Mon, 24 Nov 2003 05:00:00 -0500
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Standing Out From the Competition

Have you ever seen a clever product – say, a pair of earmuffs with built-in headphones – and said to yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that?” If so, there’s a good chance Gib Mason, economics ’95, was involved.

The “serial entrepreneur” and CPA is chief financial officer of Baltimore-based 180s LLC (formerly Big Bang Products), an innovative sportswear company whose signature products include stylish fleece ear warmers, scratch-resistant sunglasses and gloves that feature “Exhale Heating Technology,” which uses the wearer’s own breath to warm the hands. In October, the Greater Baltimore Technology Council recognized 180s LLC for its innovative products with a nomination for one of its annual “Purple Cow” awards, given to innovators whose new approaches stand out from the competition.

The entrepreneur bug bit Mason early. While in high school, he convinced a local music store to let him offer customers jazz trumpet lessons. During the 1980s, he was involved with a handful of different businesses, ranging from retail to manufacturing and distribution, with mixed results. “It’s interesting that you always learn more from the failures than the successes,” he says.

After the wood heating business he worked for began to go downhill in 1990, Mason decided to go back to school and finish his degree, 13 years after he’d started college at Miami University in Ohio. With enough work experience to know that accounting costs companies big bucks, Mason decided to take a basic accounting class at UMBC.

“Numbers had always intrigued me, and I thought, ‘I’ll probably learn something and maybe reduce my costs,'” he says. After his first class, he walked up to his professor, Elizabeth Gerkin, and said, “I am going to become a CPA,” Mason recalls. “It was so interesting, it was unbelievable. I had years of life experience with numbers, and what I heard that first night began to put definition to what I was dealing with every day.”

After graduating in 1995, Mason spent five years at Wolpoff and Company, a large, entrepreneurial accounting practice that was acquired by American Express Tax & Business Services, where he was involved in strategic planning, staff development and marketing.

Soon after Mason joined 180s in 1999, he founded a company-wide mentoring program, 180s-4-Students. Mason is working to get more companies involved in similar programs through the new b4students Foundation, which 180s formed with EntreQuest, a corporate training company. Mason’s company also hosts an intern from UMBC’s Kauffmann Entrepreneur Internship Program each year, and last fall he participated in the Entrepreneurship Speaker Series hosted by the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship at UMBC.

Mason’s best piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? “You’ve got to learn to have a duck’s back and some thick skin and keep plugging away,” he says.