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Show SUCCESS STORY Runs $2,000 Into Fortune LOS ANGELES, Calif.-H. Leslie Hoffman, the west coast's largest radio and television manufacturer. Is the hero of an almost unbelievable unbe-lievable success story. He ran $2,000 capital into a $30 million-a-year business bus-iness in Just nine years. After college he took up salesmanship sales-manship in the depressing thirties, working mostly for Firestone at $250 a month. In 1939 he went in business for himself selling a fluorescent lamp he had designed. Some customers needed transformers transform-ers in order to use the lamps, so he went into the transformer business, busi-ness, too. Then one day in 1941, he went out to the old Mission Bell Radio Co. to collect a $400 debt for his firm. A sheriff's sale sign was tacked on the front door. Hoffman put up $2,000 of his own money, got friends to invest $8,000 more, and he was in the radio business. Three days later came Pearl Harbor. Shortly after that the government was looking for a way of hoisting antennas for its "Gibson girl" radio transmitters on life rafts. Hoffman suggested kites. From Radios to Kites "We don't know a thing about making kites," he told United States procurement people, "so we have no preconceptions." He got the contract and became the world's largest producer of kites, turning out 300,000 during the war years. But during those years he held weekly staff meetings on postwar planning. Television, he admits, was the top topic. Before he came out with the first video set in 1948. Hoffman experimented experi-mented with 5,000 cabinet designs. Always the salesman, he knew the housewife's influence on how the set would go with the rest of the furniture. With television carrying 70 per cent of the load, Hoffman grossed $3,525,000 by the end of 1948. In 1949 that figure was tripled to $11,987,000 gross with a $1,270,360 net profit. Hoffman says the secret of hit success is hard work. He is also a great believer In human labor-management relations. There are two unions in the plant and there never has been a major work stoppage. He or one of his top aides meets twice a month with employe representatives to hear and act on gripes. Employes who are neither absent nor tardy during the week get a 10 cents hourly bonus. It costs him an average of $4 weekly for the 2,-700 2,-700 employes, many of them women, wom-en, but he believes he licked the absentee problem. Football Video Costly "Besides," he says, "it has increased in-creased production 15 per cent." To western gridiron fans Hoffman is an angel. He sponsors telecasts of Pacific Coast conference college games and high school games in Houston, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City and San Antonio. ' The Pacific Coast conference telecasts tele-casts cost him about $300,000 during the past season, as he guarantees the top 20 per cent on an anticipated gate. He believes that if he can get college col-lege football over the next year via television, it will create thousands of new fans for the game. He also believes that football is the greatest single attraction on television but knows that the colleges col-leges cannot be expected to stand the box office loss during the transition transi-tion period. |
