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6/5/01 :: a wonderful new "Owner's
Manual - No. 1" found its way home again. seems the company who
bought his company at auction did not do well.
no wonder "bought at a recently held
auction" kept popping up in the e-bay auctions for j.
peterman items.
in april, i received a short newsletter
from the newly resurrected john peterman company. you remember mr.
peterman, don't you? not, the fictional peterman from a certain
television show, but the real john peterman. the man behind those
wonderful mailorder catalogues. i use the british spelling here because
he truly deserves the extra "ue" when referring to his
revolutionary publications. revolutionary because he didn't go by the
price per inch concept of mail- order catalogues.
actually, the products were the icing on the cake.
that you actually got great products from the
catalogue was just a bonus.
now, i wouldn't say i could have afforded the
glorious burgundy beaded "titanic" dinner gown. it was enough
to see a sketch in the catalogue and read about it. see, just knowing i
"could have" ordered it, was enough.
so, the day the small newsletter arrived, was
like my membership to the embroiderers' guild had been renewed, a long
lost friend had found my address, or a long ago slight had been forgiven.
mr. john peterman had actually taken the time to find my address and send me a
friendly hello. or someone had done it for him. ....ok, he bought a
list.
whatever the means, i was again within a circle of
people who admired exotic items. i could again imagine scouring markets
in britain, morocco or lisbon for just the right item.
i ordered his book, "peterman rides
again" and i'm savoring it—a signed first edition for $25.00, what
a deal. he tells of his pre-duster days when he was marketing jobe
houseplant spikes. jobe houseplant spikes? that's right, and it travels
clear to the end of the beginning.
his stories all fit together nicely. this is good
since i found the
ziegler's, republic of tea chronicle a little too precious a recounting of their vision.
here, mr. peterman is able to tie together baseball, the luck of finding good
people, and his management philosophy—empowerment.
john peterman enthusiastically recounts it all in
this short book. here you will learn just who wrote those item's
novellas, where the duster was found and why he felt the need to buy it.
this book tracks back to the source of his vision and how he created his
own management philosophy as he lived his dream, only to be thwarted by
investment banks unwilling to come to an 11th hour agreement to extend
the needed credit for the next season's inventory.
if in the end, he fails, it is only for a short
time. as attested by my mailbox bearing the small gift of a newsletter,
peterman does ride again.
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