Rent-to-Own

The FTC looks at RTO: A Report on the Report by Ed Winn III

APROfile: Herb Weisblatt — The Biggest BOR in the Business by Ed Winn III

 

 

 

 

The FTC looks at RTO
A report on the report by Ed Winn III

In April, the Federal Trade Commission released its long-awaited Survey of Rent-To-Own Customers. The industry had been aware of the pending study since last May when the White House announced a consumer protection initiative broadly labeled "Expand the Consumer’s Right to Know," which included an examination of and possible regulatory recommendations for the rental-purchase industry.

The resulting FTC report shows unusual insight into how the industry works and, overall, with one possible exception, is balanced, objective and fair. The FTC commissioned a random-dial telephone survey of actual rental-purchase customers similar to the two telephone surveys conducted by America’s Research Group and Britt Beemer at the behest of APRO in 1994 and 1999. The FTC surveyors called over 12,000 homes in order to interview 532 customers who had entered into at least one rental-purchase transaction during the past five years. The America’s Research Group surveys polled a similar-sized group of actual rental-purchase customers, 600, in its 1999 survey.

The FTC study had three goals: (1) to distinguish the characteristics of rental-purchase customers from those who do not use the transaction; (2) to determine how often rentalpurchase transactions go to term; and (3) to determine whether abusive collection practices are widespread in the industry, as charged by consumer advocates.

The FTC goals differ sharply from the industry-commissioned surveys, whose goals were to measure the rental-purchase customer satisfaction levels about various aspects of the transaction. The FTC report, other than offering the results of its survey, is generally reticent either to praise or condemn industry practices, although a few of its findings do fly in the face of traditional industry criticism and can be fairly interpreted by industry supporters as official approval. The Beemer report, by contrast, offers a number of specific marketing recommendations based on its findings.

Based on the results of its survey, the FTC describes rental-purchase customers as "more likely to be African-American, younger, less educated, have lower incomes, have children in the household, rent their residences, live in the South and live in non-suburban areas."

The demographic profile derived from the FTC study differs from that found in the Beemer surveys. For example, the FTC study found that 73 percent of rental-purchase customers had a high school education or less. The Beemer studies found the percentage to be 60 percent. In the FTC study, 62 percent of rental-purchase customers rented their homes; in the Beemer study the percentage was 50 percent. The FTC study found 60 percent of rental-purchase customers had household incomes of less than $25,000; in Beemer, 30 percent of households earned $24,000 or less. Thirty-one percent of rental-purchase customers in the FTC survey were African Americans; in the Beemer studies, the percentage was 25 percent.

The studies also differed sharply over the kinds of merchandise rented by rental-purchase customers. The chart below shows the divergence between the studies relating to the kinds of products rented.

These differences go beyond mere statistical anomalies. The two groups sampled are simply different, as are the products they rented.

The differences, while material, do not render any of the studies invalid. These studies profile a diverse population base – rental-purchase customers. The industry has had difficulty defining its own customer base because of this diversity. The variance in these studies points up the lack of homogeneity among rental customers. It varies company by company, store by store, and now statistical survey by statistical survey. It would be equally difficult to derive precise conclusions about people who drive cars or people who eat cheeseburgers.

The FTC study, as did the Beemer surveys, offers new insights into rental-purchase customers’ attitudes and opinions about the transaction. No such study is intended to be definitive and the results of all such studies in the future will likely change as the industry continues to evolve with its products, services and methods of operation.

The FTC and Rent-to-own

The rental-purchase industry has had relations with the FTC dating back to the late ’70s, at least. Before APRO was formed, several rental companies had meetings with FTC staff to explain how the business worked and to see if the FTC could offer some protection from suits being brought against rental companies for allegedly violating federal Truth-In-Lending laws.

In 1983, the FTC submitted testimony to the U.S. Senate on proposed rental-purchase legislation. At that time, the FTC did not have "specific data on the frequency of rentalpurchase agreements in the marketplace or of abuses of lessors in rental-purchase transactions – " Ten years later, the FTC appeared before Representative Gonzalez’ House Banking Committee and said much the same thing: "The Commission, however, has no independent information regarding RTO issues, and thus takes no view as to whether new federal legislation is necessary." The FTC also noted that it rarely receives complaints regarding RTO matters.

