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All About Bob
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Business New Haven
4/1/2002
By: BNH
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Bob Kaufman, proprietor of Bob's Discount Furniture (“C'mon down!), sure catches a lot of flack.
His ads for $899 bedroom sets (“Untouchable!”) are as entrenched a part of the popular culture as “Eight-Minute Abs” or spots for the latest McDonald's promotion. Generation Y kids now studying journalism and advertising in college can't imagine a television era without the blue-jeaned pitchman. For this, Kaufman endures tremendous ridicule. His therapy? He laughs all the way to the bank.
Whatever one thinks of his furniture wares, Kaufman has built a successful southern New England empire that now spans four states and generates upwards of $100 million in annual sales. For this he is rewarded with scorn. It's his advertising, of course - the very reason we know who he is and where his stores are in the first place.
Interestingly, when Kaufman started out, he sought the advice of his father, a successful Hartford ad executive. While trumpeting the strengths of retail advertising to build name- and brand-recognition, Kaufman Sr. cautioned Kaufman Jr. against falling into a common ego trap: Plastering his own face all over his ads.
“Son,” Kaufman pere warned, “I love you to death. But you look like hell, and your voice is even worse. Don't do it!”
Bob Kaufman disregarded that well-intentioned advice, and today those who laugh at his advertising nevertheless can't drive far on a major road without encountering one of his stores. Who's laughing now?
Bob's advertising alone doesn't tell the whole story, of course. His growth strategy always has been to bite the high-rent bullet and lease space in high-traffic locations. With their free coffee and cookies, his stores offer customers the comfortable illusion, at least, that they are something other than mice at a pussycat convention. And Kaufman's commitment to customer-service is more than hot air: He personally answers his own consumer-complaint line, for goodness' sake.
For all their laughability, Kaufman's ads may be what keep the phones ringing - and keep his empire expanding.
Sure - let's chuckle at Bob. There may be a lesson there somewhere.
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