The way Paul Brooker sees it, the ingredients for success run in his veins. His ancestors were original Kansas pioneers.
”My people were wild Irish who traveled down the Santa Fe Trail and settled this country in 1857,” said Brooker, president of Paul Brooker Sales International Inc. ”They were tough, rugged, individualistic kinds of guys.” Some of his ancestors, Brooker says, ran a trading post he won in a card game at Lost Springs, Kan., while another one hunted buffalo and opened one of the first stores in Dodge City, Kan.
How much of their enterprising spirit did Brooker inherit? ”All of it,” he said.
It`s hard to argue with that claim. During the last 34 years, Brooker, 75, has built his retail-promotions firm into what he says is the largest business of its kind in the country. The company is a successor of one founded in 1916 by his father, C.C. Brooker. It operates throughout the continental United States and most of Canada.
What Paul Brooker Sales International does is liquidate inventory. It runs close-out sales when retailers want to go out of business and stock-reduction sales when stores are overloaded.
What the company sells is its promotional savvy.
Brooker emphasizes the firm`s ability to raise cash for merchants, more cash than they would get if they simply sold the business to someone else or ran a regular markdown or liquidation sale, he says. It does so by contracting between 130 and 140 experienced sales people nationwide to evaluate the businesses and run the sales. They use Brooker`s techniques for media campaigns, in-store decorations and a copyrighted promotions contest called the Fun Program.
Seventy-five percent of the firm`s promotions are for closeouts, Brooker says; the rest are stock reduction sales to raise money.
”Ninety percent of the businesses have some need for our services,”
Brooker said.
He laments that most turn to his firm only in a time of financial crisis. ”Nobody wants to do business with me,” he said. ”It`s like going to the doctor and the dentist, or a lawyer.” But by the time many of them contact him, he said, ”they don`t need a doctor, they need an undertaker.”
”They ought to use our services to compete, but it has no acceptability,” he said.
John McCaffery was president of A. Sulka & Co., a prominent New York City haberdashery, late in 1974, when the firm changed ownership and hired the Brooker organization to liquidate its stock. ”Liquidation is a touchy situation,” McCaffery said. ”Most places are afraid of it. It`s, in a way, demeaning.”
A. Sulka & Co. was 80 years old at the time. ”We were very conscious of our prestigious reputation,” McCaffery said, but Brooker ”handled it beautifully.” Brooker and four members of his staff met McCaffery in New York and mapped out a low-key direct mail and newspaper advertising campaign.
”He got the information over to the public that we were liquidating and that merchandise was available at reduced prices, but he did it without any sensationalism, without putting signs on the window or anything like that,”
McCaffery said. A follow-up letter to Brooker indicated that every shirt, tie, and sock was sold, to the tune of $1.4 million.
Brooker says his firm held 1,000 promotional sales that raised $50 million last year. The company brought in $8 million in fees. It was, Brooker said, ”the biggest year in our 70-year history.”
Brooker is a member of two country clubs in Wichita, but says he otherwise keeps a low profile in town. Across the U.S. and Canada, however, many retailers know the Brooker name well. The company periodically sends 300,000 of them letters reminding them that if they ever need the Brooker organization`s services, they`re available. Some have been on the company`s list 40 years, Brooker says.
Once they respond, one of Brooker`s 14 regional sales representatives sizes up each store and estimates how much cash a sale will bring in and how long it will last. Most run one to four months, Brooker says.
The company receives weekly fees from merchants, the amount based on the size of the store being liquidated and the expertise of the consultant involved. A percentage is paid to the company, the consultant who runs the sale and one of the sales representatives. Consultants report to the home office weekly on the progress of each sale.
All promotions are different, Brooker says, but the key to the success of 75 percent of them is Brooker`s Fun Program, a contest where customers win prizes for racking up a certain number of points, tabulated primarily on the number of trips made to the store by contestants and their friends.
”I`m hard-nosed,” Brooker said, but he deals with his sales consultants, some of whom he`s never met, with an even hand. ”My theory is treat everybody fair,” he said. Brooker says all start at the same wage, then have their pay increased as they prove themselves. ”We have one contract with our reps,” he explained. ”That way, there`s no trouble. That was my father`s theory, and that`s exactly the right way.”
Margaret Combs, Brooker`s office manager, who has been with the firm for 19 years, says Brooker is ”very aggressive” in encouraging representatives to bring in new business. Mavis Doshier, secretary-treasurer, who has been associated with company since 1948, before Paul joined his father`s firm, said: ”He certainly wants everything done right, and no questions about anything being on the up-and-up.”
Brooker, a native of Marion, Kan., graduated from the University of Kansas in 1931, then worked for Dun and Bradstreet, first in Kansas City, then Wichita and Topeka. In Wichita, he says, he wrote the first credit report on Cessna Aircraft Co.
Brooker was an officer with the Navy in all three theaters during World War II. Back with Dun and Bradstreet after the war, he worked out of the Chicago office while developing territory for the family business on weekends. He joined the family business in Wichita in 1951.
By 1954, his father divided the business between Paul and his brother, C.M., now deceased. Brooker says he and his brother competed head-to-head for a while, but his brother`s firm eventually failed.
