Lack of Royal Airs May Be Reason He’s ‘King’ of Big-Screen TV Dealers : Retailing: Paul Goldenberg is so customer-oriented that his employees have to open doors toward the inside so they don’t bump patrons.

After being bombarded by his advertising, a visitor to the royal lair of Southern California’s self-proclaimed “King of Big Screen” televisions might be a little, well, underwhelmed.

Paul’s TV isn’t a giant warehouse. The parking lot is not aflutter with streamers. It’s three miles from the closest freeway. But this relatively modest, carpeted showroom holds claim to selling more big-screen television sets than any other store in America.

Challenging the dominance of the big discount electronic store chains, Paul Goldenberg has proven that an independent dealer can thrive by specialization. In his case, that’s selling TV sets with screens of 27 inches or more, measured diagonally.

Paul’s TV sells about 10,000 big-screen sets a year. On the biggest sales day of the year, the day before last January’s Super Bowl Sunday, Paul’s sold 135 sets--and had them all delivered by game time. Paul’s has been Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc.’s top single-store seller for eight years running.

For all his success, the silver-maned Goldenberg remains a rather unassuming fellow. He is most comfortable watching an old movie on his big-screen TV at home, taking a spin in one of his two vintage Ferraris or working in his store in a pair of jeans and polo shirt.

Though Goldenberg has become known for his insistent “I am the king” tag line in radio and television commercials, he is a shy monarch. He said people seldom recognize him in public--and he couldn’t be more pleased.

“It’s not my style,” he explained. “I’m just a guy who has a TV store and works hard.”

Paul’s is hardly a normal TV store. Customers find an array of big-screen sets arranged in living room-style settings. It is designed to contrast with the walls of smaller screens associated with the television sections of department stores.

By specializing in the line of a single manufacturer, Goldenberg said Paul’s is able to buy in large lots that hold down prices. But it is the little things that he can do as an independent dealer that he said have built customer loyalty.

For instance, Paul’s promises four-hour delivery to just about anywhere in Southern California. And every salesman calls customers a few days after their purchase to make sure they are pleased. If they aren’t, Goldenberg instructs the sales crew to ask what they can do to make it right.

“I have a low threshold for screw-ups,” he said.

Goldenberg is a stickler for details. Installers are instructed to always open the front doors of the store in, instead of out, when carting a big TV so they don’t bump into a customer. They also must wipe their feet before entering a customer’s home.

Television retailers visit from across the country to look over Paul’s operation, which expects sales of $20 million this year compared to $19 million last year. But Goldenberg said his competitors often don’t understand the fine points of the business, such as how he is constantly juggling delivery schedules on a busy sales day so that his 25 trucks get all those televisions delivered within a few hours after the sale.

“There is no other retailer like Paul,” said Herb Halimi, president of L.A. Tronics, an Encino-based chain of six electronics stores, including one in Huntington Beach. “He tapped into a growing market, and he built a reputation as a projection TV store and as a Mitsubishi store. He will enjoy that business as long as Mitsubishi is strong as a projection TV manufacturer and projection TVs are strong in the marketplace.”

Phil Delgado Jr., president of Phil & Jim’s TV & Appliances, said Goldenberg is a master merchandiser who has not been afraid to lend his own persona to his advertising. “We could have all taken lessons” from Goldenberg, said Delgado, whose Anaheim-based chain has 12 stores.

Goldenberg is so insistent on maintaining a personal touch that he has passed up opportunities to expand, either elsewhere in Southern California or across the country. “We are not a big, impersonal chain,” he said.

“He has a unique character,” said Leo Delaney, vice president of marketing for Mitsubishi Electronics America in Cypress. “For someone who is so successful in defining their market, we have no advice to give him.”

Paul’s secret is “basically niche marketing and relationship marketing that builds a customer base,” said Marvin Lurie, director of industry relations for the National Assn. of Retail Dealers of America, a trade group based in Lombard, Ill.

“You look at the long-term value of the customer, not the sale of the hour. You do it by serving a specific need . . . and being agile, being able to respond quickly to changes in the market.”

In big-screen TVs, Paul’s has a product that is expensive and technical enough that people are willing to drive an hour or more to reach a specialist. Prices for sets range between $1,300 and $5,000, with the most popular models selling for about $2,000.

Sales can be pushed even higher with combination marketing of hi-fi equipment needed to create “home theater,” the marriage of the big screen and big sound together.

While the quality of big-screen sets has improved and prices have dropped, the product shows no signs of having reached its sales peak. In the past, big-screens were better known in the industry as projection TV because of the way images were projected onto a screen. Now picture tubes--some as large as 35 inches diagonally--qualify as big screens too.

In the projection category alone, about 415,000 televisions are expected to be delivered to dealers this year, a 9% increase over last year, according to the Electronic Industries Assn., a trade group for electronics manufacturers based in Washington.

“The market is in its infancy, basically,” said association spokesman Alan Haber. And Goldenberg came along with the right product at the right time.

A Los Angeles native, Goldenberg wanted to try his hand at sales after being discharged from the Army. He went to television repair school and longed to open his own business. In 1952, he borrowed $1,000 from a cousin to open a television store at Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont Avenue.

“I was 19 years old. I had borrowed this money. I spent $400 in rent, $300 for an old truck and had $300 for capital,” he recalled.

He built his business until 1960, when he decided to join friends who were leaving the city to work in the fast-growing suburbs of Orange County. He opened his store in La Habra, where he carried a full range of televisions and appliances.

A movie buff, Goldenberg became fascinated with the giant-screen televisions that hit the market about 1979. Soon, a combination of movie and sports buffs fueled demand for the big sets. More and more turned to Paul’s, which gradually moved out the refrigerators and stoves to make way.

By the time demand for projection TVs boomed during the 1984 Olympics, Paul’s had transformed itself from local appliance dealership into regional electronics powerhouse.

“What Paul is doing is selling his philosophy,” said Marc Spiegel, a former Paul’s employee and friend for 30 years. “It’s called listening. When you ask a question, listen for the answer.”

Spiegel said Goldenberg is “a very hard taskmaster,” but he took the lessons he learned working for him and applied them to his own businesses. Spiegel is now executive vice president of Fibertron Corp. in Fullerton, a distributor of fiber-optics communications equipment.

Goldenberg’s “king of big screens” label came from the reputation he earned in the circle of dealers with whom he formed a buying group. He sold so many that competitors started calling him “the king.”

When his ad agency heard the line, they couldn’t resist. He keeps his bejeweled crown, looking like a prop left over from a margarine commercial, under glass in the showroom.

Success has not only enriched Goldenberg, but the city of La Habra as well. Paul’s is “extremely important” to the city’s tax base, said City Manager Lee Risner. “I guess he is the king.”

Goldenberg, a La Habra Heights divorcee, supports such charities as the United Negro College Fund, Muscular Dystrophy, United Jewish Welfare Fund and AIDS research.

“This man has a heart that is unbelievable. All he has to do is see a real need,” said Kay Jacklin, the city’s director of community services. When a local senior citizens center needed a big-screen TV, Goldenberg was quick to donate one.

Goldenberg works at the store several days a week, vacations in places like Australia and Scotland and occasionally rents sailboats to crisscross Balboa Bay. He hesitates when asked about retirement, saying only that he will quit when the job isn’t fun anymore.

“I originally got into television because it was a new and exciting entertainment form,” he said. “This is a product that has no buyer’s remorse.”