Allen Consulting, Inc.
Sylvia Allen
732-946-2711
Sylvia@Allenconsulting.com |
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Gray cool
Published in the Asbury Park Press 04/23/05
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By MICHAEL RILEY
STAFF WRITER
Paul Corliss wants to start a movement and, not incidentally, make a buck or two while he's at it.
The 69-year-old entrepreneur from Manasquan (and at least part of the year in Florida) was first called a "Silver Fox" maybe 20 years ago by a colleague in his former business.
The name stuck with him, and over the years has assumed the status of not just a compliment about one's distinguished hair color, but more a state of mind -- a state of being, a way of redefining "cool."
"Regardless of age, a Silver Fox is smart, successful, and sexy with a great sense of humor and a tireless spirit. Silver hair helps -- but it is your cool attitude that really counts," is how Corliss puts it.
When you put it like that, what man -- or woman -- of a certain age wouldn't want to count himself among that group?
And the number of Silver Foxes can only keep growing, Corliss figures, as what demographers refer to as "leading-edge baby boomers" pass the half-century mark.
That sexy, smart, uber-cool state of mind is all well and good, but the real mark of belonging to a cool group is buying stuff with a logo on it.
That's where Corliss comes in. He and a staff of folks who are, for the most part, a good many years shy of their own silver hairs, have created a line of merchandise called the Silver Fox Club brand. Corliss suspects that there a goodly number of Silver Foxes out there whose loved ones are nearly always stymied by what to give them for presents.
He believes he has come to their rescue with such things as a Silver Fox key chain, a Silver Fox wine caddy, Silver Fox golf accessories, sundry articles of Silver Fox clothing and various Silver Fox executive geegaws.
Meeting Corliss in person, one sees that not only was he the original Silver Fox, but is the epitome of "silver foxiness": He exudes success, confidence, and an ability not to take himself too seriously. Corliss is also a devoted family man: husband to his wife, Pat, a father of four and a grandfather -- with the moniker "Pepe" -- to 15 grandchildren.
He wasn't always a Silver Fox, of course.
Corliss started out wanting to be a business man, like his father who started a fence company.
Corliss graduated from the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia. Then, in a side journey, Corliss joined the Army, where he served as part of the 82nd Airborne.
Corliss' dad sold his fence company to Reynold's Aluminum, and stayed on for a time as his son joined him.
"One time I had a boss at the fence company," Corliss says. "That was the last time I had a boss."
And an entrepreneur was born. "It's about the independence," he says.
But before he found his way, he faced a personal tragedy and a professional challenge in one and the same event.
"After my dad resigned from Reynolds Aluminum," Corliss says, "he started another business and soon after that was diagnosed with leukemia. He passed away when I was 28, so I had to take over his business, fulfill millions of dollars worth of contracts and literally recreate everything from scratch."
Eventually, Corliss made his mark and his fortune in the high-volume, low-profit-margin world of supermarkets.
He was a pioneer in the supermarket club card business, which has evolved over time into the food market equivalent of airlines' frequent flyer programs.
Several years later in 1978, he helped revolutionize the coupon redemption business by developing a system where his company directly invoiced the manufacturers for the supermarket's coupons but told them not to pay the invoice. His company would simply deduct the amount of that unpaid coupon invoice when the supermarket paid the manufacturers for groceries. The company founded on that concept, Coupon Controls Inc., is still going strong 25 years later.
A lot of guys would figure, "two industry-wide innovations is career enough for anybody" and think about retiring.
Not Corliss.
He was thinking about turning a lark into a business.
Back in the day, when supermarket bigwigs would get together for conferences and conventions and the like, one of them dubbed Corliss, "The Silver Fox," and it stuck. Corliss knew he was not unique. He began to host "Silver Fox Club breakfasts" at these shindigs and getting these stolid businessmen doing silly things like chering in unison.
In Corliss' Wall offices, there are framed pictures of groups of silver-haired executives -- overwhelmingly male . . . smiling behind banners that announce that year's class of Silver Foxes.
"It just kept getting bigger," Corliss says. "Men who were graying, many of them having worked 20 or 30 years, were proud of their accomplishments."
These were men, he says, who viewed their silver hair as a sign of their achievements not as a sign of aging. "These guys bought into the Silver Fox Club because of the camaraderie," Corliss says. "We were friends, an army of guys wearing the hat, the shirt, the vest. At that time, the club was really a state of mind and since everyone liked the logo, we figured why not create a brand for men with silver hair?" Corliss explains. The idea is not without precedent.
One of the nearest parallels would have to be he Red Hat Society, which boasts 300,000 members, all women, who wear red hats and share tea in their search for what they call "Fun and Friendship Over Fifty."
Business savvy aside, there are good reasons to believe that something like the Silver Fox Club makes sound psychological sense, according to Manasquan-based psychotherapist Rosemarie Poverman.
"We're clearly social animals," Poverman says. "People like to belong to groups. As people get older, and the world seems to go speeding by, we feel the need to celebrate where we are now."
And where we've been.
"Nostalgia can be powerful," Poverman says. "We like people who have been where we are, and not just places we've been, but the times we've lived in."
Corliss' research gave him the kind of demographic information that would make a marketer drool.
"The statistics on men and women 50 and older blew me away," Corliss says. "We would never run out of customers."
Corliss and his team have everything ready to finish launching the brand.
"As a good business person, I'm supposed to say that this idea will appeal to the 75 million Baby Boomers in this country and grow exponentially as the population grows up," Corliss says.
"But the truth is, I'm simply providing a framework for a club based on good old-fashioned camaraderie. I just want everyone to have fun with it." |
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