This guy often finds his business in tents.

• Position: People

When Will Gay bought Diamond Brand Canvas Products Co. in 2000, it was on the condition that former owner Arnold Kemp would stay with the third-generation family business four years. "He was going to teach me all he knew from 50-plus years in the business," Gay says. Six weeks in, illness permanently sidelined Kemp, leaving Gay--until then a salesman of heart pacemakers--alone at the helm.

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Despite his baptism by fire, Gay, 37, has ably guided Diamond Brand, which makes combat tents for the military and backpacks for the Boy Scouts. It has been in business since 1881, when the Kemps founded it as a Philadelphia-based fur distributor. In 1931, it manufactured the first backpack for Boy Scouts. The company moved to Naples, just south of Asheville, in 1941 and made canvas products for the U.S. military during World War II.

The company now has about 130 employees. In addition to four- and seven-man crew tents for the Army, it won an emergency contract in 2003 to make 12,000 two-man combat tents, used by American forces in Iraq. Also last year, the military tapped Diamond Brand as the exclusive maker of a trauma bandage for the Marine Corps. The company, which is heavily involved in military research-and-development projects, also has 10 industrial contracts for items such as utility umbrellas. In January, Diamond Brand...