It’s easy to think that we’re living in an age of unprecedented progress and wonder when it comes to technology. But that’s small-minded and prejudicial. A.J. Richard felt the wonder of electric irons, and he ran with it.
January 1, 2005
A.J. Richard, 95, Tinkerer Who Built Appliance Chain, Dies
By JENNIFER BAYOT
A. J. Richard, whose contagious enthusiasm for new gadgets transformed P. C. Richard & Son from a hardware store into a major retailer of consumer appliances and electronics, died on Dec. 28 in West Islip, N.Y. He was 95 and lived in Bay Shore and Port St. Lucie, Fla.
The cause was pneumonia, said Alan Meschkow, the company’s advertising director.
Although Mr. Richard’s father, Peter Christiaan, started the business, it was A. J. who in 1924, at the age of 15, insisted on selling newfangled electric irons alongside the store’s kerosene lamps and plumbing supplies.
“It’s beautiful, look – it’s chrome, it’s polished, it fits your hand,” went Mr. Richard’s sales pitch, Mr. Meschkow said. “And look at the tip, the point – you can go right in between the buttons.” He asked his first buyer to pay 50 cents a week toward the total cost of $4.95, and other customers soon followed.
Over the next six decades, including several years he spent living above his store in Ozone Park, Mr. Richard sold New Yorkers all kinds of new electric devices, from toaster in the 1920’s to the Walkman in the 1980’s.
His methods were often ingenious. In the early 1930’s, when people seemed content to scrub clothes on washboards, he sent salesmen door to door offering families $5 to try out washing machines. In the 1950’s, he let people watch Friday-night boxing matches on a television displayed in the store’s window, and some inevitably bought their own 10-inch black-and-white set, which cost nearly $400. In the 1980’s, the company offered cooking classes to demonstrate microwave ovens.
P. C. Richard & Son now reports annual sales of roughly $1 billion, making it the country’s largest family-owned and operated seller of appliances and consumer electronics. Based in Farmingdale, N.Y., it has grown to 49 stores in New York and New Jersey, even as competing regional chains like Crazy Eddie and Newmark & Lewis have closed. Many people can whistle its five-note advertising jingle, “At P. C. Richard.”
Much of the advertising still carries pictures of A. J. and his two sons: Gary, now the company’s chief executive, and Peter, who is executive vice president. A grandson, Gregg Richard, recently became president, and a granddaughter, Bonni Richard, is head of human resources.
Alfred Joseph Richard was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 11, 1909, the same year his father, a handyman who emigrated from Amsterdam, opened the family’s first store in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn.
“I waited on customers when I was 7,” he told The New York Times in a 1995 interview. “I was a 100 percent hardware man by the age of 9.”
He was also a tinkerer, and he started the store’s service department after learning to repair radios as a teenager. He took over the company in 1947.
His wife, the former Vicky Himmelman, died in 1997. He is survived by his sons, Gary and Peter, both of Long Island; eight grandchildren; and 18 great-grandchildren.
Although the next generation has led the company for 20 years, until last month, Mr. Richard, often with cigar in hand, helped train new sales representatives, reviewed most advertising and occasionally waited on customers.