(FORTUNE Magazine) – GYMBOREE Gymboree is turning child's play into big business. The company, in Burlingame, California, began in 1976 by offering play and exercise classes to young children and their parents. Ten years later it expanded into clothes for kids 6 and younger, and today its retail stores are its main focus and source of growth. CEO Donald Cohn credits much of Gymboree's retail success to its exclusive lines of brightly colored cotton outfits. Says Cohn: ''By having your own product, you can really control your own destiny.'' Gymboree, which does all its design work at its California headquarters, contracts out most manufacturing to 30 Asian companies. Since the preschool fashion market doesn't change with the wind (not yet anyway), the company has more leeway in its ordering and shipping schedules than apparel makers who serve the more volatile markets for teens and up; it often places orders six months in advance. Nearly all of Gymboree's stores are in malls, where it competes directly with its larger rival, GapKids, which has 283 U.S. stores. Gymboree has 152 and is growing fast. It opened 40 stores last year and plans to add 40 or 50 more this year. All but six of Gymboree's 370 play centers are run by franchisees; they serve some 100,000 children annually in the U.S. and seven other countries, but supply less than 5% of revenues. The company had shifted its attention to clothing even before 1990, when Cohn arrived after 20 years of marketing and sales experience at Casual Corner. Still, Cohn shook things up, firing and hiring staff to improve Gymboree's retail expertise. Patrick Snell, an analyst at Robertson Stephens, expects net income for the fiscal year ending January 1995 to increase 29%, to $17.7 million, on a 35% surge in revenues, to $173 million. The stock traded recently on Nasdaq at $38, or 27 times Snell's estimate of fiscal 1994 earnings per share. The company will soon expand its product lines. This year Gymboree will move beyond the preschool market to sell clothes for 7-year-olds, and it is testing shoe sales in selected stores. It is also exploring the idea of selling its wares on cable television.

CENTRAL GARDEN & PET This company gives new meaning to the term middleman. In its 30 warehouses, Central stocks more than 18,000 gardening, pet, and pool supplies made by such producers as Ortho and Monsanto. It delivers those goods to its retail customers, which include mass merchandisers Kmart and Target, and superstores Home Depot and Lowes. Then Central, in Lafayette, California, helps the retailers stock shelves and manage inventory, and even instructs them in the use of products ranging from pesticides and gopher traps to snail bait and garden hoses. Three years ago, Central diversified its seasonal garden supply business by acquiring a pet supply distributor. The pet business is now the company's fastest-growing segment, contributing 14% of revenues. Bo Cheadle, an analyst at Montgomery Securities in San Francisco, expects 1994 net income to rise 65%, to $6.6 million, on a 21% increase in revenues, to $411 million. The stock traded recently on Nasdaq at $11.50, or 10 times Cheadle's estimate of 1994 earnings per share. Central has been an aggressive acquirer; in the past 12 months, it has added six small gardening and pet distributors worth $70 million in annual sales.

CABLE DESIGN TECHNOLOGIES CDT has carefully picked its electronic cable niches. The Pittsburgh company designs and produces copper and fiber-optic cables for some of the fastest- growing sectors in the high-speed data market. Half its sales come from supplying cables for companies upgrading their computer networking operations, including Bell Atlantic and Citibank. CDT's other products include wires for the innards of mainframe computers, sold to original equipment manufacturers like IBM, as well as cables used in safety and security systems such as fire alarms. The company manufactures in eight plants around the U.S. Ann Schwetje, an analyst at Smith Barney, expects net income for the fiscal year ending July 1994 to surge 62%, to $9.7 million, on a 14% rise in revenues, to $145 million. The stock traded recently on Nasdaq at $12.50, or 13 times her estimate of 1994 earnings per share. CDT went public last November at $10 a share. About 17% of its sales are overseas.