Victor Kiam II

1926-2001

 

 

"A truly remarkable entrepreneur of the old kind - the kind they simply don't make any more."
- Business associate, Jonathan Lyons

 

Born on December 7, 1926, Victor Kiam was an entrepreneur ever since he got involved with his first start-up company: a Coca-Cola stand he opened on the sidewalk near his grandfather's home in New Orleans. The founder was all of eight years old. Known to millions as "The Man Who Bought The Company," Victor Kiam became one of America's leading entrepreneurs. He has been recognized internationally as the epitome of a successful entrepreneur and turnaround specialist. Victor began his corporate career at Lever Brothers in 1951. As a trainee, he lugged cosmetic samples from store to store while building a performance record impressive enough to lift him through the managerial ranks. Even back then, Victor had a way of standing out. The super salesman once persuaded a roomful of hardened buyers to buy Pepsodent toothpaste by making a brief but memorable sales presentation that featured a trained monkey.

 

He joined Playtex as a regional sales manager in 1955 and eventually became Executive Vice President of Marketing and President of that company's Sarong division. While at Playtex, Victor launched the Cross Your Heart Bra. As a forerunner to his future success on television commercials, Victor, with the help of some padding and creative photography, stood in as a simulated model for his company's product in an early commercial. Victor left Playtex when it was sold.

 

After leaving Playtex, Victor decided it was time to run his own venture. With financial backing, he became Chief Executive Officer of the Benrus Corporation, a maker of fine watches. With Victor's successful direction, Benrus developed into a mini conglomerate. Despite this, he opted to leave the organization when the board decided to abandon the continued expansion of its consumer products in favor of strengthening its industrial company.

 

Though no one knew it at the time, Victor's 1979 purchase of Remington would prove to be historic and would make him a worldwide, household name through his appearances in Remington's television commercials, which he wrote. One of the first and most successful leveraged buy-outs, Remington had been a distressed property; the company had losses of $30 million dollars in the five years before the Kiam purchase. Victor took the helm and immediately reversed Remington's fortunes. He introduced bold marketing strategies and aggressive advertising campaigns. The company was trimmed of any fat. Victor also introduced a series of incentive programs that transformed each Remington employee, from the executive offices to the factory floor, into an entrepreneur.

 

Starting with a debt equity ratio of 50 to 1, Remington Products was honored by the National Association of Asset Based Lenders as the outstanding financed company of the year in 1979.

 

It wasn't long before Remington was at the forefront of the shaver industry. Its sales increased ten-fold, and its market share more than doubled. Becoming the largest employer in the City of Bridgeport, the company's turnaround saved thousands of jobs and, in no small part, sparked the nascent renaissance of Bridgeport, a city that had been showing all the tell-tale signs of urban blight.

 

Remington's resurgence was so momentous, 60 Minutes devoted an entire segment to it. Consumer Reports designated The Remington Microscreen first among men's electric shavers. The best-selling book The 100 Best Companies to Work For In America included Remington among many larger corporate entities. At a time when the Japanese monolith was dominant, Victor was chosen to receive the prestigious International Marketing Executive of the Year Award and the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award.

 

All those accolades did not make Victor complacent. If anything, they inspired him to wrestle new challenges. He expanded his horizons to include additional turnaround and start-up ventures that the Kiam family still own today:

Victor even found time to buy and run a sports franchise, the New England Patriots of the National Football League.

 

However, it was Act II Jewelry (today known as lia sophia), a direct sales company that Victor purchased in 1986, which has become the core of the Kiam family's business ventures. At the time, Victor's son, Tory, was a second-year student at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and when the opportunity to buy Act II came to Victor, he asked Tory to analyze the company's prospects as part of a school project. The final report determined that direct selling was an industry that provided great earnings opportunities, flexible working hours and enhanced self-esteem for those involved in essence, an industry for and about entrepreneurs.

 

Not only was Victor energized by the prospect of supporting budding entrepreneurs, but he also knew a lot about the jewelry business, having previously started two jewelry companies with his wife, Ellen. This included the Friendship Collection, which began as a mom-and-pop business in the Kiam apartment, and in the 1970s it blossomed into the United States' largest importer of jewelry, antiques and artifacts from China.

 

After Victor purchased Act II, he immediately changed the name to Lady Remington to more closely associate it with the company that, by then, he had become famous for. He established a Lifetime Replacement Guarantee on all the jewelry products, similar to the guarantee he used for his electric shavers in which Victor proclaimed, "Shaves as close as a blade, or your money back!" Most importantly, he imbued Lady Remington with a family atmosphere and a recognition that the dream of each Advisor was important to him. Many of the lia sophia Advisors who were with Lady Remington then still fondly remember Victor urging them to, in his words, "Go for it!"

 

When he was not encouraging the women at Lady Remington, guiding his other enterprises or exploring new possibilities, Victor acted as an entrepreneurial missionary to the world. He spread the gospel of the benefits of risk-taking in two internationally best-selling books, entitled appropriately, Going For It and Live to Win!. In his advice-to-the-small-businessperson column, which was featured in newspapers and magazines prior to his death, Victor tackled every question and problem faced by entrepreneurs today. His Going For It radio show, which was devoted to helpful hints for businesses of every size, was syndicated on more than 200 radio stations. Among the periodicals that Victor's articles appeared in were The Wall Street Journal, Success, Leaders, Harper's Bazaar and Streetwise Business (U.K.). In addition to the 60 Minutes segment, he appeared on David Letterman, This Week With David Brinkley, The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, The Macneil-Lehrer Newshour, Face The Nation, The Larry King Show, as well as numerous appearances overseas. He was a lecturer, guest speaker or keynote speaker at more than 300 events around the world.

 

Victor Kiam, this renaissance symbol, held several patents and was a Life Master bridge competitor. Victor was a ranked tennis player, having played the circuit early in his life, including at Wimbledon. Later, he was one of the top senior players in the US. He and Tory won several father-son tennis championships, and together they started the first international family tennis tournament.

 

Victor was a graduate of Yale University. He held an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business and a Certificate of Languages from the Sorbonne, as well as several honorary degrees. He lived in Wellington, Florida with his wife, Ellen and had three children, Lisa, Tory and Robin; and seven grandchildren, Jenny, Alexander, Sophia, Caleigh, Lia, Blake and Nikki. In 1982, Victor was named the National Business and Commerce Father of the Year.

 

When Victor Kiam passed away on May 27, 2001, the world lost a great human being and one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time.

 

Click here to see a video of Victor's lifetime achievements.