Where were you in September 1985? I know where I was — starting out my sophomore year of high school, beginning to have the first inklings of college and wondering exactly what I would ultimately end up doing in this world. And thankfully, in the course of 25 years, some things do change. Case in point: My willingness to undergo fuzzy home perms, like I did the night before picture day in my sophmore year of high school back in 1985. The end result graces this page.

What a perspective time can bring, and this issue of Corporate Report Wisconsin is no exception. As you can probably tell from our cover, it’s a special occasion for us as we look back on 25 years of being Wisconsin’s statewide voice for business.

We have all of the first issues of CRW archived in our offices, and as a history buff, it’s intriguing for me to take even a small step back into time with each issue. The ads can be an absolute hoot, particularly those dealing with communication and technology, and yet, they really do illustrate how far we’ve come in the past three decades. Back in 1985, the thought of having a cordless phone seemed high tech; now I think many of us would be lost without that tiny little gadget that’s shrunk to the size of a deck of cards but provides us instant access not just to our phones, but our email, our Tweets, our blogs and the World Wide Web.

The articles are equally as intriguing to me, both in the predictions and perspectives as well as the companies those early staff members chose to write about in CRW’s pages. Some of them have stood the test of time, albeit in different forms and ultimately with different owners. Some, unfortunately, have not or are, at the very least, navigating their way through some difficult challenges in the current business environment. Many of the names in the first four issues that rounded out 1985 still have name recognition: Rayovac, Simplicity, Henry’s Food Products, Kikkoman Foods, Trek, Sub-Zero and Runzheimer. Other names are part of the state’s business history, from AMC to Hibernia Brewing. And yet still others are quiet reminders of entrepreneurial ventures that ignited well but ultimately fizzled, like the Chris GTE 5-star racket, a tennis racket designed and created by a West Bend-based tennis player.

In this issue, as well as throughout the next 12 months, you’ll see nods to the visionary people — Editor and Publisher H. Nicholas Pabst, Associate Editor Barbara Abel, Art Director Juergen Strigenz as well as the rest of the staff — that launched CRW in the mid-1980s. It was an interesting time for business in Wisconsin, and they deserve a solid pat on the back as well as the publishers, sales executives, writers and artists that followed in their footsteps over time to sustain this magazine.

As someone who has been a part of CRW in some capacity since 1997, I think I can speak for many of those people when I say there’s something about this magazine that ignites a certain passion about Wisconsin business. It’s something that’s clearly evident in the hundreds of archived pages on the shelves in our office, and hopefully it’s something that will continue long into the future.

By Laurie Arendt

Laurie Arendt is editor of CRW. She can be reached at crweditor@crwmag.com