For auto parts mogul Sandler, road to success led to Palm Beach

Everybody loves a rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches story. Especially one that has tales of fruit deliveries by a team of horses, souped-up cars driven by 1950s-era hot-rodders and Playboy centerfold models signing autographs for clients.

All of this, and more, must be included if you’re telling the story of Bill Sandler, a retired auto parts mogul who looks back on the ups and downs from his ocean front condo in Palm Beach.

And yes, he has all the photos — including pictures of the centerfolds — to prove it.

A beautiful route

Stories need beginnings, and Sandler’s starts, in a purely chronological sense, on the day he was born, Oct. 9, 1913. He grew up in a tough Boston neighborhood. He says he did lousy in school and graduated from high school “with three Cs and two Ds.” He went on to take a variety of jobs, including one delivering fruit to customers with a team of horses.

However, the real story of Bill Sandler seems to begin one day while he was working in his brother’s auto garage, installing a muffler.

“I’m laying on six layers of cardboard — they didn’t have creepers in those days. This guy gives me a kick and says, ‘Come on out here, I wanna talk to you.’ He says, ‘I’ve been watching you, and you’re too smart to be doing that. Smart guy like you ought to be out selling auto supplies.’

“I bought myself a Model-T Ford for $8. I developed a route, and I was done every day at 3. Then I’d go down to the beach and play handball. One day I woke up and said, ‘You know what? I’m smarter than these guys I’m buying auto supplies from. I’ll open my own place.’ So I started selling and built up a beautiful route.”

Eight-track disaster

He opened a shop for $60 a month and the business grew into Hub Auto. He met his future wife, Lillian and moved into a walk-up apartment that cost them $47.50 a month. Things were chugging along nicely, like a finely tuned Model-T.

“But one day the landlord said, ‘You’re going to have to move out. I need the store.’ He said there was another building up near Braves Field (in the late 1940s, the Braves had not yet made their moves from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta).

“It was 20,000 square feet, and I thought, ‘What am I going to do with all that space?’

“But it turned out to be the best thing I ever did. I developed a hot-rod business. I had eight, 10 people at the counter selling retail.”

Lillian explains: “You’ve seen the movies with these high school kids picking up their girls in their souped-up cars? It was a big thing. Everything was chrome plated.”

Sandler kept branching out. He rented a five-story building and manufactured high-end car radios. Then eight-track tape players came out — and they proved to be the Sandlers’ undoing.

“Here’s what happened,” says Sandler. “Transistors had come out, and the MIT engineers I was working with wanted to go with print boarding. The eight-tracks sold like crazy. We had a thousand people working on the line, day and night. We couldn’t make them fast enough.”

But then an unusually hot summer swept across the country. And it turned out that the transistors couldn’t handle the heat. The eight-track business went down like the Titanic.

Sandler kept trying to keep it afloat with cash infusions from his still-successful Hub Auto, but by 1966, both enterprises were broke.

“We had nothing left,” says Sandler. “Just a big house, but at least that was paid for.”

The Big Brute

This is where Part II begins. Sandler had two very remarkable talents. One, he could sell. But perhaps more importantly, he could spot product potential. He and Lillian were able to get seats on a free junket to Japan. When he got there, he toured manufacturing plants to find automobile accessories that would appeal to young American consumers.

He came back with a high-end head rest that sold for four times what American domestic head rests were going for. After convincing top brass at Pep Boys to give it a try, it became such a popular item they couldn’t keep it in stock.

“That was our lucky break,” says Lillian. “I always say, you have to be in the right place at the right time.”

One day at a car accessories trade show, a Japanese businessman showed Sandler a new kind of speaker. It was 1970, and the youth market was crying out for more elaborate sound systems.

“Bill was showing me the speaker,” Lillian says. “And I said, ‘Bill, that is one Big Brute of a speaker.’ And Bill said, ‘That’s it! That’s the name of the speaker.’ And we ran with it.”

How do you tap the lucrative 18- to 45-year-old male auto parts market? Sandler explains: “We advertised in Playboy and Penthouse every week. And once a year they would send five centerfold girls to one of the trade shows. The buyers came in, and the centerfolds would autograph the magazine: ‘Joe, you’re the only guy who ever turned me on.’

“We had one ad in the New York Daily News saying that the first 300 men who came in would get a signed autograph from Avril Lund, the Centerfold Girl of the Year. At 10 in the morning, I got a call from a guy who said: ‘You wouldn’t believe it. There’s about a thousand men outside, but the fire department is only allowing a certain number into the building. These guys are going crazy. They all want autographs.’”

Tennis and charity work

It was really game, set and match for Bill Sandler, who sold the business in 1977 and retired with Lillian to Palm Beach. He spent the next 30 years playing tennis — the doctor told him two years ago he better knock it off before he breaks a leg.

He and Lillian also went big into charity work. They’ve devoted their time to improving education in Israel, aiding the Variety Club chapter in Palm Beach, and helping to build a neonatal unit at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach.

And they hang out with friends, many from Boston who have also relocated to Palm Beach. One of them, Bernice Krupp, says: “I know Bill played tennis almost every day up until a couple of years ago.” (One of his last matches was against a 100-year-old. He lost.)

“Lillian’s a sweetheart, and Bill is a funny guy. He has a whole slew of jokes he tells, year in and year out. He’s very entertaining.”

WILLIAM SANDLER

Occupation: Retired auto parts dealer, importer of new automobile accessories in the 1950s through the 1970s. Since then, the couple has been involved in charity work.

Favorite quote: “In order to get on your feet, you have to get off your (butt).”

Favorite movie: The Ghost Writer, a 2010 Roman Polanski thriller about a writer hired to complete the memoirs of a British prime minister.

Most admired person: Famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. (His wife, Lillian,said her’s was her husband. They’ve been married for 69 years.)

Source: http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/profile-palmbeach/for-auto-parts-mogul-sandler-road-to-success-526654.html?viewAsSinglePage=true