Chairman Gonzalez at the time publicly chastised the FTC for not coming down on the industry using the FTC Act, which gives the commission authority to regulate "unfair or deceptive acts and practices." The FTC representative noted for the committee that the commission received 41,000 consumer complaints in 1992, 82 of which dealt with leasing of any kind and perhaps one or two of which dealt with rental-purchase transactions. The implication was that the FTC was not persuaded, unlike Chairman Gonzalez, that the industry was necessarily doing anything wrong.

The FTC representative went on to note that much of the rental-purchase industry was made up of mom-and-pop operations. According to the FTC, "Expansive changes in the legal environment for this industry could impose compliance obligations that many such businesses could not easily meet. As a result, many such businesses could be forced to leave the market. These departures ultimately might harm rent-to-own consumers who rely on these small businesses in their neighborhoods and would be left with a less competitive industry."

The FTC is not a knee-jerk consumer protection organization and, indeed, it cannot be, because the FTC wears a lot of regulatory hats. The FTC has regulatory authority under 46 separate federal laws, which fall into two main categories: protecting consumers and insuring economic competition. The FTC has a lot of economists on staff to analyze the complicated business situations that call U.S. antitrust laws into play. Most of that analysis requires application of the "rule of reason," which means that they, as regulators first and, finally, the courts, if need be, must assess the costs and benefits of various decisions instead of instinctively leaping to a "pro-consumer," "liberal," "pro-business" or "conservative" conclusion. This vigorous economic analysis on the antitrust side appears in the consumer protection side of the FTC and is evident all through the findings in the rentto- own survey.

Rental-Purchase Customer Satisfaction

The biggest finding in the FTC study from the industry’s point of view is that 75 percent of rental-purchase customers are satisfied with their experience with rental-purchase transactions. In the Beemer survey, this percentage was just over 80 percent. According to the FTC, here is what customers like: "the ability to obtain merchandise they otherwise could not; the low payments; the lack of a credit check; the convenience and flexibility of the transaction; the quality of the merchandise; the quality of the maintenance, delivery and other services; the friendliness and flexibility of the store employees; and the lack of any problems or hassles."

Most customers who are dissatisfied are unhappy with rental-purchase pricing. The Beemer survey found similar reasons for satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

Keep Rate

The most puzzling finding in the FTC study was that rental-purchase customers ended up owning 70 percent of the units they rented. The industry’s own analysis of keep rate derived by dividing units delivered that went to ownership over a period of time by total units delivered over the same period of time have consistently yielded "keep rates" less than half of the FTC number. When rental-purchase customers in the Beemer surveys responded with a 50 percent keep rate percentage, the industry assumed that customers had forgotten units they had rented briefly and returned.

The industry’s internal analyses were subjected to strict scrutiny because of the circumstances that gave rise to the analyses in the first place. It was during the industry’s negotiations with the IRS over how to characterize rental-purchase transactions for tax purposes and, if the transaction was going to be deemed a lease, how to depreciate rental merchandise. The industry was prepared to go to court over the lease-versus-sale issue. In fact, there were two tax court cases pending when the Congress clarified the tax code in 1997 making rental-purchase transaction leases for tax purposes. Against the tracking data available in most companies which shows the keep rate for new merchandise to be under 25 percent and the keep rate for all merc handise to be under 35 percent, one can only assume again the imperfect memory of rental-purchase customers polled in the FTC survey.

The bright side of this finding is that the FTC found no evidence that customers were renting units for a long time and then "losing" them back to rental companies when they missed a payment. Critics are fond of accusing the industry of lying in wait for customers in the 77th week to fall a day behind so that the company can grab the unit back. The FTC study found that 90 percent of customers who rented for six months or more obtained ownership.

No Collection Abuse

The FTC answered its third inquiry (to determine whether abusive collection practices exist in the industry) emphatically in favor of the industry. "Abusive collection practices are not widespread and do not represent the typical experience of most rent-to-own customers who are late making a payment." And nearly half of rental-purchase customers surveyed were late at least once. This finding is a tribute to the patience and restraint that the industry consistently demonstrates in the collection end of the business and should do much to portray the occasional horror story that makes its way into the media as what it is, an aberration, and in no way an indication of industry business practices.

