In the beginning. (top private companies in North Carolina)

The first time around, nobody knew how tough it would be to track down the state's top private companies.

Paul Garrett doesn't have any trouble remembering what he and other managers at Arthur Andersen & Co. went through a decade ago after they had decided to compile the first list of North Carolina's biggest private companies.

"The day before y'all had to go to press, we knew one or two owners that should have been in the top 20 and were still struggling with whether they wanted to be on the list," says Garrett, who worked with the accounting and consulting company from 1971 to 1991. "We were calling them daily to take their temperature."

"They had a terrible time getting people to cooperate," Whitney Shaw, then publisher of BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA, recalls. "But it turned out to be a good deal for everyone concerned."

On its 10th anniversary, the North Carolina 100 is still without a doubt the state's most definitive source of annual information about companies that are, by definition, very private about what they share with the press.

"Our partnership with Arthur Andersen on this project has enabled us to give our readers an intimate look at many of the state's most quietly successful companies," says David Kinney, editor and publisher of BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA, which Shaw sold to The News and Observer Publishing Co. in 1985. Shaw is now a vice president of American City Business Journals Inc.

Readers sure like the concept: The issue with the North Carolina 100 has consistently been among the magazine's best sellers. And members of the North Carolina 100 feel the same: "It's kind of prestigious to be there," says William A. Prince Jr., CEO of Monroe Hardware (No. 50). "We get comments from our manufacturers and from our retail friends saying they saw us …