Ken Longdone

Chicken Salad and Lemonade

From I Love Capitalism by Ken Longdone

You noticed. I originally named my little start-up Invemed because I was so fascinated by the health-care field, and now here I was, in 1976, up to my ass in the home improvement business. And happy to be there.

Contradictory? Sure! Life is full of left turns, and I've taken quite a few of them, following my nose, which has very often pointed me in the right direction. The truth is I can't help myself: I am a deal junkie. If the phone rings, I'm like the proverbial firehouse dog – off to the races. Who knows who might be calling? More often than not, it's someone who has a very interesting business proposition. Doesn't matter what kind of business it is.

Handy Dan was ab extremely interesting business proposition in 1976. And Bernie Marcus, I soon found out, was very much a kindred spirit. Oddly enough, ha had started his business career in the health-care field, as a Rutgers-trained pharmacist: this was how he came to Daylin in the first place. Then two friends of his, Amnon Barness and Max Candiotty, knowing that Bernie understood merchandise and markups and service, asked him to go take over this little home-improvement start-up. Which, as we've seen, Bernie turned into a big success, despite the failures of the parent corporation.

After I took my position in Handy Dan, Elaine and I became friends with Bernie and his wife, Billi. Every January, I used to rent a house in Palm Springs to play in the Bob Hope golf tournament, and Bernie and I would golf there together. As we walked the course, we would inevitably talk shop, and Handy Dan continued to fascinate me. I began visiting the stores often, in California and Arizona (where they were called Angels Do-It-Yourself Centers), in Denver and Kansas City and Houston.

I love capitalism. Photo by Elena.

I used to love to go to store openings: they always seemed to exciting and hopeful. One Thursday in the fall of 1976 – grand openings typically happened on Thursdays, with lots of newspaper and TC ads and hoopla, to get momentum going for the weekend – I joined Bernie at the christening of a new Handy Dan in Houston. And Bernie and I were walking around the store when I saw something in the paint department that knocked my socks off.

It was a big display, depicting two cans of paint, one Handy Dan's house brand and the other a competitor, Sherwin-Williams or Glidden. The display showed the percentage of each can that was pigment and the percentage that was thinner: the more pigment, the better the quality. And here was graphic evidence that not only did the house brand have more pigment than the competition, but the prices were better. Oh boy, I thought that was wonderful.

It was a big display, and the new store was a very big store, thirty-five thousand square feet. Every place I went in it, I saw similar displays and signage, showing how this Handy Dan was going to educate and service the customer. Soon I was literally bouncing up and down; I thought this was the greatest thing I'd ever seen.