FTC Policy Recommendations

The FTC did have some recommendations about how to regulate the industry. The clearest suggestion was for all rental stores to have price tags that include the total rental-purchase cost, the rental rate and other basic terms on products in the store. Rental-purchase statutes in 18 states require price tag disclosures and it is not known how widespread the practice is voluntarily among dealers in the other states. The FTC argues persuasively that consumers need this information while shopping and not after a decision to rent has been made. The FTC found the burden of complying with such a requirement to be minimal for dealers. As it happens, price tag disclosures is one of the provisions in the Jones bill currently pending in the U.S. House of Representatives and is a provision that the industry supports.

Because of the high keep rate found in its survey, the FTC acknowledges that some may want to regulate the transaction as a sale. However, the FTC urged caution about requiring an annual percentage rate disclosure in rental-purchase transactions. An interest rate disclosure has already proven difficult to regulate in automobile leases where there is a debt accrued. It would be no less difficult to require an interest rate disclosure in rental-purchase transactions where there is no debt. Problems include cash price variances and the valuation of the various services that make up the typical rental-purchase program. These are problems that the industry has understood for some time and that the FTC acknowledges in its report.

The FTC writes deftly of the difficulty of mandating a uniform cash price disclosure methodology for the industry. The study decimates the notion that dealers be required to disclose cash prices in their stores equal to "prevailing market prices," which has been a recent push from some consumer groups at the federal level and in a few states as well. The FTC discusses the operational difficulties dealers would have in conducting the needed surveys of other stores and concluded that these kinds of surveys "could be prohibitively expensive."

Rental-Purchase Profits

Another finding by the FTC, albeit an indirect one, was that rental dealers are not enjoying exorbitant profits as has been suggested by critics. The FTC was discussing the feasibility of imposing price restrictions on the industry, perhaps by requiring an APR disclosure and then limiting the amount of interest. The FTC noted that it was not charged with studying the industry’s prices and profits. It did note, however, that there are few barriers to entering the rental-purchase business. "A new entrant would need little more than a storefront, a delivery truck and an inventory of household merchandise."

The FTC properly notes that excessive profits in an industry can only be maintained if there are significant barriers to entry, collusion or some type of anti-competitive behavior. The FTC did not discuss anti-competitive behavior, but rental dealers in most markets know how competitive the business is. Dealers know, finally, that rental rates are what they are because of the costs associated with running the business. The FTC implied as much.

Customers’ Transportation and Finances

An important finding in the FTC study is that 84 percent of rental-purchase customers have a car or truck. The FTC acknowledges that this finding refutes the argument that the industry is somehow preying upon the poorest of the poor who have no choice but to visit rental-purchase stores. "Most rent-to-own customers are not constrained to a neighborhood rent-to-own store by a lack of transportation and are able to comparison shop at traditional retail stores if they choose to do so."

Also important is the finding that 77 percent of rental-purchase customers have at least one type of credit card or a bank account. They are not part of the "unbanked"population in this country and this finding may help the industry separate itself from the alternate financial services sector that is so much criticized by consumer groups these days.

Initial reactions to the FTC report have been favorable both inside the industry and out. Rental dealers had copies with them during the most recent legislative conference in Washington last month and members of Congress and their aides seemed favorably impressed with the FTC’s conclusions about the industry. In Florida, a rental dealer had been negotiating for lease space for a new store in a shopping center owned by Fannie Mae. The bureaucrats in charge of the property had insisted that they didn’t want to lease to any rental-purchase tenants. When they were shown a copy of the FTC report, this objection went away and the dealer got the lease signed.

The industry does not realistically expect the White House, which commissioned the study, to promote the findings, but the industry can count on its friends in Congress to do so. The industry itself, through the national and state associations, has a rare public relations opportunity to spread good news about rental-purchase from an unbiased third party. APRO members can obtain copies of the FTC report from the APRO office or from the FTC Web site at www.FTC.gov/.

