Forty Under 40: Park Anders

After 10 years in BudgeText Corp.’s retail sales division, Park Anders was promoted two years ago to the family business’ corporate offices in Fayetteville. Now BudgeText’s vice president of operations, Anders, 35, says envisioning where he wants to be and getting there is the most exciting part of his job.

After taking the company’s Orlando, Fla., store from 4,200 SF to more than 10,000 SF and tripling its volume in a two-year span, Anders knows how to “get there.” It also helps that BudgeText has operations in all 50 states and Korea, and the Fayetteville native has been a general manager for the company’s stores in Norman, Okla., Chapel Hill, N.C., and Orlando.

“I came back to Fayetteville after all of that,” Anders says. “We have broadened and shifted more to a wholesale focus, and I mostly oversee the telecommunications and project management aspects of the business.”

Anders, who received a degree in finance from the University of Arkansas, is the son of Sterling Anders, who started the company 28 years ago. BudgeText is a distributor of college and kindergarten-through-high school textbooks.

Anders is currently working on a master’s of business administration degree by commuting every other week to Duke University in North Carolina. He’s a former member of the Orlando Chamber of Commerce.