"You cross-pollinate one business with another one, and then you have something going, " says Wirtz.
William Wirtz, who owns the Chicago Blackhawks, also owns half of the United Center, where the team plays.
The team performed poorly, and Wirtz alienated everyone from former Blackhawks greats like Bobby Hull to the fans themselves.
They were instituted by William "Rocky" Wirtz, who took over the team in October 2007 after his father died.
Like Ed Wirtz, a 46-year-old Los Angeles-area insurance and investment adviser, many customers have flocked to Audi's "new luxury" image.
While the United Center is a separate corporate entity from the Blackhawks, the building and team are part of one equation for Wirtz.
What Wirtz is to landscape design a game changer with far-reaching influence another Flanders native son, Axel Vervoordt, is to interiors, only tenfold.
Since Wirtz took over running the Blackhawks, the season-ticket base has grown from 3, 400 to 14, 000--with a waiting list of 4, 000.
Such a painterly hand with plant material could only be credited to the influence of landscape designer (and hometown boy) Jacques Wirtz.
For 41 years his father, Bill Wirtz, ran the Blackhawks from his downtown Chicago office and was vilified for being a cheapskate.
Wirtz then went out and paid top dollar to acquire a star defenseman, Brian Campbell, pushing the team's payroll to the league's salary cap.
Rocky Wirtz inherited some excellent young players when he took the helm in Chicago, specifically right winger Patrick Kane Jr. and center Jonathan Toews.
But most Chicago fans only get to see these players regularly because Wirtz reversed his father's longstanding policy and put all Blackhawks games back on local TV.
With its real-estate holdings and liquor distributorship, the Wirtz family has owned the Blackhawks for generations, but until recently, Rocky Wirtz had little to do with the team.
Wirtz smartly views each hockey broadcast as a three-hour commercial.
Rocky Wirtz's rapid reinvention of the Blackhawks has largely been due to his decision to hire John McDonough as team president, a marketing guru who emerged from baseball's Chicago Cubs.
Now Wirtz feels he has overcome the one big concern he had when he met with Forbes in October (see "Chicago's Comeback"): the performance of the Blackhawks on the ice.
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