 

The Biggest Bor In The Bussiness

On the north side of East Belknap, in the northeast section of Fort Worth, Texas, Sam’s Furniture and Appliance has stood quietly and unobtrusively since 1959. Inside, however, is a different story. The store boasts rental revenues of nearly $500,000 and another $200,000 in sales each month. The store has more than 3,000 lease customers on the books with over 11,000 units out on rent. The quiet exterior belies the hum of activity inside with store personnel hustling to service all types of accounts in what must be the largest rental store in the country. There are retail shops selling more, but no other rental store delivers as much product month in and month out as Sam’s.Owner Herb Weisblatt is justifiably proud of his family’s accomplishments as the story of Sam’s success began more than 50 years ago.

Fort Worth is “where the West begins,” no more improbable a place for America’s largest rental store than any other medium size city. Dallas- Fort Worth is called the Metroplex, but the two cities are separate and distinctly different. Dallas is a modern metropolis; Fort Worth still resembles a town and continues to carry with it traditional values of two generation ago.

Sam Weisblatt,Herb Weisblatt’s father and company namesake, was born and raised in Fort Worth. He raised his family there. He started out working in an airplane factory during World War II. In February 1946, he and his wife, Florence, with $500 in savings and $500 borrowed from the bank, opened Sam’s Stop and Shop on East Rosedale. One month later, Florence gave birth to their second son, Herb, the boy who would ultimately transform their fledgling store into the behemoth rental store that is Sam’s today. Those were hardly father Weisblatt’s ambitions at the time. He wanted to be his own boss and provide for his family and so he opened a grocery store. From the beginning, Weisblatt managed the floor and did the selling; Florence kept the books for the operation and raised the boys. But even then, Sam’s was a concept on the more.

Setting the stage for success In the late ’40s, because of wartime rationing, appliances were on allocation in that part of the world. Televisions hadn’t become a household item yet. Sam Weisblatt managed to get a few stoves and refrigerators allocated to him and started selling them out of the small grocery. A few years later, when TVs did begin appearing, he got some shipped and started selling them, too. The first televisions came from the manufacturer in three boxes—one for the cabinet, one for the picture tube and one for the chassis. In those early days of TV, there were no technicians— not in Fort Worth, at least—and Weisblatt had to assemble his televisions before he could sell them and had to teach himself how to fix them when they broke.

Herb Weisblatt and his older brother, Paul, grew up in this “mom-and-pop” business. As soon as they were old enough, they both had jobs in the store sweeping and cleaning, riding shotgun in the delivery truck and learning to make themselves useful, all the while absorbing their parents entrepreneurial spirit and drive.

The business grew steadily along with the boys. TVs and appliances drove the groceries out after a time.Weisblatt added furniture when the boys were in high school. Herb Weisblatt remembers that his father, in the 1950s, in that first store, saw a lot of soldiers coming home from the Korean War with lots of needs, little credit and less cash. Sam Weisblatt started refurbishing traded-in televisions and appliances and selling them to the soldiers “by the week.” His son, Herb, wonders if this early memory contributed to his own love of leasing later on.

Texas was thriving in the 1950s. Military bases had sprung up during World War II and after the war; Texas was the country’s second largest defense contractor. The petrochemical industry exploded. Fort Worth dominated the cattle trade. Sam’s and Florence’s ambitions kept pace with the growth of the region and the city and, in 1959,they bought out a competitor, Frank Carrie Furniture on East Belknap and turned it into the second Sam’s. “Two sons, two stores,”Weisblatt reasoned. Paul Weisblatt, the older brother, found the furniture business to his liking and Herb Weisblatt drifted toward electronics.

After high school, both boys enrolled in Texas Christian University in Fort Worth to stay close to home and to the business that was now dependent on their efforts. Herb managed the original store—which by the mid- 1960s was a full-fledged TV and appliance store—all the way through TCU. Paul ran the East Belknap store, which carried mostly furniture and a few appliances.

One of the smartest decisions the Weisblatt clan made was to get involved with the creation of a furniture buying group, “SafBi,” in the mid-1960s. Sam’s is still a member today. Twice a week, Sam’s fills a 52-foot truck from the SafBi Warehouse 80 miles away to keep Sam’s showroom well stocked.

Change in leadership

In the early 1970s, the power retailers in both electronics and furniture came to Fort Worth and threatened all the mom-and-pop shops in town, even the well-established ones, like Sam’s. The Weisblatt response, once again, was to join an electronics buying group called MARTA. It proved to be a well-timed, fortuitous move. Between 1976 and 1986, Sam’s saw 90 percent of the local furniture and appliance independents in Fort Worth go out of business. It was also in 1976, the beginning of this turbulent period, that Sam Weisblatt, the founding father, died.

