This was the really great thing about the mail-order business. You could test your ads in small, inexpensive publications, and if they worked, then you rolled them out to the expensive large-circulation journals. As long as you didn’t have to invest in a big inventory first, there was virtually no risk involved in trying to sell new things. I didn’t have to cozy up to clients and beg for their business, I only had to figure out what the tabloid reading public wanted and then supply it. I have always hated having to be dependent on the opinion of others for my success. This robs you of your self-worth and too often turns people into brown-nosers, always afraid that someday their “benefactor” will turn on them. Think back to the beginning—when Adam was all alone in the Garden of Eden, all G-d gave him was Eve as a companion and helper. He didn’t give him a cadre of bosses, kings, or overbearing clients to direct his every move. Even once thrown out of the garden, he was able to farm the land on his own, earning independence and self-respect in his own eyes.

In our much more complex economic society it is no longer possible just to have a nation of yeoman farmers, each looking after his own land. In fact, small self-reliant farmers are having a tough go of it. On the other hand, does this mean you should relinquish all independence and allow your physical as well as mental well-being to be dependent on the goodwill of others rather than your own innate value? I think not. This is probably the reason I’ve resisted the temptation to run for elective office. It’s also the reason I’ve always made sure that no single client would ever account for more than 5 percent of my business. I’ve always preferred to make sales based on uniqueness or the superior quality of our offerings rather than on some personal “connection” where friendship gets turned into a commodity and the loss of goodwill adds up to the loss of income.

The mail-order business and the brochure business suited me just fine. I was my own master. Even if you hated a teenage overachiever who went to Bronx Science, if you wanted your brochure in a hotel lobby in New York, you paid us. If you wanted a pet plant, I was your man. In short, things were going great.

In all honesty, though, not everything I tried always went right. Sometimes I got so carried away with how well we were doing that I’d take a foolish risk and lose months of earnings. Two particular cases stick in my mind, even to this day.

At that time, a lot of mail-order marketers seemed to be making big money selling small samples of a large variety of well-known perfumes for one low price. They got samples from the perfume companies who were looking to find new consumers. I realized that the women who were ordering such large varieties of perfumes didn’t yet have a strong preference and were searching for the right scent. I also knew from my other products that people wanted something that was created personally for them. I hit upon what I thought was a brilliant idea: perfume personalized for your personality. Women would fill in a whole page of questions about their age, weight, coloring, favorite colors, dreams, pastimes, clothing, education, et cetera . . . and we’d send the perfect perfume for them.

I even invented a fictional Italian perfumer, Guiseppe LaVerde, who was featured in our ads as supervising the blending of your personal fragrances. I was so enthralled with what I thought was the brilliance of these ads that soon I could think of nothing else. Estée Lauder, Charles Revlon, and Nina Ricci would soon be nothing compared to me.


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