Summer Camp Goes Online

Summer camp has gone high-tech since Alan Sherman presented a rained-in adolescent's whining letter to his long-suffering parents in the '60s novelty hit Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh. These days, while most campers still write home with old-fashioned ink and paper, their parents have it easy. If their child is at one of the 1,200-plus camps served by Bunk1.com, they need do no more than call up the Web site of Junior's home away from home and scan the daily uploads of snapshots that capture what their pride and joy has been up to. They can e-mail reminders about the importance of oral hygiene, pass on news from home, and generally soothe the anguish of separation anxiety.

For that comfort, they can thank 32-year-old entrepreneur Ari Ackerman, a Kellogg graduate who turned an MBA class assignment into a business plan, then a pitch, and now, a booming online outfit. "I was a huge camper," Ackerman recalled last week, "and my initial business dream was to open my own camp." Instead, he recognized that the Web had opened a potentially lucrative niche. So he turned down the offer of a job in Corporate America, and hit the road to sell his vision. It was a gamble, but as Ackerman explains, one that paid off. "Over the last three years," said New York City-based Ackerman, "we've doubled revenues every year."