Hupmobile Adventure

A shrewd, genial, supersalesman is Archie Moulton Andrews, board chairman and largest stockholder of Hupp Motor Car Corp. In 1932 when this arch-promoter was backing the sale of securities in packages of one share each in 25 or 50 companies, he confidently expected his merchandise to become the "Ford of the American investment business." When he was pushing his Elektrolite cigaret lighter, he used to rub his hands over the 120,000,000 U. S. birthdays as prospective gift sales, crowing: "Give me 5% of them and I'll make $10,000,000." A sworn foe of Wall Street, which warmly reciprocates his sentiments, he once declared: "I'm no angel but these directors who short their own stock--why, I sold out my stock before the Crash, but I kept every share of those in which I was connected with the management. That little gesture cost me $75,000,000."

Boss of Hupp for half a year, Archie Moulton Andrews last week announced a new wrinkle in automobile merchandising, described as "an adventure in profit-spreading." The "adventure":

Each of the 250,000 Hupmobile owners in the U. S. will be asked to send to the company the names of at least four prospective Hupmobile buyers. "We acknowledge this service with a trifling gift--a flameless cigaret lighter" (presumably Mr. Andrews' own Elektrolite). The suggested names are turned over to the Hupp sales organization, which will then try some "modified high-pressure." If one of the suggested prospects actually buys a Hupmobile, the person who sent in the name will receive a commission of $20 by going on the Hupp payroll at $5 a week for one month. Nothing is deducted from the salesman's or dealer's commission. Later Mr. Andrews expects to employ more of the public "with a consequent wider distribution of salary checks. . . . There is no limit to the number of names that can be sent. And the salaries we will pay will go up in proportion to the number of sales."

In the first year Mr. Andrews hopes to pay the public $500,000.

"If one company by means of this profit-spreading device can add that much money to the gross income of the people," said Promoter Andrews, "think what it will mean when the plan is adopted by a hundred other large industries. It opens a new era, new vistas of prosperity, wholly in keeping with the policies which compose the New Deal."

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