From: Detroit Free Press
Oliver L. (Ollie) Fretter, the colorful founder and president of the old Fretter appliance and electronics store chain whose zany commercials endeared him to a generation of local television viewers, died Sunday at his home in Bloomfield Hills. He was 91.
Ollie Fretter was very much the public face of his chain. His TV pitches included the memorable pledge, “I’ll give you 5 pounds of coffee if I can’t beat your best deal.” The Free Press noted in a 1996 article that Fretter’s “Ollie Oops” sales on dinged and dented merchandise were a penny-pincher’s delight.
Fretter started his company in the early 1950s as a single appliance repair shop. One of his first stores was in Redford Township. The company went public in 1986, and along with Highland Superstores and ABC Warehouse, was one of the Detroit area’s Big Three appliance and electronics chains.
Through growth and acquisitions the firm expanded to a peak of more than 250 stores in several states by the early 1990s, under the names Fred Schmid, Fretter, Dash Concepts, Silo or Yes! About 60 stores carried the Fretter name itself.
By 1987 Fretter stopped appearing in the chain’s TV spots as the company hired actor Robert Stack for more somber ad campaigns.
His Brighton-based company eventually struggled amid increasing competition from discounters and big box electronics chains such as Best Buy and Circuit City. The fast-falling prices of computers and other electronics by the 1990s played a role in the chain’s demise, too.
Fretter declared bankruptcy in 1996 and all of its stores were liquidated. Of Detroit’s electronics Big Three, today only the ABC Warehouse chain is still in business.
“At the end it just got to be a tough business and he wanted to retire,” his son, Howard Fretter, recalled Tuesday.
Oliver Fretter was born in Cleveland in 1923 and moved with his family to Michigan as a teenager, graduating from Royal Oak High School in 1941. He worked as an appliance repairman in Detroit before founding the Fretter Appliance Co.
His “five pounds of coffee” line filled local airwaves during the 1970s and 1980s and was mentioned by Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.”
Howard Fretter recalled how his father’s stores did indeed hand customers free cans of ground coffee with their appliance purchases. As part of the joke, each 1-pound can of coffee carried the label “net weight — 5 pounds.”
“People loved it and it was very fun,” his son recalled.
Fretter’s memorable commercials date to an era when local television had more ads from regional businesses and business owners, said Tim Kiska, an associate professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn and author of three books about Detroit television.
His on-air contemporaries included Maurice Lezell, better known as “Mr. Belvedere,” who owned Belvedere Construction Co. in Southfield and whose phone number — TYler-8-7100 — was widely committed to memory. Former Lions running back Mel Farr also had a following with his campy ads for his Oak Park Ford dealership in which he often donned a superhero’s cape.
“You had a lot of these regional advertisers who’d get on TV and do seemingly outrageous things,” said Kiska, who used to cover television for the Detroit News and worked for the Free Press. “The advertising business was a lot looser back then and that kind of stuff could get on the air.”
Fretter once explained why he decided to tone down his TV act and hire a professional ad agency.
“As you grow larger, you have to present a more professional image,” Fretter said in a 1983 interview. “I’m a professional. On TV a lot of people thought I was that crazy person. But in reality that wasn’t me. I had to sort of get in the mood.”
Surviving are his wife, Elma Fretter; daughter, Laura Fretter; son, Howard Fretter and daughter-in-law Dawn; and grandchildren Alexandra, Andrew and Catherine Fretter.
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