Success is in the cards for Asheville entrepreneur.

• Position: Collectors Products Corp.'s John Connor - Company profile

Success is in the cards for Asheville entrepreneur

Baseball cards have been very, very good to John Connor. Just over a year ago, Connor - a former Putt-Putt Golf manager, guitarist and jingle composer - was selling memberships in a health club.

Today, he owns an Asheville baseball-card shop that rang up well over $300,000 in sales in nine months. And he's championing a new product he hopes will change the way collectors store their cards.

"I get in and out of things quick," Connor, 33, admits. In 1986, he spent about $100 for 543 baseball cards. When he sold them in early '89 for $700, he decided it was time to change jobs.

He borrowed $15,000 from a friend, bought The Dugout and immediately expanded the year-and-a-half-old shop's inventory.

Within five months, he was batting $1,000 in sales a day and more - a tenfold increase over the previous year's business. And the profit, Connor says, is "much better than I ever dreamed" - he clears anywhere from 10 to 500 percent on each card.

It wasn't long before Connor noticed that traditional single-card holders, which had to be screwed together, were difficult to assemble. He decided to design a simpler, less expensive holder.

Thus was born Snap-Its. Connor, his father, Charlie, and an investor formed Collectors Products Corp. last summer and contracted out production in nearby Arden. Snap-Its retail for about $1.75...