Olaf Growald
One thing to know about Rich Hollander, the ex-Tandy Corp. executive: “Retirement just doesn’t make sense for Rich Hollander. I have too much energy, and my mind is racing all the time.” Hollander’s been around retail for more than 50 years. After a quarter century at Tandy and its RadioShack unit, he worked in pawnshops and tires as president of Cash America and Rent A Tire; president of the Buxton consulting firm in Fort Worth; and vice president at MasterCard’s card-linked loyalty programs. Six years ago, he co-founded a Fort Worth company called Axcelora, matching networks of its 200 partners with clients looking to make connections. Hollander’s latest launch: a company called A Sweet Goodbye, which a dozen partners founded this fall. Simple pitch: Charge customers a $25 fee to record a message in the cloud to loved ones, who can replay it as often as they wish.
Turning Point “I was sitting in morning minyan [a daily Jewish prayer service] and ‘talking’ with my mom. She had been gone 10 years by then. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could just push a button and hear her voice. I could not fix my own problem, but what if we could fix it for other people?”
Team “I called Rich Last [Axcelora partner, e-commerce specialist, and creator of the digital retail program at the University of North Texas] first. Rich talked to one of his students, and he said he thinks it makes sense, not just for old people but for young people. How do we want to fund it and how much? Who knows? We got with another friend, Dave Martella, from Tandy, and asked how much would it cost us to store a five-minute message. We figured out it doesn’t cost very much to store 100,000 messages for a year. It’s less than $1,000. We built the system. It took us a year. I have two daughters, one in New Zealand in marketing. Another here, who was a project manager for RadioShack after college. She became our project manager. We built this team one little bit at a time.”
Mechanics Twenty-five dollars, plus sales tax, to record and store a message up to five minutes long in the cloud; designate up to 50 recipients; and assign a trustee to ensure the message gets to the recipients. “We’ll fund it to be virtually forever. Ten percent of all revenues we take will be put into a fund so we can constantly have updated technology.”
Potential “That is the multimillion-dollar question. We have a friend that is in the business. She thinks ultimately it’s 100,000 units a month. I think that’s crazy high. Rich Last thinks it’s 10,000 to 20,000 units a month, which is substantial. Because of the pricing we put on it, it’s a nice category we would call greeting cards from beyond. One product we’ll offer in the not-too-distant future is to send a birthday card greeting. It’s just natural to do that.”