In 1983 Marjorie Burchett started Balloon Surprise. She offered balloon deliveries, dressed up in costumes, and wrote original songs or poems for each order. The balloons only floated for a few hours, and she had to inflate them right before a delivery. Customers complained their balloons were on the floor the next day. She asked her husband, a chemical engineer, if he could make balloons float longer. After a year of experiments, HI-FLOAT was born. Word got out about a small balloon shop in Louisville, Kentucky with magical balloons that floated longer than anywhere else in the world. Phone calls came in asking Marjorie for her secret and distributors called, asking to sell her product. She established the HI-FLOAT Company, and the rest is history! Decorating for a party ahead of time, rather than waking up at 5 am to get a thousand balloons on site, fundamentally changed the business model for decorators. Marjorie didn’t plan to start a new company. She never imagined HI-FLOAT ...