HARVEY BRODY - Long Lost Article On The King Of The VIRTUAL CORPORATION

Interesting you mention Joseph Cossman because I recently had an email conversation with his son. While Harvey and Joseph's models parallels in concept and with some methods and strategies, there are some major departures between their models. They complement each other, but are not exact models.

Harvey apparently concentrates his asset acquisitions with things industrial, more of what you may expect to see in Home Depot or something sold within an industry, not to the public. He is also an inventor who sometimes uses his inventive mind to improve an acquired asset before reintroducing it to the marketplace for competitive advantage and perhaps at lower cost.

Joseph Cossman's genius was in finding non industrial consumer type assets that were under performing, or performing well, but in only one sales channel and negotiating the right to distribute it in ways and or in places not previously done for a wider sales reach. If the whatever was sold only in the US and selling well, he would approach the owner for Europe and United Kingdom, etc. distribution rights.

He was not an inventor in the traditional sense, but extremely "inventive" in developing more ways to move assets. He came up with 22 ways to distribute products. He didn't invent most of them, but complied and became an expert in all of them, who to contact for best results, etc. He also was an expert on using government resources to help him establish distribution channels world wide, not costing him a penny, using tax payer resources instead. To my recall, Harvey's model does not, or at least it did not decades ago involve enlisting government agency help with establishing international distribution of products.

Less than a week ago, for the first time in decades I watched Joseph's telemercial from the early to mid eighties of him presenting and selling his system. At its height, his telemercial ran in 200 local US television markets for five years. It is surprisingly clear and HDDish for 1980's video technology.

Having both of of these models working in tandem where they can, someone could do some serious damage (make tons of money) in the marketplace I imagine.

Originally Posted by jsansi

Good article... was never real familiar with Harvy's work.

Sounds a lot like what Joseph Cossman does... and the late Jim Straw. His finders system works (I've pocketed money using it), even though it's dated the principle of it is as relevant as ever.

The thing is, in the world of business... equipment, machines, materials, raw goods and stuff are bought and sold everyday. And _every_ business on the planet has "stuff" sitting in a closet or warehouse that is valuable to someone else.