A.J. Richard, who died December 28 at age 95, was the master marketer behind the P.C. Richard chain of appliance and electronics stores.

Although he stopped heading day-today operations more than 20 years ago, Richard was actively involved with his company until just weeks before his death, training new sales clerks.

Beginning with electric irons, which his father’s hardware store began stocking at Richard’s initiative in 1924, he kept the store at the forefront of consumer technology. After irons came washing machines and radios, and later televisions. As the sets were extremely expensive when first introduced, Richard put a console in the show window of his Ozone Park store and mobs gathered out front to watch Friday night fights.

Now based in Farmington on Long Island, P.C. Richard boasts 49 stores in New York and New Jersey and has annual sales of about $1 billion.

A.J.’s father was P.C. (Peter Christiaan) Richard, a Dutchborn milkman and handyman who began doing odd jobs and home repairs for customers on his Brooklyn delivery route. In 1907, he opened a small hardware store in Bensonhurst, with part of his inventory comprising the stocks of materials and tools he had built up doing home repairs, plus home items like candles and kerosene lamps.

According to a company history, young A.J. began working in his father’s store at age 8, although in some interviews he claimed he was at work as young as age 4. What is certain is that, from the beginning, P.C. Richard was a family affair. It continues to be family-owned, with Richard’s sons in leadership roles.

In 1919 the store was relocated to Ozone Park, where it could offer merchandise to denizens of the rapidly growing Long Island suburbs.

In addition to stocking newfangled electric appliances like irons and washers, Richard innovated by allowing customers to pay over time – 50 cents a week for the $4.95 iron – and by offering in-home trials of wringer washers.

“When washing machines came out in the late 1920s, it was a tough sell,” Richard said. “They cost $180 and that was a fortune. … My dad told me nobody would want to buy one of those things. He was right.”

But, “Once they started using it, they wouldn’t let us take it back,” he said.

The store began offering tube radios in 1930, and A.J. started the store’s service department. A second floor was added to the store in 1934, and A.J. moved in with his new bride, Vicky Himmelman. They would remain married until her death

In 1947, P.C. Richard retired and A.J. took over. Within three years, he opened a new showroom in Cambria Heights, a much larger space where the larger, postwar appliances could be exhibited. In 1951, a large, freestanding P.C. Richard store was opened on the outskirts of Bellmore, again a marketing novelty in an age when most shops were in town centers. By 1980, when Richard retired, the company had 10 stores, including outlets in New York City. As Richard’s sons Gary and Peter II took control, the pace of expansion grew, even as rivals Crazy Eddie and Newmark & Lewis folded. Richard continued to be intimately involved with the chain, helping to oversee ad campaigns, many of which featured him and his family.

In 1991, Richard – chomping on his ever-present cigar – told Newsday, “I live 20 minutes away. Now am I gonna stay home, am I gonna play golf every day when I have a living, breathing thing here that I started from a little boy? I have 385 salesmen and I know them all by their first name.”

He took particular care with the sales force. In the Newsday interview, Richard said, “I’ve said to my salesmen continually, ‘You should hope’ – with tongue in cheek – ‘that everything you sell will have a problem. Now you take care of it like a shot and you’ll have a customer for life.”

Alfred Joseph Richard

Born October 11, 1909, at Brooklyn; died December 28 at West Islip, N.Y.; survived by his sons, Peter and Gary, eight grandchildren, and 18 greatgrandchildren.