Co-founder & President
Chrome Specialties
12,000+ products · 900-page catalog · 3,500 retailers
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.
Chairman
Funimation
$100M+ annual sales · Acquired by Sony in 2017
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.
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Owner & board member
Whitefish Mountain Resort
3,000 acres · 110 named trails · Independently operated
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 a 3,000-acre independent resort that has deliberately stayed off the major multi-resort passes.
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Co-founder
Latin Gin
20+ countries · 2,500 premium accounts
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.
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Owner & board member
Worth National Bank
$390M in assets · $127M sale to BOK Financial
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.
Investor & Chairman
Ecosphere Energy Services
4B+ gallons treated · 900+ wells
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.
Higginbotham
Early investor
When Rusty Reid moved to take over the Fort Worth insurance brokerage, John was part of the group that put up the money. Reid and his team have since built it into one of the largest independent insurance brokerages in the United States, with thousands of employees and a national footprint. Sometimes the most important part of the thesis is the person who will lead the company's next chapter.
Sunergy
Co-founderSunergy grew out of the family's consumer-products business, World Factory, and centered on patented solar-powered outdoor products including its solar umbrella. It began by developing and selling physical products through major national retailers — Walmart, Costco, Target and The Home Depot — before evolving from a traditional consumer-products business into an intellectual-property and licensing model, which became the company's most successful chapter.
GameSamba
ChairmanA game publisher with studios in the United States, Hong Kong and Tokyo, building titles for audiences who already loved the source material — Star Trek, Tokyo Ghoul, Fairy Tail, and the first authorized Naruto game built for mobile in 3D. Licensed franchises are unforgiving work: the audience arrives knowing exactly what the thing should feel like.
Vaquero Entertainment
Co-founder · Executive producerJohn joined country artist Kix Brooks and their partners in founding Vaquero Entertainment, which developed film, television and home-entertainment projects — among them the features Home by Spring and You're Gonna Miss Me. A different kind of operating business, with the same underlying question: is the team good enough to finish what it starts.
Dallas Leathers · Motor Factory · Highway One · Jammer
Built within Chrome SpecialtiesBrands developed or acquired inside Chrome Specialties — leather apparel cut and sewn in Dallas from 1987, plus three aftermarket names built alongside it. Several outlived the company that created them and are still sold worldwide today.
Royal Oak Equestrian
Investor · SponsorRoyal Oak is the horse sales and training operation of Spencer Brittan, based in Wellington, Florida. Spencer and his twin brother Jackson grew up in show jumping; Spencer made his Grand Prix debut at fifteen, has competed to CSI5* level, and has taken top FEI placings at the Hampton Classic, the Winter Equestrian Festival and Traverse City. He has trained under programs including Beerbaum Stables, and the business is built around training, catch riding and sales.
Across the family's operating history, more than $4 billion of products have been sold at retail.
