Whatever Works: Where Product is King

Really.

Brown, 55, started out as a rookie in the Great Old Days of mail order, and has a repertoire of wild and colorful stories to prove it. He says he never chose the mail order business. The mail order business chose him—by way of his mother.

“A kid from the Bronx” who wondered why anyone would waste time in school when they could be making money, he got his first job at age 11, lifting air conditioners for a distributor near his home. He was paid the lordly sum of 25 cents a day.