After being fired and told he'd "never work in politics again," Shawn Harmon, incorporated his own list company to compete against his former employer.

Annapolis, MD July 16, 2004 -- After being fired and told he'd "never work in politics again," Shawn Harmon, incorporated his own list company to compete against his former employer. By racking up $50,000 in credit card debt, Mr. Harmon started buying registered voter lists to resell to authorized users. It was a calculated risk; he had some verbal commitments to buy from prospective clients but no signed orders and plenty of mounting personal bills.

Today, over four years later, Mr. Harmon, as President of e-Merges, has grown it into an assembler of multiple lists including: pilots, campaign donors, boat owners, hunter/fishers lists, aircraft owners, and professional occupational licenses.

e-Merges consistently earns a very healthy thirty cents for every dollar in sales because each list is turned over an average of 3 times before the data is repurchased.

The recent competitiveness of the Bush vs. Kerry race has helped fuel the growth of e-Merges too.

But according to Mr. Harmon: "The reason the e-Merges business model works so well is twofold: redundant overhead is eliminated and clients are not forced to buy lists with unneeded add-ons. For example, a