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It’s Bob’s World, We Just Sit in It
Discount furniture king's
success a ‘no-brainer'
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Business New Haven
3/20/2000
By: Michael Gomez
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You doubt it? Don't.
Bob Kaufman is for real.
As the personification of Bob's Discount Furniture, some feel he's a tasteless buffoon. You hate his radio and TV commercials? You recoil from his jeans-clad, scruffy-bearded appearance? You cringe at his high tenor voice? And you stab at the remote when this carnival barker comes on screen and brashly turns up the heat on the cool medium of television?
Well, Bob actually agrees with you. He knows he's a TV amateur. He accepts that he's a caricature of the businessman whose ego is so big that he thinks he belongs in hundreds of thousands of households hawking his furniture in 30-second TV spots.
Bob just laughs this off. Because it's easy being Bob.
For he's having fun, making a ton of money, and outfitting folks' homes with all manner of furniture. “This isn't brain surgery,” he insists. “This is just television.”
And it works for him. Big time.
A Growing Empire
In just nine years, Bob's Discount Furniture has grown from one store to a chain of 14 stores throughout Connecticut and western Massachusetts, with six more due to open across New England this spring alone.
This growth has fueled his chain's rise to be the 56th-largest furniture chain in the U.S. He employs 400 people and will generate $100 million in sales in 2000. Kaufman (33 percent) and his cousins, Gene and Anja Rosenberg (67 percent) control the company's ownership.
Not bad for a former factory supervisor and waterbed salesman.
Bob Kaufman, 48, graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1974 with a degree in marketing. A post-college job was as a line supervisor at a tachometer factory in Uncasville, an unassuming town in unassuming eastern Connecticut, a region of the state where Kaufman still lives (in Montville). He says that this factory foreman's gig taught him the value of providing working men - like himself - with quality goods at an affordable price.
He left the factory in 1981 to go into the waterbed business; a near-fatal motorcycle accident drew him to sleep on waterbeds for their therapeutic benefits and comfort. During the 1980s, he built his waterbed business into a concession department in five Wholesale Furniture stores owned by his cousins.
Shifting consumer tastes in the waterbed market, combined with the protracted New England recession, caused Kaufman and his cousins to shift their business focus in 1991. The first Bob's Discount Furniture store opened that year in a Newington building that was once a waterbed competitor's showroom.
Initially, the store obediently followed the basic marketing strategy of most furniture retailers: artificially inflate prices and then cut them in sales-event promotions. Then, in 1993, Bob's adopted its current sales philosophy to focus on one price, provide value, and adopt a low-key sales approach. Sales mushroomed, and Bob's stores began cropping up everywhere.
A “one-price” story in a retail segment renowned for so-called sales events and high-pressure sales associates requires some introduction to consumers. Kaufman says he felt it necessary as owner to be the narrator.
A TV Star Is Born
Business founders and CEOs on occasion star in their firm's advertisements and TV and radio commercials - remember Victor Kayem, who liked his Remington shaver so much he bought the company (and later, briefly and infamously, the New England Patriots)?
Connecticut has seen, and suffered, its share of such pitchmen, whose more visible ranks have included the late Bill Savitt, the winking Hartford jeweler who promised consumers Peace of Mind Guaranteed, and Ruby Vine, the hand-waving Railroad Salvager who touted tractor trailer-loads of odd-lot goods.
(Pilot Pen of America CEO Ron Shaw has starred in his firm's TV ads, though Shaw shows considerably more on-camera poise than many due to an earlier career as a stand-up comedian.)
Nationally, of course, television ads have made celebrities of such business pitchmen as chicken tycoon Frank Perdue and hamburger king, Wendy's Dave Thomas.
But becoming a living logo can be, well, problematic.
“There's pros and cons about it,” argues Charlie Mason, president of local advertising agency Mason & Madison. “The good news is that every company needs some sort of face and personality. One shortcut is to have a charismatic CEO embody the brand.
“But there's a potential drawback. A strong ego might not be appealing [to audiences] and could appear to be arrogant or a jerk, and then that becomes the company,” warns Mason. “When we look at branding, we want to make sure the CEO matches the set of attributes you want the company to represent.”
Father Doesn't Necessarily
Know Best
Before embarking on his pitchman career, Kaufman called on his father. Dad is Leo Kaufman, coincidentally a former Hartford advertising man whose clients included Mr. POMG himself, Bill Savitt.
