How business, doctors and journalists prey on your food anxieties I

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Why's a tiny company you never heard of
invading the crowded electric shaver market?
Because It thinks it has a better product .
Father says,
! " l um " F p
By Jerry' Flint
}
Lro WAHL began making electric
hair clippers in 1919 . He kept his
Wahl Clipper Corp . going for almost
half a centnn,, selling to barbers <strong>and</strong>
living otl' rovaldes <strong>and</strong> patent infringement
fines .
But then his son Jack took o%er in
Jack Wahl, chief executJve of Wahl CI!pper Corp .
Haven't you seen his "Dancing Mustache"7
1977 <strong>and</strong> things started popping .
When Jack R'ah1 took o% er, recenues
were $7 million . Last vear they were
5100 million-16% annual compounded
growtll o~er neari\• trnn decades
. The Sterling, I1L-based company
now employs 1,100 ~corlters <strong>and</strong> is
owned iock, stock <strong>and</strong> barrel bv Jack
6t%ahl <strong>and</strong> his famif .- .
Jack Wahl credits the grosr°rh to a
simple principle : "I realized the difference
bemeen sales <strong>and</strong> marketing-that's
a big thing for a small
companv ." Wahl explains that sales
means simplv presenting
_ the product <strong>and</strong> collecting
the money . •`hiarketing,"
11e saxs "means stepping
back <strong>and</strong> looking for the
needs of the customer, <strong>and</strong>
for the best way to get
through to that user ."
Jack FVahi decided the
place to ewrcise his marketing
skills was in the consumer
market, his Pathcr
ha~ing focused ot1 barbershops
. The big move was
the introduction, in 1984,
of a batten~-operated
beard-<strong>and</strong>-mustache trimn1er,
the Groomsmun, It
turned out to be % er ' v good
at shaving heads, too . It's
now the big product in
10ahl Clipper's $50-million-a-vear
domestic cottsumer
products division .
The Groomsman recenthgot
a big plug from Pulp
Fiction <strong>and</strong> Die Hard star
6ruce Willis . When Dacid ~
Leaerman asked Willis how ~
11e acilieces his shaved-skull ~
look, Willis told Letter- Q„
man-<strong>and</strong> millions of late- '
night tv sietcers-that he T
shaves his head even• other ~
day with Wahl Clipper's ~ ~
Groomsman .
Today Jack 4Va11I is ob- ~ I
I"t Forbes .August 14, 199i
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/agf97d00/pdf