Spartan Profiles: John Costello
HEAD OF MVP.COM
Can you imagine going into business with John Elway, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan—the three biggest superstars from football, hockey and basketball? Dream on: Your new business venture launches in January 2000 and promptly becomes the market leader with 60,000 products and 600 brands. Actually, it’s no dream.
John Costello, MBA ’70, president and CEO of MVP.com, actually does work with Elway, Gretzky and Jordan, who are members of the board of directors and investors in the company. In one year, MVP.com has risen to become the leading online company for outdoors and sporting goods—a market estimated to reach $5 billion in the next five years. “It’s a lot of fun,” confesses Costello. “Elway, Jordan and Gretzky are top athletes, great individuals and successful entrepreneurs. They are very involved in the business. But it’s also a lot of work, like seven days a week.”
The superstar trio’s choice of John as CEO made sense, given John had become one of the nation’s top brand builders. He was president of AutoNation, Inc., the world’s largest automotive retailing and rental company with $18 billion in annual revenues. Previously, John was president and CEO of Nielsen Research, vice president of sales and marketing at Pepsi-Cola, USA, and held key positions at Procter & Gamble, Sears Canada, Inc., and Wells, Rich, Greene, Inc. “I was fortunate to work for many great companies at a significant point in their history,” notes John. “I had some great mentors. But I think my background at MSU really helped round out my skills.”
John chose to attend MSU because, in his words, “(in the late 1960s) all the marketing textbooks were written by professor at MSU—Staudt & Taylor, and McCarthy.”
He also notes that Eugene Jennings had just published The Mobile Manager, which was then the rage in management circles. “I thought it would be nice to mingle with these professors in real life,” he says. “My education at MSU not only provided me with a good analytical framework, it exposed me to a wide range of career options from consulting to brand management.”
