Well, almost anything. Three years ago Amre, now based in Irving, Tex., acquired a company that installed wooden decks. Because the wood was "a living organism," as Bedowitz puts it, heat and moisture would change its shape. Pretty soon, customers with warped decks started calling. It was a mess. Eventually, Amre closed down the division.
Better to stick with the dead stuff.
The Texas economy has been hit hard, and Jacksboro Highway heading west out of Fort Worth yields evidence of the attendant pain. Body shops, used-car lots, discount furniture houses, and cut-rate appliance stores crowd one another along the road. One storefront sells nothing but batteries. Another has furniture -- very used -- displayed in the parking lot.
As Butch Barton, a diminutive, flush-faced man, negotiates his Lincoln Town Car down Jacksboro Highway, he recalls the time he once resorted to going to a pawnshop. "I borrowed $150 on my model 1100 Remington shotgun. I needed that $150." Now, as a vice-president of Cash America Investments Inc., a chain of 141 pawnshops that operates in six southern states, Barton's needs are no longer quite so basic.
Ninety-five of Cash America's shops are in Texas. They are clean and reasonably well lighted places that do their best to dispel the menace and the mystery of the pawnbroking business. Sixty percent of Cash America's customers are women, who often do business during the daylight hours and bring their children with them.
Barton pulls up to the Cash America store on Jacksboro Highway. Inside, the proprietor, Julie Kelly, is hanging ferns in the barred window. The store has the homey feel of a department store in the 1950s, before the big chains ruled America. It sells everything from toasters to welding equipment -- at eminently reasonable prices. In a back-room safe, pieces of jewelry are stashed in crisp brown envelopes with cellophane windows, recorded so carefully they might as well have been cataloged by a curator.
Earlier, over a lunch of barbecue, baked beans, and jalapeos washed down with Dr. Pepper on a 90-degree day, Barton had said, "We try to loan people whatever we can, even if some old lady comes in with a toaster and all we can give her is $5. That $5 may make the difference in the world to that lady. You're there to help that person. Jack says you should never, ever feel that you have power over another person's life. If you ever get to thinking that way, he'll fire you in a heartbeat."
Jack is Jack Daugherty, the man who put Cash America together. His offices in downtown Fort Worth are cool, dark, and carpeted. Prints on the paneled walls depict the gentility of English country life a century ago -- a bit of a clash with the gritty ambience of Jacksboro Highway circa 1990.
Daugherty, a laconic sort, speaks in a thick, languid drawl. He gives the impression of a man at ease, which is fitting, perhaps, given that he runs the largest chain of pawnshops in the world and the only publicly held company in the business listed on a major stock exchange. Cash America has appeared on the 1989 and 1990 INC. 100 lists. The numbers, meanwhile, are arresting: sales have doubled, to $87.5 million, in the past two years; pretax profit is 30%. "Now, that's what I call a profitable business," says Daugherty. "And we've just scratched the surface." He says that there are 20,000 independent pawnshops out there waiting to be bought and a customer base of some 70 million people. "Have you seen the movie Top Gun?" he asks. "We are in what's called a 'target rich environment.' "
Jack Daugherty, like Steve Bedowitz, carries his cash in a money clip, which he now brandishes to make an essential point about his line of work. "Now, I learned back in college that accounting was done either on a cash basis or by the accrual method -- credit. Well, we're talking about a group of people [Cash America customers] who do their accounting by the cash method. They get their paycheck, cash it, and pay their bills. Now what's wrong with that? That's the way this country started." In a credit-crazed country, Daugherty asserts, his customers are victims because they often choose to deal in cash and nothing but. "The majority of our customers are not on welfare and never have been. It's the working class, with family income ranging between $18,000 and $28,000." Daugherty adds that 30% of the population are not bank customers, which puts them in his target market.
Back in 1969 Daugherty had just sold his share in a business and was looking for something else to do. He met the head of the Texas Pawnbrokers Association on a hunting trip. Daugherty, armed with the usual suspicions, inquired about the trade. "I asked him, 'Can I make $600 a month doing this?' He laughed at me and said, 'If you can't make $1,000 a week, you shouldn't be in the business.' "
Daugherty wanted in. He subsequently served a rigorous apprenticeship under the association's head. He earned no salary for 10 weeks. He was chastised when he failed to take notes. One day he was told to wear a nice pair of slacks to work the next day. They were going to go out and lease space for a shop.
