"Mr. Dunavant is no stranger to intriguing promotions. The troubled horse shampoo mogul was described by Forbes magazine in 1996 as a "persuasive scoundrel who plundered the company." The company in question was Straight Arrow, Mr. Dunavant's self-acclaimed biggest success story. In a variation of a classic "bust-out," Mr. Dunavant took control of the family-run horse shampoo firm in 1989 and expanded the market to humans, while allegedly milking the company dry.
Even Forbes initially fell for Mr. Dunavants new pitch of "Mane 'n Tail" in 1994. In a flattering 1994 puff piece, the business magazine noted Tane Harwood, a Houston-based rodeo-rider-turned-advertising-executive, was excited with her "softer, thicker, shinier and so much easier to brush" hair. "I've got two bottles of Mane 'n Tail in my bathroom," Ms. Harwood confessed.
Two years later, Forbes, in an editorial mea culpa, admitted it failed to "spot the whiff of fakery" and exposed Mr. Dunavant in quite unflattering terms. "A Pennsylvania court has found Dunavant, 44, guilty of awarding himself millions in excessive compensation, siphoning off company funds to cover personal expenses and diverting Straight Arrow assets," stated Forbes writer Michelle Conlin.
In 1999, articles by MSNBC on May 5 and Miami Herald reporter James McNair on June 7 note Mr. Dunavant jumped from horse shampoo to high-tech video compression technology. At a computer pornography convention in Las Vegas in 1997, the entrepreneur, then the president of Summus Technologies, an affiliate of Verinet, told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that Verinet's software was great for fast porno site downloads. "People want to see it, do it and get out of a site fast," Mr. Dunavant told the reporter. A year later, the Mane 'n Hair and porno pitchman hooked up with controversial Howe Street stock promoter Rene Hamouth in Corsaire Inc., renamed Net Command."
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