Detroit Pitchman Ollie Fretter

Ollie Fretter

Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1923, Oliver "Ollie" Fretter moved with his parents to Royal Oak, Michigan when he was in his early teens. He graduated from Royal Oak Dondero High School in 1941. After serving in the military during World War II, Fretter borrowed $600 from an uncle to open an appliance repair shop.

By 1950, twenty-seven-year-old Ollie Fretter decided he may as well sell home appliances and consumer electronics. With the post-war G.I. Bill and Veterans' Administration funding boom, America moved from a nation of renters to a nation of home owners. Selling appliances and electronics was a forward-looking career move for Fretter. His first store opened on Telegraph Road, north of I-96 in Redford, Michigan. Within ten years, Fretter had eight Detroit area stores.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Fretter Appliance and Electronics ran print ads in all of Detroit's major newspapers. The ads ran on Mondays to advertise mid-week Wednesday sales and on Fridays to generate weekend sales. The ads featured photos of appliances with the "Lowest Prices in Town" listed beneath them. Fretter's headshot was prominently displayed near his slogan, "If I can't beat your best deal, I'll give you five pounds of coffee."

Typical Fretter Appliance Print Ad

An unidentified Fretter employee revealed to a Detroit Free Press reporter, "Fretter gave away about 200 pounds of canned coffee a month costing about $500. When coffee prices rose, Fretter ordered one-pound cans of coffee with the label Fretter's House printed on them listing the weight as five-pounds. Somehow, Fretter got away with it. The cans became gag items that most customers were good-natured about. My guess is these short-weight coffee cans would be valuable collectors' items today if any have survived.

In 1971, Ollie Fretter increased his advertising budget and shifted into television advertising. He starred in his own commercials projecting a hokey, amateurish charm 40 or 50 times a week over most small market TV stations. His ads ran in the afternoon and late nights when buying television time was cheaper than prime time.

At first, Ollie Fretter played it straight as an owner/pitchman, but to distract his potential customers from the mind-numbing repetition of his commercials, he began hamming it up with all sorts of silly promotions like dressing as various characters. Sometimes, he would appear as a Gypsy violist, a mountain man, George Washington on President's Day, Uncle Sam on the Fourth of July, Johnny Cash, or Mother Nature. He would do almost anything to sell a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, a television, or a stereo system.

Ollie Fretter became Detroit's King of Local Advertising despite newspaper columnists ridiculing him in their editorials. He cried all the way to the bank. When Detroit Free Press reporter James Harper asked Fretter why he appeared in his own commercials, he replied, "People like to think they're dealing with the owner of a business. A too professional approach is not good. People like to think they're listening to somebody just like them."

In May of 1980, Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley brought a $25,000 lawsuit against Fretter Appliance and Electronics for violating the Item Pricing and Deceptive Adverstising Act. The company's media advertising and signs that hung in their chain stores proclaimed "The Lowest Prices in Town." Ollie Fretter and his lawyers failed to provide documented evidence to backup that long-held claim.

Fretter updated his company's advertising by making the products the focus. An off-screen announcer described the appliances and electronics featured that week. At the end, Fretter's image was superimposed over the products with him saying, "The competition knows me, you should too." The new approach reflected the loss of Fretter's consumer protection lawsuit and the increasing competition from Highland Appliance.

But there was also a new threat--the big box appliance stores popping up along the retail horizon. Advertising had gone from cute to cutthroat. By offering lost leaders (items retailers sold at a loss) big box stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sam's Club undersold their competition. Fretter rolled the dice and took his company public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1986 to raise capital and expand into new markets to compete nationally.

Fretter's long-time competitor Highland Appliance filed for Chapter 11 bankrupcy in 1992. It owed its creditors $241 million dollars. Best Buy saw an opportunity and stepped in to fill the retail void by opening six big box stores in the Detroit area by the end of 1993.

Fretter bought up his biggest competitor Silo Electronics, but Silo hadn't posted a profit since the early 1980s. Fretter assumed Silo's debt and lack of liquid assets but expanded into more states anyway. The bottom dropped out of consumer electronics market due to stiff competition and falling stock values. Fretter spread his assets too thin and banks refused to lend him any more money. By 1995, all Silo Electronics stores closed, with all Fretter stores closing by the end of June 1996. Ollie retired after forty-six years in the retail business.

Fred Yaffe, president of the advertising agency that handled the Fretter account from1992 until 1995, noted, "It wasn't any one thing that killed Fretter's business. It was a bunch of things that all happened at once. He had serious competitors with deeper pockets, constant price wars in the appliance and electronics industries, and a lack of new products like VCRs and handheld video cameras."

Oliver "Ollie" Fretter lived out his life in Bloomfield Hills and died at Beaumont Hospice on June 29, 2014 at the age of ninty-one. He was survived by his wife of sixty-five years Elma M., his adult children Laura and Howard, and his grandchildren Alexandra, Andrew, and Catherine.

"Ollie's Ooop" Sale (1979)