“I told my dad that I was going to do my own ads,” Kaufman recounts. “He said, 'Son, I love you dearly. But you look like hell and your voice is even worse.'” Kaufman relishes telling this story about himself. “He's right, of course,” he laughs. “As an ad man, he's 100-percent right.
“But I discovered that's the key - to not be just another suit on TV. Being different was a plus and helped us get through the din” of commercial messages and plugs that engulf consumers every waking hour.
The Bob image erupted fully formed when the first TV ads aired in the early 1990s. Here was a short, slight, grinning guy with a reddish beard (now graying) wearing a golf shirt or turtleneck and his ubiquitous blue jeans (still size 33 waist).
“The blue jeans are my waterbed outfit. When you carry hundreds of thousands of waterbeds, you sure don't get dressed up,” Kaufman explains.
The Bob's icon is broadcast day and night on TV; media buys are determined by Kaufman's sister Eileen, who favors Oprah and other shows that appeal to the chain's primary audience of women. The image beckons from the back page of the Hartford Courant's weekly TV guide. And the famous Kaufman voice brays from radio most hours of the day.
The unscripted ads feature catchwords and phrases that Kaufman readily admits cribbing from old TV shows and popular culture. You've seen or heard them all: Untouchable! It's a No-Brainer! I Doubt It! Lickety-Split Delivery!
They roll so fast off his tongue that exclamation marks have joined the endangered species list. Even he is surprised, however, that his most famous lift - 'Come on down!” from Bob Barker's The Price Is Right TV game show - has become the trademark of his stores.
“I've had parents come up and tell me that the first words out of their kid's mouth were 'Come on down.' I tell them they're letting their kids watch too much TV.”
In all, Kaufman's ads have made him one of the most recognizable celebrities in this celebrity-rich state. His visibility has led to a demand for him as a motivational speaker and guest entrepreneur in Hartford area MBA programs. His advertising budget nears $5 million annually.
And, after traipsing to a rented New Hampshire studio in the early years with a truckload of furniture to pull all-nighters and produce several TV ads, Kaufman wised up and built a state-of-the-art TV production facility in his Manchester flagship store to produce the ads that confound so many.
“I don't want to be associated with that guy,” demurs one marketing expert when asked to comment on Kaufman's commercial persona. “I'm not his target audience.”
Another Connecticut ad man also declines an on-the-record opportunity to comment, stating that contrasting Kaufman's amateurish ads to professionally produced TV commercials that use actors, scripts and experienced camera operators and lighting experts would be “an apples-and-oranges” comparison.
While likewise declining to comment specifically on the Bob's ads, Charlie Mason readily acknowledges that they do “break through the clutter” - the Holy Grail among advertising creatives who constantly search for ways to generate commercial buzz. Mason believes that using a CEO pitchman, such as famously gravel-voiced ice cream magnate, the late Tom Carvel, to embody a company often is viewed favorably by consumers.
“They know that this is not a Madison Avenue-manufactured image,” Mason says. “These are real people. And consumers most likely are saying, 'This has got to be the boss - no one else could be this inept.”
Perception vs. Reality
Like the old Rolling Stone magazine advertising campaign, the Bob's image doesn't always match the reality of his stores. Bob's Discount Furniture isn't all $595 bedroom suites.
His stores also feature higher-end furniture and accessories. And he proudly claims that the chain does a lot of interior decorator business. In fact, he says his average sale is between $1,000 and $1,500 - decidedly un-schlocky price tag. And his return, or exchange, rate is a paltry three percent (untouchable!), matching the customer-satisfaction rate of such high-end furniture retailers as Ethan Allen and Thomasville.
And while the occasional Bob's salesman does indeed sport an earring or ponytail, there's no arm-twisting pressure to buy. They learn to treat Bob's customers with respect in a three-week training course, branded “Bob's Way of Selling.”
“We build our business one customer at a time,” he instructs. “Our goal is to exceed customers' expectations at every level.” Kaufman says Bob's does that by offering the best selection of quality furniture for the best price. The stores themselves are clean, tastefully decorated, and offer children's play areas and free coffee and cookies for browsers.
So when Bob Kaufman exhorts you to 'Come on down!” to Bob's Discount Furniture, he really wants you to. You might even enjoy the experience. BNH
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