Faced with a changing market and the loss of the head of the clan and the company’s driving force and inspiration, the late ’70s were a time of soul searching for Weisblatt’s widow and sons. The business and the family had relied on the patriarch’s vision for 30 years. Herb emerged from this dark period committed to moving the company forward. He was determined to learn from the large, successful chains, “not to sweat the small stuff” and “to have a plan and to work the plan.”

Changing course

It was at one of the MARTA meetings during this period (Herb made a point of attending them all), that he first heard about the new concept of TV rental. The notion instantly intrigued him and he began investigating it about the same time APRO was forming. Sam’s became one of the first APRO members and Weisblatt went to all the APRO meetings.Weisblatt says that listening to rental dealers talk at those early meetings gave him the confidence to jump into the rental business. Ironically, one of the more heated issues at those early APRO meetings was whether retailers like Weisblatt should be allowed to participate in APRO functions at all lest the trade association be used as a springboard for retailers to jump to rental. APRO attracted a few retailers like Weisblatt, but never in the numbers feared by some of the APRO founders.

In the early 1980s,Weisblatt opened three rental-purchase stores in Fort Worth in quick succession, Sam’s TV and Appliance Rental, while continuing to supervise the two retail stores.

Paul Weisblatt took a different path and began opening Sam’s Video Stores. The Sam’s empire prospered in all aspects—retail, rental-purchase and video—until 1986.

That was the year of the Texas oil and real estate bust and almost overnight the Sam’s stores saw volume decline by 40 percent. Historically, when the retail business got soft, Weisblatt had been able to trim margins or increase advertising and solve the problem. This time, though, Sam’s did both and nothing worked.

Sam’s had been a fixture in Fort Worth for 40 years by now and, for the very first time, the company began losing money. It became apparent that the company could no longer support both brothers as well as Florence, so Weisblatt and his brother flipped a coin for the business. History does not record Weisblatt’s call or how the coin fell, but Herb says he lost the toss and had to stay in the business and buy his brother out.

Weisblatt needed cash for his brother and for the business, and one of his first decisions was whether to sell the ailing retail chain or the more stable and successful fledgling rental chain. Perhaps out of a sense of tradition, perhaps in memory of his father, perhaps out of a sense that the rental-purchase business as it existed then was not perfectly to his liking,Weisblatt decided to sell the rental stores and keep the retail. He sold his three stores to a competitor, Bill White’s Action chain, in 1987. At the same time, he closed the original retail store to consolidate his energies into the larger store on East Belknap.

The rental bug bites

Despite the sale of the rental stores,Weisblatt soon realized that the rental bug had bitten him. He felt as if he understood the rental business and its customers and pondered variations on the rental theme as they might apply to retail. He knew the demand for rental was strong; he saw it every day in his retail store. Customers came in wanting the products he carried, but they were without the cash or credit to buy them. They were leaving Sam’s Furniture and Appliance store with nothing and presumably finding their way to a rental store or doing without. Weisblatt determined to change all that in his corner of the world.

He began studying the rental concept in earnest, its strengths and weaknesses, and determined that the leasing concept had fewer negatives and more positives than traditional rental-purchase. He decided to launch furniture and appliance leasing in order to “satisfy the wants and needs of our customers, whether they had credit or not.” His program as it evolved was to lease only new products, to lease them only on a monthly basis, to collect two month’s lease payments in advance, to have an initial lease term of six months and to give ownership in 17 months. Having run three traditional rental-purchase stores for a time, he knew how labor intensive the weekly business was and figured that he could not adequately service the weekly business out of his retail store. 

A part of that decision also involved another customer service angle.Many lease customers had bad or no credit and wanted to repair their credit histories. They wanted Sam’s to report their payment histories to the credit reporting agencies; those agencies would only accept monthly payment reports. Weisblatt worked on a transaction that took into account all of the objections to traditional rental-purchase from both the owner’s and the customer’s point of view. For example, he refused to rent used products. When units came back, Weisblatt refurbished them and sold them off the retail floor to his “cash-paying, bargain-hunting customers.”

