Business People : A NEW WRINKLE : Entrepreneur Insists His ‘Iron in a Can’ Will Sell Like His Armor All

Like a latter-day Genghis Khan sweeping through Asia, Alan Forman Rypinski is out to conquer your household.

Chances are, he has already vanquished your Volvo with Armor All, his marketing marvel of an all-purpose auto protectant. Now he wants your clothing--the whole wardrobe--and he plans to win it over with Wrinkle Free, a crease-creamer he affectionately calls “an iron in a can,” “a phenomenon” and “revolutionary.”

No, it’s not the polio vaccine, and Rypinski isn’t quite the Jonas Salk of the laundry set. But his patter is persuasive. The 48-year-old chairman and chief executive of Very Incredible Products in Costa Mesa (an upgrade from his earlier firm, Very Important Products) wants your money.

After all, he took it once with Armor All. Now he insists that he can take even more of it with his new aerosol fabric relaxant--and in the process become one of a rare breed of born-again entrepreneurs, a man who can boast of the elusive success No. 2.

The Hype Is Continuous

Rypinski’s secret weapon is a spiel so polished it doesn’t need Armor All; so smooth, it’ll never warrant Wrinkle Free. Words are proclaimed in italics. Sentences end in exclamation points. It is hype so continuous that an hour with the man is like a day in front of a TV stuck on Home Shopping Network.

“If you wear clothing, you need Wrinkle Free,” Rypinski insists as he brandishes a royal blue can of his latest wonder chemical dangerously close to one reporter’s wrinkles. “Every member of my family uses it every day, and you will use it every day, too. . . . We will change society’s habits.”

To one former colleague, such a line is the mark of “a great salesman,” the kind of a guy who took a “$2,000 investment and turned it into $50 million,” who started out with a drum of car cream and ended up with Armor All, a product that market research indicates is in 25 million U.S. homes, about 33% of all domestic households.

“He was always selling something,” recalls James Cohune, director of public relations for McKesson Corp. of San Francisco, the company to which Rypinski sold Armor All in 1979 for $49.6 million.

“He’s a great salesman. When you engaged him at a cocktail party, a company reception, any social function, he was selling Armor All. His view was that every person in the Western World was a potential customer for Armor All, so he was always selling it. He’s not a shy and retiring guy.”

He is a millionaire. And Rypinski’s rhetoric is the sound of money being made:

“Once in a while,” he says, warming to the task of hawking his latest wares, “a product comes along that changes society’s habits. Wrinkle Free is such a product! To dramatize that bold statement, just think about how many times you’ve stood behind an ironing board and how much you’ve liked it.”

Rypinski pauses for dramatic effect, quickly spritzes the fabric relaxant into the air before him, reaches into a nearby ostrich tote for a repulsively wrinkled shirt on which to demonstrate. And resumes:

“We have found that ironing--touch-up particularly--is just as aggravating as cleaning the toilet. And we have solved this problem. Touch-up ironing--or any other maddening chore--if you find a solution, it’s big news. . . . We can foresee public restrooms filled with people spraying themselves before making their grand entrances.”

But before such a sight can even be contemplated, Rypinski is off again, reciting. The “Five Reasons This is the Greatest Product You’re Going to See” trip off of his tongue in rapid succession, followed by an engaging, “Let me show you how to use it.”

He demonstrates on a linen shirt, first spraying an area of fabric in a circular motion, counting to 10 to let the fibers absorb the product and begin to relax, then smoothing the sprayed area with his hand. He holds the shirt triumphantly before him, as if an invisible camera is recording his every move.

“And there you have it,” he says, waving the wrinkled shirt, which is punctuated with one surprisingly smooth swatch. “I can fix this entire shirt in a matter of two minutes--maybe even less.”

He moves on to redeem a rumpled silk blouse, then strips off his suit coat, grabs a fistful of his own pristine cotton shirt, sprays, smoothes and looks up with a fevered glance. “How about poplin?” And he sprays his slacks.

Alan Rypinski has been selling for a long time. But he didn’t start out that way.

The Pasadena native moved to Newport Beach at age 14, and his first jobs were in TV. His mother was a girlhood friend of Harriet Nelson, and he acted in 38 episodes of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” mostly clowning as a fraternity brother or losing at love to the likes of David and Ricky.

‘Anything But Show Business’

After a year at Orange Coast College, he spent two years in the Army and eventually married his longtime love, the former Pat Ragan. It was Pat, he says, who brought an end to his film career with the decisive: “You can do anything but show business.”

So he moved on to marketing. In 1961-72, Rypinski hawked everything from motor homes to processed cheeses--seven jobs in 10 years--before he stumbled onto Armor All. And that, he says, is one of his favorite tales.

It was 1972. Rypinski, an avid collector of classic cars, drove to the now-defunct Briggs Cunningham automotive museum in Costa Mesa in a 1959 Jaguar that had spent a decade in storage.

He went looking for advice, but instead he found a fortune.

“I wanted to know what products to use on the sun-dried parts of the car that ranged from rubber and leather to wood,” Rypinski says. “The curator . . . suggested that I use some milky white substance that a chemist used to bring there that he had batched for himself. When I tried this product--then unnamed--I went crazy. I got the chemist’s name, went after him and the rest is history.”

