Jim Streetman was my neighbor at The Grove Apartments, circa 1981. While visiting one day he said to me, “you know, people around here think you’re crazy, I tell them well one day you’re going to be calling him eccentric, and you know what the difference is? MONEY.”
I took that as a compliment from Jim, and while I don’t think I’ve achieved the level of eccentricity he was referring to, I haven’t done badly. Back then you’d see me in a work van with handyman made shelves loaded with sunglasses. Not something my neighbors understood.
I started March of 1972. I was 19 years old and had a $42 income tax refund check that I invested in some items from a wholesale warehouse on Delta Drive (now Medgar Evers Blvd).
My former scoutmaster and church member, Gordin Rawls, was in a business selling to stores and he’d told me about that place. I put these items in a box and started carrying them into mom and pop stores around town, display cards of lighters, keyrings, combs, watchbands, etc.
It was an easy way to make money while going to Hinds Jr. College and have the freedom to set my own schedule. Later on at that warehouse I met a sunglasses importer that changed my life.
In fall of 1973 at Hinds, I enrolled in their marketing program which required me to be interviewed by the head of the program, Mr. Baker. He asked, “why did you want to be in this program” and I said “I want to have my own business.” He then said “It’s highly unlikely you’ll have your own business, but a lot of our students are getting jobs at Howard Brothers.” It was a discount department store that went by the wayside in Wal-Mart’s growth. I got in the program, but wasn’t impressed. Later on, I’d send postcards to Mr. Baker when I was at trade shows in Chicago and New York.
The sunglasses importer I previously mentioned enabled me to get sunglasses in Tote-Sum convenience stores, thanks to Stewart Barry who was in charge there. I had been interested in sunglasses for quite some time, always checking out what was on the displays at Brent’s Drugs.
I set up Tote-Sum in the fall of 1974 and would work them on weekends while attending USM. Two quarters at USM proved college was not for me and my part time business became my full time business.
Summer of 1975, I made plans to go to a trade show in Chicago, something a mentor thought was premature, but at 21 years old of course I knew better and took the train to Chicago. It was a wide eyed experience of opportunities I’d not imagined. I found a variety of things I could sell from flashy cheap watches to afro combs, and of course, a greater variety of sunglasses! I also met the JOB Papers folks, and having been to college I knew that they would sell in Tote-Sum. At the time such as that was only found in discreet locations and the traditional grocery and tobacco wholesalers didn’t stock this taboo item. Getting them in Tote-Sum covered my trade show trip expenses and my apartment rent for a year. After a year the traditional wholesalers realized how much money they were losing and started selling them and I stopped. In 1976 I met Rick Barry and Fred Block, two real California hippies who’d started an incense business.
I became a distributor for them and soon put Olfactory Incense® in Tote-Sum and a lot of other stores around town. I’m still in touch with Rick and Fred and am proud to call them friends.
Still not being able to make a living off of just sunglasses, in 1979 I put small display cases of knives, cheap jewelry and novelty items in stores, some of which were in the same category as the paper product previously mentioned. That carried me through 1982, and I sold the “showcase” business to focus on sunglasses. Allen and Linda Kitchens, owners of Bovina Grocery near Vicksburg had been customers since summer of 1975 and my reputation with them helped me get in with Waring Oil in Vicksburg who had started opening stores. Allen and Linda are good friends and are still customers in my “retirement biz” - and Dan, Howard, and Richard Waring (who sold their stores in 2005) are still friends and treat me like family.
Independent pharmacies were a good spot for sunglasses, and I had added them along the way.
Mike Rose in Hazlehurst worked in the family pharmacy and when I called on him, he referred me to his dad to make a decision on stocking my sunglasses. Mr. Rose then referred me back to Mike, then Mike back to his dad. Did you ever feel like a pinball? I did. Some months later Mike called me to come down and put a rack of sunglasses in their store, which surprised me.
After setting up the rack in their store and getting the check in hand, I asked Mike, “What happened? What made y’all decide to do this?” Mike’s reply, “I told my dad you’re crazy but you know what you’re talking about.”
In 1985, while driving through the Delta on Highway 438, I started thinking about creating a reading glasses program, a brand name of a few classic styles with specific strengths to offer. What will I call it, I thought? Then “Franklin” came to mind. Ben Franklin invented bifocals so that would make sense. I started with four basic styles, in a variety of strengths. In the years later when the boomers came kicking and screaming into reading glasses age, the glasses became more fun. Starting in 1990 trips to China with my primary Asian supplier helped me find and create more fun readers.
Over a few years the reading glasses program had picked up as word spread and soon there were orders coming from out of state. Trade shows that I would have once been excluded from were now welcoming me. Soon Franklin Eyewear® was nationwide. At one particular conference we had a party on the Midway, the WWII aircraft carrier in San Diego harbour. What a great experience!
Looking back on it all now, my biz has given me 40 something trips to New York, 80 plus trips to Vegas, numerous trips to California and Florida, six to Europe, and seven to the Far East…not bad for a boy from the low end of Fondren.
So, if you ever bought sunglasses at Tote-Sum, or JOB Papers, or Olfactory Incense, or Franklin Reading glasses, I am grateful. It’s been a great career never having a “real job” in all my adult life. Some have noticed I haven’t completely retired. I can’t! I don’t hunt, fish, smoke, drink, or play golf, so I now do my brand, American Style Sunglasses™. You’ll see them at Highland Village Chevron and Half Moon Bay Chevron (south of San Francisco) and places in between!
Thank you all for this “long strange trip.”
Al Underwood is a Northsider.
