Businesses we've helped build.

Chrome Specialties

In 1984, as Harley-Davidson and custom motorcycles were becoming part of a larger American cultural moment, John and his brother founded Chrome Specialties around a simple ambition: give riders access to virtually everything they needed to make a motorcycle their own.

The business ultimately offered more than 12,000 products through a 900-page catalog and reached more than 3,500 retailers around the world. It created Motor Factory, Highway One and Dallas Leathers, acquired the Jammer name, opened internationally, and helped popularize the idea that a complete custom motorcycle could be built from a catalog. Chrome eventually merged with Global Motorsport and Custom Chrome. Several of the brands created inside the company remain in the market decades later.

Funimation

Funimation helped turn Japanese anime from an American subculture into a major category of entertainment. In 2011, founder Gen Fukunaga joined John and a group of Dallas investors to buy the company back from Navarre for $24 million.

Its catalog came to span hundreds of titles and thousands of hours of programming, including some of the most recognizable franchises in the world — Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia. The business grew to more than $100 million in annual sales, reaching audiences through partners including Amazon, Hulu and Netflix. John served as chairman through the company's 2017 sale to Sony, which acquired 95% of Funimation at an approximately $150 million valuation.

Whitefish Mountain Resort

Whitefish is a 3,000-acre ski mountain overlooking Montana's Flathead Valley and Glacier National Park. John partnered with Bill Foley in the ownership group that reinvested in the resort, and has served on the board of Winter Sports Inc., the company behind it.

In the years that followed, the resort strengthened its financial position, added terrain and infrastructure and built a meaningful summer business — while deliberately preserving the independence that made Whitefish worth owning in the first place. It remains the largest ski area in the country that has stayed off every multi-resort pass.

Latin Gin

Latin Gin began with a simple idea: bring the energy and flavors of Latin culture into a spirit made with generations of Italian craft.

Ivania Sher, John A. Kuelbs and Nick Kuelbs built four expressions around botanicals drawn from Italy and Latin America — Ecuadorian passionfruit, Brazilian lime, Calabrian chili, Sicilian strawberry, Amalfi lemon. The gin is vacuum-distilled in the Italian Alps at a family-run distillery founded in 1906, where four generations have worked the stills. Led by expressions including Latin Beach, the brand has grown across more than 20 countries and 2,500 premium accounts.

Worth National Bank

Worth began as a community bank serving Fort Worth. John was among the investors who acquired voting shares of Worth Bancorporation in the late 1990s. By the end of 2006 the bank had grown to approximately $390 million in assets across five Tarrant County branches, with $5.8 million in annual net income.

In 2007, BOK Financial acquired Worth Bancorporation for $127 million, bringing Worth into Bank of Texas.

Ecosphere Energy Services

Ecosphere was built to commercialize Ozonix, a patented chemical-free water treatment technology, and to point it at one of the hardest water problems in American industry: the enormous volumes of wastewater produced by oil and gas operations.

John was an early equity holder, helped assemble the original investor group, and served as chairman through the company's development. Over its life the technology enabled operators to treat, recycle and reuse more than four billion gallons of water across more than nine hundred wells. Fidelity National increased its position over time and took a larger role in the business, with John continuing as vice chairman.

It is the clearest example in the family's history of a different kind of transaction — industrial technology, early capital, board leadership, and an eventual institutional partner.