L. William “Bill” McNutt Jr., chairman of the Collin Street Bakery, died Friday at his home in Corsicana, TX of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to wire service reports. He was 81.
McNutt’s father and uncle had bought the bakery from three other partners in 1946 and asked McNutt to help run the business in 1958. As president from 1967 until 1998, he expanded the baker’s clientele worldwide by pioneering computerized direct mail and, later, online marketing operations, the reports said.
“He was one of the first people to understand you could do business across borders using the mail,” Bill McNutt III, a noted promoter of international direct marketing, told a wire service reporter.
During his time at the Collins Street Bakery, it became one of the largest food-by-mail companies in the world.
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