Supersalesman Chuck Sussman

From Sauna Pants to the INC. 500: the hilarious confessions of a mail-order maestro.

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Unless you belong to New York's Friars Club, you've probably never heard of Chuck Sussman. Not that membership in the world-renowned fraternity of jokesters isn't something of an accomplishment. But in Sussman's case, the talent for delivering a good punchline combines with the talent for selling all manner of things through the mails. In fact, his Pretty Neat Industries Inc. was on the INC. 500 for three years running.

We got the idea for this interview while listening to Sussman regale a group of us at a conference last autumn in Hong Kong. The tears of laughter streaming down our faces were the tipoff that there is something particularly engaging about this colorful entrepreneur. But beyond the gags are some deadly serious observations about marketing, salesmanship, and the culture of small business that may be every bit as profound as those of better-known business philosophers.

Last September, Sussman sold Pretty Neat Industries, promising his wife and lifelong partner that he was finally ready to retire. But don't count on it. Hardly a week goes by that Sussman doesn't run across some "item" that could "go through the roof," as he would put it. A supersalesman may sell his business, but he never retires.

Sussman spoke with executive editor Bo Burlingham at our offices in Boston late last year.

INC.: What is it that would attract someone to the mail-order business?

SUSSMAN: Fun. It was a heck of a lot of fun in the old days, dreaming up the products and the ads -- God, we ran some nutty stuff. And it was exciting, because you never knew when you were going to hit a winner. But when you hit, the numbers were astronomical.

INC.: You say "the old days." Has the mail-order business changed?

SUSSMAN: Changed? It's like night and day. In the real old days, before my time, a guy would run a tiny classified ad in the back of do-it-yourself magazines or newspapers: "How to make a fortune in mail order. Send $1 for mail-order secrets." You'd send in your buck, and the guy would send you back a copy of the ad you just answered, telling you to place it in classified ad sections of magazines. That was a classic.

Then you had the guaranteed bug killer. "No pesticide, no chemicals, perfectly safe to use around babies." You send in your dollar, and they send you two pieces of wood. One had an x on it, and the instructions said, "Place bug on x and hit with other piece of wood." That ad ran for years.

Another one was, "A genuine copper engraving of Abraham Lincoln that you can hang in your home." You send in a dollar, they send you a penny. That one was dynamite.

Of course, you couldn't get away with that stuff today.

INC.: Has the business changed in other ways?

SUSSMAN: Oh, sure. Today, mail order is much more sophisticated. You've got all the mail-order catalogs from the major companies with their fancy stuff. You've got a lot more government regulation as well. They've given it legitimacy, but they've taken some of the fun out of it, too.

INC.: How do you mean?

SUSSMAN: Well, take my friend, whose name I won't mention, but he was one of the most creative guys in the business. That was his problem: he was too creative. He was always getting into trouble with the postal inspectors. One of his most popular ads was for a television antenna that you plugged into the wall. The copy said something like, "Turn your entire house into a giant TV antenna." Now, at the time, the Defense Department had a whole network of giant radar detectors up in the north, running along Alaska and Canada, as an early-warning system against possible nuclear attack. These were six-story-high antennas, big round things, and this guy used a picture of them in the ad, with a caption that said, "Official United States Photograph." Which was true: he got the photo from the government information office. The government got really angry at that.

But the thing that put him away was an advertisement he ran for some kind of miracle grass seed. The ad said, "Have a lawn like this in just 7 to 10 days," and there was a picture of the back lawn of the White House, with the White House in the background -- another "Official United States Photograph." I think that was the final straw. He got nailed on that one.

INC.: What about the ads that you yourself have done?

SUSSMAN: Oh, yeah, we were involved in some great ones, too. Like the Royal Palonia tree, which was a tree the government had found somewhere. They used to plant it in strip-mined areas after the mining was all finished. So we decided to sell this tree by mail order. The ad we came up with said, "Plant this tree and jump back . . . because that's how fast it grows." And it was a very fast-growing tree. You might not want it in your backyard, but it did grow fast. That was an absolute classic -- a super, super tree.

INC.: How did you ever get into this business?

SUSSMAN: Well, I first got into the novelty business back in 1955. At the time, I was a manufacturers' representative in the Midwest for a toy company. I sold novelties -- imitation throw up, clickety-clack teeth, dribble glasses, that sort of thing. And one day I'm in Minneapolis, and one of my novelty customers says, "Look, I've got a great novelty item I'm selling, but the guy who makes it is very sick, and he's going out of business. Do you want to buy him out?" So I say, "What's the product?" He brings out this perfect representation of a woman's breast -- foam on the bottom, latex on the top, all detailed and airbrushed. It was gorgeous. I said, "What is this thing?" And he says, "Well, we call it a Bar Mop, because at home you clean your bar with it. It's a sponge." It was hysterical. So I get Irv, my boss, on the phone and I say, "This guy wants to sell his tools and his molding process; the costs are very low. How would you like to get into it?" And Irv says, "I don't handle anything dirty." I answer, "Irving, it's not really dirty." He says, "I don't handle anything that looks like it's even dirty." So I told him I was going to do it on my own.

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