Word: freimann
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...secret, says Magnavox President Frank Freimann, is market selectivity. He limits his retail TV-phonograph dealers to the fewer than 2% in the U.S. that he thinks are best, deals directly with them to cut out middleman costs and prevent Magnavox products from winding up in discount houses at profit-breaking prices. As the company grew, he kept it from becoming top-heavy with bosses (a ten-year sales increase of 294% increased the number of top executives from only five to ten). In research, says Freimann, "the big thing is to avoid blind alleys...
...Government contracts, Freimann goes after jobs that will help the company develop techniques that will also apply to consumer products; e.g., an electronic photographic record storage system developed for the Pentagon led to a relatively low-priced system for business record storage that will be put on the market soon. In all, military orders bring in 40% of Magnavox's income. Present Government order backlog: $90 million, v. $67.6 million a year ago. This includes a communications system for the Advent satellite program, and new devices (started in Magnavox laboratories without Government subsidy) for detection of enemy submarines. Says...
Lifetime Critic. Hungarian-born Frank Freimann has been a critic most of his life. Brought to the U.S. by his mother, he went to work for an Indiana radio-phonograph company after leaving technical high school. He criticized the company's sets so much-and proved that he was right-that at 19 he was made chief engineer. After a series of other jobs and two trips around the world as a ship's radio operator, he founded his own company in Chicago to manufacture custom sound systems. In 1932 he sold 30% of his stock to supplier...
...Freimann became executive vice president of Magnavox after the two firms merged in 1938. He took a hard look at the growing competition that had forced Magnavox $400,000 into the red, persuaded the company that its future was not in components but in consumer products. Magnavox took his advice, quickly slipped into the black. But consumer products also had their dark side: Magnavox was hard hit in 1949, when the introduction of the LP record and industry confusion about new frequencies and TV-tube size caused a slump in consumer buying. Overloaded with sets, Magnavox saw its stock plummet...
...Sounds. Freimann works 18 hours a day at company headquarters in Fort Wayne, Ind., sleeps in a room ad joining his office. A demanding perfectionist, he visits the company's nine plants unannounced, dresses down plant management when things are not ship shape, sometimes takes a soldering iron and a screwdriver to go to work on a problem himself. The largest single Magnavox stockholder (167,000 of 2,350,000 shares), he relaxes aboard the 62-ft. company yacht, Magna Mar, fishes for marlin off Florida. A music lover, he has little confidence in engineering graphs and charts that...