”Crazy TV Lenny” has been peddling televisions, stereos, furniture and appliances for whatever the customer is willing to pay for more than a dozen years.
But ”Crazy” Lenny Mattioli is crazy like a fox. In a little more than a dozen years, he has built American TV and Appliance of Wisconsin Inc. into the largest independent retailer of appliances in the state. With sales of $160 million last year, the fox works like an ox.
A familiar face and voice through his frenetic radio and television pitches here, the 41-year-old chairman of American got his first taste of sales and hard work in Chicago.
In the early 1950s, Mattioli began delivering the now-defunct Chicago Herald-American when he was a 6th-grader at Dever Elementary School on the Northwest Side.
”The boss there, Matthew Cockrell, would call all the delivery boys in and tell them that delivering the papers was only half the job. The other half was selling subscriptions. He said some would sell one subscription, some two, others three, but zero was unacceptable,” he recalled.
At 12, young Lenny made his first ”cold” calls.
”I would knock on a door and say, `I`m a paper boy and I`m really cold. Could I come into your foyer for a second to get warm?` Then I`d ask if the woman subscribed. If she took the morning paper, I told her why she should take the afternoon American. If she took no paper, I`d tell her why she should.
”Then I asked if her paperboy sometimes threw the paper in the bushes, and when she said yes, I promised her I would deliver it inside. To this day, I tell my salespeople to ask the basic questions to find out what the customer wants,” he said.
One of six children, young Lenny outpitched and outperformed the other newspaperboys. With the same rapidity he now pitches his sale items, Mattioli won a baseball glove, a bicycle and a trip to New York through subscription contests.
After graduating in 1961 from Steinmetz High School, Mattioli went to the University of Illinois in Champaign, but most weekends he would return to Chicago to help his immigrant father repair trucks in his Maxwell Street garage.
”I`d get down there at 6 a.m. and leave around 7 or 8 p.m. He would help me out in college and I would work summers, saving every penny. I couldn`t afford the fancy dorms there, so I would get something reasonable and work in one of the frat houses,” he said.
After college, Mattioli got a job as a mechanical engineer for Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, N.Y. He stayed there for five years, getting perfunctory raises with the rest of the engineers.
”A lot of the engineers were better than I was, but they didn`t get any more than I got,” he recalled.
Then while mowing the lawn in 1969, he got a phone call that changed his life. ”My brother Ferdinand called and asked me if I was sitting down. I told him yes, and he said he was dying of cancer. He asked me to come close his TV business. He had a negative net worth of $210,000 and no inventory except on the floor. I took it over for the debt,” he recalled.
For several months, Mattioli commuted from Rochester to Madison, driving, flying, taking the bus. Finally, he took a six-month leave of absence from Kodak, moved here and started running the small storefront known as American Television.
”I`d sell a television to a customer, but tell him we`d deliver and install it. He might want to take it with him, but I`d insist on installing it. I couldn`t let him have it–we only had six or seven models on the floor and kept selling them over and over again. Then I`d get up at 4 the next morning, drive to Milwaukee and pay with a check, then deliver the television c.o.d., race to the bank to deposit the c.o.d. to cover my check,” he said.
During those first tough years of 80-hour weeks, Mattioli realized he knew little about televisions but knew plenty about selling.
”I grew up watching Jim Moran ”the courtesy man” sell cars and
”Madman” Muntz sell televisions. So I began to advertise on radio and television,” he said.
But Mattioli disliked the ”round tones” the radio announcers used and decided to show them how he wanted his ads delivered. Since 1971, he has been delivering his breathless pitches over the Madison airwaves. Now he has his own studio.
Unlike ”Madman” Muntz, who filed for bankruptcy in 1955, ”Crazy”
Lenny has enjoyed enormous success. In 1973, he expanded into a 9,200-square- foot store. He doubled that space in a year. In the next three years, he expanded to 42,500, then 50,000 and then 80,000 square feet in 1977.
In 1980, he built his present 150,000-square-foot store on Madison`s South Side. The Bears could play the Packers and Wisconsin could take on Purdue beneath his roof, and Lenny could still have room to sell appliances and televisions.
In addition, American has expanded to Milwaukee and Appleton, Wis., and Marquette, Mich.
As chairman, Mattioli can watch the floor from his modest office, but will still hit the floor to make a sale. One key to his success has been his pricing, or rather, the lack of it. Just like buying a house or car, customers bargain with American salesmen to establish a price.
”We don`t ask the customer what they`re willing to pay. We ask them questions about its use. They want a 9-inch television, but where will it go? If it`s going in the bedroom, it might not be large enough. Most people put their televisions farther away in the bedroom than in the living room.
”The hardest thing to do is to get our salespeople to get the customer to talk about what he wants. The toughest thing to do is build a customer`s confidence. He has to like you before he`ll buy from you,” he said.
But doesn`t the lack of a pricetag bother a lot of customers?
”Some intelligent people don`t want to be bothered. Americans aren`t considered good shoppers around the world. But the smarter the customer is
–the one who comes in with Consumer Reports under his arm–the easier it is to close (the deal),” he said.
If a customer comes and tells Mattioli he can buy a dishwasher for $270 that Mattioli is selling for $310, he has a problem, but one with options.
”If he really did get that price for the same machine, then the problem is with my vendor. I`ll write it up at the lower price and take my loss. I still want to keep that customer. He`ll come to me for his next purchase. Is that competitor in business to lose money? I doubt it. I`ll call that vendor to find out how the competition is able to give that price,” he said.
His sales force of 400 is on a strict commission basis, so they have to know how to close. In effect, they set their own salaries and raises, a contrast to the across-the-board raises Mattioli got at Kodak. Some salesmen make $10,000 a year, others $50,000.
Midway through the interview, Mattioli takes a call from a vendor and leans back in his chair.
”I don`t need 4,000 at $46.50 to beat the competition. Would you be willing to keep the same price and conditions at a lesser quantity? It sounds like I`m yelling at you. I don`t mean to be,” he soothed.
For 16 years since leaving Kodak, Mattioli has been smiling, laughing, cajoling and pitching everything from television to stereos to computers to beds.
”You`ve got to sleep, eat and think business. Cover all the bases
–inventory, price, security, customers, advertising, mop the bathroom. Never allow yourself to say enough is enough. And you can`t just do what everyone everyone else is doing,” said Mattioli, who owns 55 percent of the stock.
And he never stops bargaining.
”I`ll bargain anywhere. Gucci`s or Bonwit Teller. When I go on vacation, I bargain. In the Caribbean, we`d rented a boat and the garbage needed to be hauled. I bargained with the guy to take away our garbage,” he said.
