Commodities to Cleaning

Jay Patel, 35, worked as a commodities trader in Chicago until his employer, Breakwater, merged with another firm in 2006. With his wife, he decided it was time to leave Chicago and return to Florida, where their families lived. He'd always wanted to own a business and settled on dry cleaning. Rather than starting new franchises, he bought three existing Martinizing Dry Cleaning locations in March. "There's always a need, even in a slow economy," he says.