Rypinski bought world marketing rights for the product and eventually bought out the inventory. Then he went door to door, handing out samples, chatting it up, making Armor All Protectant an automotive institution by dint of his own character.

In 1979, he sold Very Important Products to McKesson and remains a McKesson consultant.

“With Armor All, we’re in 40% of American households,” Rypinski says. “Armor All has a 92% market share of the category called protectants.”

But that’s nothing, he insists, compared with the retail heights that Wrinkle Free can eventually scale.

It ‘Has No Competition’

“Wrinkle Free has no competition,” Rypinski says. “No one has ever come out with a product like it, nothing at all. Only the iron or the steamer is a competitor to us.”

In addition, he contends, the product can be sold to men and women alike, can be used every day, can help cure many wardrobe ills from static and smell to rumples. It can be kept in the glove compartment and the desk drawer, the bedroom and the bath.

Although a 3-ounce portable can retails for about $5, and the 9-ounce economy size is about $10, Rypinski contends that price is no issue. His logic is as follows: The average dry cleaning bill is $100 a month. Using Wrinkle Free to touch up creases, refresh pleats and deodorize clothing will “reduce that bill by half.”

“We’re going to save you a couple of hundred dollars a year,” Rypinski says, and in turn, the U.S. public is expected to buy $15 million to $20 million worth of Wrinkle Free in fiscal 1988--the product’s first year of full-bore marketing. This canned creation, he insists, will be a $1-billion business within 10 years.

It all came to him as serendipitously as his first fortune-maker. Ever since his success in the automotive after-market industry, a dozen inventors have approached him monthly, trying to persuade him to make them millionaires, too.

Enter Jeff Jacobson, self-proclaimed “36 and single” and the inventor of such products as Blind-Brite, a tool and cleaning solution designed to keep mini-blinds buffed. Jacobson had already spent an estimated $500,000 in research and development on his aerosol fabric relaxant and sprung it on Rypinski--along with other inventions--one afternoon in 1986.

The response was dramatic, says Jacobson, who lives in Newport Beach and works out of a Long Beach factory:

‘Another Armor All’

“I’d say that he grinned, and I could see the excitement start to fill his eyes in a way that is different than seeing just another typical product,” Jacobson says. “He was very excited, as if he’d found another Armor All.”

Like archetypal Hollywood deal makers, the two men “ate dinner together. We talked, We socialized. We got to know each other and made a deal that made us both happy,” Jacobson says.

The terms of that deal remain undisclosed at Jacobson’s insistance, but he did say that he gets royalties for the 17-year life of the patent and maintains a stock interest in the company. Rypinski has already invested $14 million of his own money to bring the product to market.

Although Jacobson admits that he uses his product daily, he balks at the contention that it--or any product--can revolutionize one’s life. And he insists that it will probably not even be his lifetime achievement.

“I can’t say that,” he says. “I’m young, and I come up with ideas fairly frequently. . . . I may go months without feeling inspired or have what it takes to come up with something. But all of a sudden, I know I’m ready to sit down and create.”

Specialty chemicals analysts contacted by the Times were not familiar with the spray, but they did know the Rypinski name and reputation. And to at least one, that’s proof enough that Wrinkle Free has a chance to take off.

“I’ve not heard of it,” says a New York-based analyst who requested that his name not be used. “But if this guy brought it out, it suggests he might be on to something. After all, he did do Armor All.”

Although there have been business magnates with multiple successes, in the entrepreneurial arena one good product does not necessarily bring on another.

Take Nolan Bushnell, who created Pong and Atari Corp., the world’s first video game and video game company. His next ventures, Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre and the robotic servant-toy Androbot, foundered badly. Harold Butler, the founder of Denny’s and Jojos restaurants, couldn’t replicate those successes with the later Jean’s Donuts & Cookies or McGorky’s Seafood House.

So far, however, all signs are pointing toward potential prosperity for Wrinkle Free. In fiscal 1987, its first year on retail shelves, Wrinkle Free was sold exclusively through department stores and had no accompanying ad campaign to gauge consumer reaction.

48 Cases Sold

At that time, during just one week, Nordstrom at South Coast Plaza sold 48 cases of 24 cans each, grossing $6,000 in six days with Wrinkle Free, says Rypinski, who is also chairman and chief executive of Alanar Corp., parent company of Very Incredible Products.

At Robinson’s, the fabric relaxant “has been a tremendous success,” says Debra Rivera, buyer for the Closet Shop section of all 24 Robinson’s stores. Rivera refuses to divulge sales figures for the product.

“At Christmastime it’s a fabulous seller as an extra stocking stuffer,” says Rivera, a Wrinkle Free user herself. “Back to school is also good. Also in the summer, because people are traveling. . . . Our customers do believe that it’s a product that does work well.”

But of course, Rypinski says: “Isn’t this fabulous stuff? Have you ever seen anything like it in your life?”

Alan Rypinski at a Glance

POSITION: Chairman and chief executive of Alanar Corp., parent company of Very Incredible Products, which makes Wrinkle Free.

AGE: 48 .

RESIDENCE: Newport Beach.

FAMILY: Wife, Pat.

EDUCATION: Attended Orange Coast College.

GOAL: To make Wrinkle Free a $1-billion brand in 10 years.