P.C. Richard & Son History: Founding, Timeline, and Milestones - Zippia (2024)

Their first electrical appliance was an iron that cost $4.95 in 1924. "People just wouldn't spend that," said A. J. Richard. "They were getting, some of them, only $2.75 a week," he noted.

By 1929, A.J. began selling Zenith radios in the store.

He claimed to have founded the first nonmanufacturer's service department after beginning to sell tube radio sets in 1935 and realizing that he would sooner or later have to repair them.

There was a second Queens store in 1952, when P.C. Richard opened a third in Bellmore, a community in Long Island's Nassau County.

By 1954, P.C. Richard & Son became completely committed to selling appliances, televisions, and radios.

The business was flourishing and expanded further eastward into Long Island, which was a rapidly developing location and a prime spot to establish new showrooms.By 1958, both of A.J.'s sons, Peter and Gary, who were regulars in the store since childhood, worked full time for the company.

In 1974, A.J. stepped down as president, but always remained an entrepreneur at heart while continuously showing encouragement to his sons.

With Gary as president, starting in 1980, the company saw huge growth.

Gary became president and CEO in 1980 and took the company through the next period of expansion.

Even so, sales volume was still a relatively modest $27 million in 1983.

One full page of the book is devoted to the story of how Gary tried to get General Electric to can its young salesman assigned to the P.C. Richard account in 1986.

The company had sales in excess of $200 million in 1987 and was reportedly the largest General Electric dealership in the nation.

The 21 stores, including five opened in Brooklyn during 1990--the first in that borough since the original P.C. Richard store--were being fitted with a racetrack design to take customers on the perimeters of every department and encourage impulse buying.

P.C. Richard had sales volume of about $300 million in 1990, including about $130 million of electronics equipment and $110 million of appliances.

In 1992 they shared total compensation of $2.8 million, or 15 percent of pretax profits, of which $2 million came in the form of bonuses.

The company's long-term debt was only $500,000, but about $11 million of the proceeds from the proposed stock sale was earmarked to repay a note issued in May 1993, in lieu of a dividend, to a family holding company that was also leasing 17 locations to the company for $3.3 million a year.

The company began adding home office equipment to its product mix just before Christmas 1993.

There were 28 to 30 P.C. Richard stores--five of them former Newmark & Lewis outlets--in the summer of 1993, ranging from 8,000 to 18,000 square feet in size.

P.C. Richard's mammoth new warehouse in Farmingdale, the size of 15 football fields and the largest on Long Island, was completed by the summer of 1995.

With the opening of this outlet the chain had 38 stores--up from 31 in 1995 and including its first store in Westchester County, New York--and owned 22 buildings.

In 1996 P.C. Richard opened its first Manhattan store by taking a 20-year lease on a three-story building in the Union Square area.

Sadly, our Founder, A.J. Richard passed away December 28, 2004.

Soon, Gary’s son Gregg began to work his way into the fabric of the company in the same way his father and grandfather had, until he became president in 2004.

What is inscribed in the book, and on the walls, and in conversations, is the story of a New York family reaching out — in this case, reaching aggressively into Connecticut, with six large stores opening since May 2009, and a seventh, in Enfield, on the way.

Alfred J. Richard,Pieter Richard