Keep on Plugging The American Dream

From Expatriate Spook to Mail Order Maverick: Joseph Sugarman Keeps Plugging The American Dream Despite Recent Economic Eruptions

By Joan R. Magee

Joseph Sugarman didn’t dream of being a mail order pioneer when he was a kid growing up outside of Chicago – he wanted to be a journalist like Ernest Hemingway, an alumnus of his high school.  As it happened, his father told him to "get a real job," and Sugarman gave in, attending The University of Miami’s School of Engineering. By 1961 though, The Vietnam War was seething, and the Army drafted him a year shy of graduation. He was the sole student to score 100 percent on a routine I.Q. test, piquing the interest of the C.I.A. He went to spy school in Fort Holabird, Maryland and was shipped to Frankfurt. In 1965, Sugarman helped European acquaintances market ski lifts in the U.S. "There is nothing more powerful than the pen," Sugarman said. Once stateside, he formed the JS&A Group, Inc.  Some of the company’s successes include the world's first pocket calculator, cordless phones and inexpensive digital watches.

His governmental psychological training influenced his sales and marketing schemes. He’s profited from spotting a decent product and marketing it relentlessly. The New York Times called him The Mail Order Maverick. Sugarman, 68, a slight man with curly dark hair, large, white teeth and an elfin face, was in fact the first businessman to allow customers to pay with credit cards over the phone. That’s how he sold his most famous product, BluBlockers. Sugarman first saw a pair in the late 1970s. “The world was clear again,” Sugarman said. “I knew that they'd be a gold mine.” He sold them on QVC and made millions of dollars in one day.  Those millions didn’t come easily. In 1988, SunTiger, Inc. and Biomedical Optics Company of America, Inc. filed a copyright infringement case against JS&A Group, Inc. The company claimed to own the patent for optical lenses that filter certain wavelengths of “visible blue light.” But after 11 years, the case was vacated on Sugarman’s behalf.

He’s now obsessed by what makes people buy. “When you lower the price of a product, generally speaking, with very few exceptions, you’ll end up with an easier sale requiring less justification and less logic,” Sugarman said. In his semi-annual seminars, he teaches entrepreneurs that: “Money is merely a symbol.” Despite the economic downturn, Sugarman defends the American Dream. His philosophies align with the Obama’s: “Because somewhere in America, an entrepreneur is sketching designs for the startup that will revolutionize an industry. Our economic crisis has put these plans at risk, but it has not dimmed the dreams.”

Sugarman hit the jackpot, owning mansions in Chicago, on Maui, and in Las Vegas. He restlessly hunts for the next big thing, along with his 30-year-old beauty queen wife, and is launching a line of stem-cell anti-aging skin care products. The products will apparently transform one’s skin to that of a “nineteen or twenty-year-old.” Sugarman is almost 70, but looks 50. He has been taking fish oil supplements his whole life, to which he attributes to his child-like energy levels, taut skin and mental acuity.  For eight years, Sugarman owned The Maui Weekly as a way to revisit his childhood dream before selling the failing publication. Alas, for now, it’s all about stem cells. “I always tell people that whatever you focus on expands,” Sugarman said.