La Habra’s Big Screen King Still Outdoing Large Chains
By JENNIFER BELLANTONIO
Orange County Business Journal
Odds are you know Paul Goldenberg as the king. And you wouldn’t be alone.
Goldenberg, owner of Paul’s TV & Video in La Habra, is etched into Southern California’s cultural landscape as the king of big-screen TVs. Millions of people, from sports fans to movie stars, know of his commercials.
Goldenberg’s “king” persona is such that when he met actress Geena Davis at a recent social event, she had a request of him.
“She looked at me and said I want to hear you say it,” Goldenberg recalled. “I said, ‘What?’ And she said, ‘You know what.'”
Goldenberg said he obliged.
“I am the king.”
Goldenberg, 72, created his tagline to sell big-screen TVs 35 years ago on the advice of now-deceased ad guru and close friend Jack Lawlor.
“He is a brand unto himself,” said Dean Dudley, president and chief executive of Pasadena-based DSLV Lawlor Advertising, which handles Paul’s advertising. “I’ve never seen anybody that has created anything like this.”
Thousands of big-screens
Goldenberg’s no-frills store has held its own despite competition from big-box chains, such as Circuit City Stores Inc. and Best Buy Co.
Irvine-based Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America Inc., the largest seller of big-screen TVs and a unit of Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Corp., recently recognized Paul’s as the biggest single-store seller of its big-screen TVs for the 18th straight year.
“Paul’s sells thousands and thousands of big screens (every year),” said Max Wasinger, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Mitsubishi Digital. “It’s not rocket science. It’s just about the fundamentals.”
Goldenberg, who also sells Panasonic sets from Japan’s Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. as well as other consumer electronics, declined to divulge annual sales or how many sets he sells a year. (Past articles pegged it at 10,000. Mitsubishi big-screens sell for $1,500 to $4,000.)
Goldenberg said that Super Bowl weekend is, hands down, the store’s busiest time. The last time out, he said his 30 delivery trucks were running non-stop, as were the five additional trucks he had rented.
The volume that Goldenberg generates allows him to offer incentives. The biggie: no payments or interest for 14 months. “It’s tied to volume and the fact that some of the (financial) institutions will make special deals with us because we have such good customers,” Goldenberg said.
Just one store
Paul’s warehouse holds up to 2,000 big screens and if customers find they have service-related questions later, they can call Paul’s and a “real live human being is going to answer for you,” he said.
“We don’t have one of these infernal prompts on the phone where your press 1 for this and 3 for that,” he said.
Goldenberg realizes that his 100 employees are not “angels” and sometimes things “slip through the cracks.” That’s minimized, though, by only running one store. “I will positively absolutely never have more than one store. I make pretty good money. I don’t need to have 50 stores to try to make more money.”
Goldenberg finished TV repair school and started his business in Los Angeles with $1,000 borrowed from a cousin. He relocated to Orange County about five years later. “I used to deliver sets and I just used to get so excited carrying one of these big sets up into the house and delivering at a time when there was something exciting on,” he said.
A staunch Democrat in Republican-heavy Orange County, Goldenberg is a big supporter of his party and its candidates. He gave away two TVs and a DVD player to former President Bill Clinton.
“I got to a point and realized you’ve got to be who you are. Believe me, we have a lot of Republicans that come in here and love to buy our products,” he said.
Goldenberg scoffs at retiring and refuses to talk of a succession plan. Instead, Goldenberg is intent on beating the pants off the big guys.
“There’s a challenge in having one store in a place called La Habra that most people have never heard of,” he said. “There’s a lot of fun in that challenge.”
