

After a year of selling computer software, he and a partner, programmer Ray Allen, started their own company in 1981 on a 30-day, $10,000 note.

Five years...