Butch Stewart Q&A The Sandals Resorts chain founder, who died on January 4 at age 79, turned a tiny business into a billion-dollar empire. August 2008 Gordon ("Butch") Stewart had a comfortable middle-class childhood on Jamaica's Honeymoon Bay, so his story doesn't qualify as a rags-to-riches tale. But he most certainly went "to riches." Stewart began his career at the Dutch-owned Curacao Trading Company, where he earned enough in five years as a sales manager to open his own air-conditioner service and distribution business in 1968. That company, Appliance Traders Ltd., expanded rapidly and now sells a wide assortment of household and commercial appliances and supplies.