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Quy "Charlie" Ton has been occupied for more than a year with studying coffee, tinkering with fish tanks, learning how to roast coffee beansall to start Charlie's Coffees.
Now he's back at the first big business fie created while he awaits the results of an experiment: Will Charlie's Coffees, like his Regal Nails salons, make money inside Wal-Mart stores and lead to another victory for the Vietnamese immigrant?
Until that's clear, he says, he's "back to strengthen the nail salon business."
And what a business that has been. At the current pace, it will surpass 1,000 salons in the next couple of years.
Polite and measured, Ton has quietly built a business kingdom from rag-tag quarters on Choctaw Drive.
He owns a series of warehouses on the industrial street. Inside them are machines that build equipment for salons, beauty supplies, shipping cartons and even a Vietnamese restaurant, which provides free meals to his staff in town. All of it is connected by computers to Ton's new Handspring Treo, which he uses to text-message directives while traveling the country.
Ton won't disclose how much he's worth or what his companies do...