AJ Richard; PC Richard owner
Hyfler/Rosner
After 77 years at the helm of family-owned chain of
electronics stores, A.J. Richard, the company's chairman,
dies at the age of 95
BYLINE: BY TAMI LUHBY. STAFF WRITER, Staff writer Elizabeth
Moore contributed to this story. Newsday
Seventy-seven years after he took over the business from his
father, A.J. Richard was still teaching sales associates how
to handle customers at P.C. Richard & Son.
Up until a month ago, he would spend a day with the
trainees, giving them tips on how to turn a patron into a
customer for life.
Richard died of pneumonia Tuesday evening at Good Samaritan
Hospital Medical Center in West Islip. Richard, whose given
name was Alfred Joseph, was 95.
He was only 18 when he took over the hardware store his
father, Peter Christiana Richard, opened in Bensonhurst in
1909. A.J. Richard served as president of the company until
1980, building it into a 10-store chain on Long Island and
in New York City. He was among the first retailers in the
area to sell electric irons, refrigerators and wringer
washing machines.
"He set the foundation of what P.C. Richard is today, which
is taking care of the customer," said Gary Richard, A.J.'s
son and the company's chief executive.
For the past 24 years, A.J. served as chairman, while sons
Gary and Peter II ran the daily operations. Peter II is
executive vice president. A.J.'s grandson, Gregg, was
recently named president, while granddaughter Bonni is head
of human resources and grandson Peter III is an assistant
manager in warehousing and distribution.
In an era of big-box electronics retailers like Best Buy and
discounters like Wal-Mart that have driven most independents
out of business, P.C. Richard is one of the few family-owned
chains in the nation to survive. It now has 49 stores in New
York and New Jersey and is expected to pull in $1 billion in
sales this year. It trumpets its family leadership in its
advertising with pictures of A.J., Gary and Peter II.
Unlike many family-owned businesses, the company is not
expected to be forced to sell out, Gary said. This can be a
problem when a patriarch passes away, leaving heirs with a
large estate tax burden.
One reason the company has survived is its emphasis on
customer service, said Tom Edwards, a consumer electronics
consultant and former analyst at NPD Group, a Port
Washington retail consulting firm.
"P.C. Richard has a good word of mouth among consumers in
the New York area," he said.
In an 1991 interview with Newsday, A.J. Richard spoke of the
hallmarks of a good retailer.
"The thing is to practice what you preach," he said. "The
requisites of a good retailer are honesty in sales and
service. I've said to my salesmen continually: 'You should
hope' - with tongue in cheek - 'that everything you sell
will have a problem. Now you take care of it like a shot and
you'll have a customer for life.'"
A.J. Richard, who lived in Port St. Lucie, Fla., and Bay
Shore, often dropped by the company's Farmingdale
headquarters once or twice a week when he was in town.
Usually a straight talker, A.J. also liked to tease. When
Alan Meschkow, the chain's ad director, joined the firm in
1989 after two decades in advertising, A.J. enjoyed ribbing
him about his relative inexperience.
"He called me a fledgling," Meschkow recalled. "It was part
of his charm."
A.J. Richard is survived by sons Peter II of Islip, and Gary
of Huntington, and their wives, Nancy and Maria; and by
eight grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. His wife,
Victoria, died in 1997.
Visiting hours will be Sunday and Monday from 2 to 4:30 p.m.
and from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Fredrick J. Chapey & Sons Funeral
Home, 200 E. Main St., East Islip. A service will be held
Monday at noon at St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Bay Shore,
with burial to follow at Pinelawn Memorial Park.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in A.J.
Richard's memory to Our Lady of Consolation, 111 Beach Dr.,
West Islip, NY 11795; or to the Heed Foundation, 205 South
Service Rd., Plainview, NY 11803.
Staff writer Elizabeth Moore contributed to this story.
GRAPHIC: Newsday photo/Dick Yarwood - A.J. Richard, center,
with sons Peter II, left, and Gary, at the company's
headquarters in Farmingdale in 2000.
Hyfler/Rosner
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.