Word: peterman
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...Peterman senses an advantage: his name is already known to some 40 million people, including the 32 million viewers who saw him portrayed on Seinfeld, which is still in reruns. "It can cost $1 billion to build a brand," says actor John O'Hurley, who played Peterman as "a FORTUNE 500 lunatic" on the show. "And this brand occupies a unique niche already." Sounds like a real CEO, doesn't he? In fact, O'Hurley has since become a partner in Peterman's reborn company...
...Peterman has targeted that niche since the mid-1960s, when he hung up his baseball glove after three years as a minor-league second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He bounced from one sales-management job to another for employers such as General Foods and Dole. In 1984 he started a business that diagnosed the problems of sick house plants by mail and wangled his first bit of free publicity when he appeared on Good Morning America to promote it. That company soon wilted (Was there an omen there regarding free p.r.?), forcing him to look for something else...
...bought for himself, which was included in his first catalog, launched in 1987. The catalog had already become a Hollywood favorite when its kitschy prose--initially written by Manhattan marketing consultant Don Staley--caught the eye of comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, who owned some Peterman clothes. "We used to laugh about it all the time," David says of the prose. "When I knew we had to get Elaine [the character played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus] a new job, I thought the guy who wrote this kooky stuff would be great for her to work...
...Peterman learned that he had become a TV character only after the first episode aired, but he didn't mind being portrayed as "a buffoon and a bore." Indeed, he was later allowed to review scripts that included his character six weeks in advance--but he never changed a word. "For the long term, this was good for the brand name and the company," Peterman says, despite the fact that "most people who saw the show didn't know we were a real company." Nor did Peterman advertise to tell them...
...late '90s, Peterman's expansion plans got out of control. His catalogs bulged with more than 100 pages--up from an initial seven a decade earlier. He added 10 J. Peterman stores in 1998. His five-year business plan called for 70 by 2002, the buildup topped with an IPO. "I took my eye off the brand focus and put it on rapid retail expansion," he recalls. "That was my mistake...