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Don Kelin has shaped himself into one of a handful of successful American Indian entrepreneurs over the last nine years, when many others have failed, by forming the right relationships.
One of the most important of those was making his sharp, stylish wife of the last few years, Patricia, a partner in his company, office furniture and products seller Caddo Design & Office Supply of Denver. Pat Kelin is the firm's vice president.
Another strategic alliance began when Kelin sold nearly half the concern to local independent Mile High Office Supply in 1996, and soon after that, Mile High got gobbled up by publicly traded but entrepreneurially oriented U.S. Office Products Co. of Washington, D.C. While other office-supply giants have grown by swallowing small companies whole, U.S. Office Products and its founder, Jonathan Ledecky, the Harvard University-educated son of a Czech immigrant, early on believed in acquiring interests in family businesses and allowing the families to remain relatively autonomous under...