The plan, once implemented, began working immediately. Sam’s started pulling in the “cream of the crop” from traditional rental-purchase stores in the market and also attracted a lot of “leasing” customers who had never considered rental-purchase as an option. With a tweak here and there, Sam’s lease program continues today.

The WalMart of leasing

Weisblatt says that he has tried to position Sam’s as both the Neiman Marcus and the WalMart of consumer furniture and appliance leasing in Fort Worth. Being so many different things to customers out of a 15,000-square-foot showroom is no mean feat. Sam’s is high end because the store offers new merchandise, great selection and truly lavish service. It also offers lease rates 30 percent to 50 percent lower than his rental competitors and the best early-purchase option in the business, according to Weisblatt.He maintains that the cash prices in Sam’s are as low as anyone’s in town, thanks in part to the company’s continued active involvement with the two buying groups.

Weisblatt remembers that the biggest internal change to Sam’s came four years ago when he assembled the troops and gave what his wife calls his Nikita Kruschev speech, complete with shoe pounding on the table.Weisblatt understood the value and growth potential of his leasing concept, but his employees didn’t. They still thought they were in retail.Weisblatt says that speech, all about his passion for and the potential of leasing, converted 90 percent of the employees to his way of thinking and the other 10 percent quit. Since then, leasing revenues have grown at over 20 percent a year.

Four years ago, there were 30 employees; today the store runs with about 45. Weisblatt predicts another 20 percent growth in 2000. 

Pleasing the customer

When asked how he does it, Weisblatt responds that Sam’s offers its customers what they want at prices they are willing to pay. He says that he is very successful in converting former weekly rental customers into monthly leasing customers at Sam’s.He estimates that store activity is only one-fifth or one-sixth of what it would be if he carried weekly accounts. The rule is inviolate. Customers who insist on paying weekly must go somewhere else.

Nearly half of the business is “take-with” as opposed to requiring delivery, even the furniture business, and roughly half of lease revenues are from mailed-in payments. That means the showroom must stay full and the company is purchasing more than $2 million in inventory a year.

Thanks to the SafBi warehouse, Weisblatt says he can get name brand furniture twice a week at about what he would pay if he bought directly from the manufacturers and waited 13 weeks.

Weisblatt says his lease customer demographic is nearly two-thirds female with a high percentage of single women. He also targeted the Hispanic market, which is large and growing and is under served in Fort Worth. Weisblatt thinks his leasing customers may be a little older than traditional rental-purchase customers, with the 35–50 age group being the largest. A lot of customers did rental-purchase when they were younger and now prefer to lease.Weisblatt describes the Sam’s customers as being unusually loyal.

“Our customers often pay us first.We are giving them a better deal and they know it,” says Weisblatt. In his rentalpurchase stores, it was not unusual for customers to come in and rent several units just before declaring bankruptcy. In Sam’s, as often as not, customers who are going to file will come in and pay off their units before filing.

“They know they are going to need us after the bankruptcy and that we are going to be there for them,” says Weisblatt.

On keeping employees

Weisblatt is quick to credit his employees with Sam’s successes. His key staff members have been with the company more than 10 years. There is very little turnover after an employee has been with the company for two years. Weisblatt attributes employee tenure to the work atmosphere, the benefits package and the fact that his employees are genuinely appreciated by Weisblatt and Sam’s customers. Weisblatt’s mother, Florence, is the employee of longest standing. Fifty-four years later, she still writes the checks and counts the money for the company. Behind the scenes, her nickname is “Cash Flo.”

In keeping with its Fort Worth heritage,Weisblatt says Sam’s has retained a small-town look and feel to it. “We pull proudly from our roots in the ’50s and combine that with modern service and high-tech systems,” he says.

Plans for the future include computer leasing, which Weisblatt has moved toward slowly. There is incredible demand and, therefore, great potential.Weisblatt continues to consider taking his concept multi-store. “I think this concept would work in every major city in America,” he says.Whether he decides to go big or bigger, the future looks promising. He is confident Sam’s will grow to a $10–$12 million business in the one location, not counting what he can do with computers.

Weisblatt and his wife, Rosemary, spend as much time as possible on their ranch west of Fort Worth, although he is still in the store four days a week. They have three children. Jon is an executive at Dell in Austin, Shari is an oncology nurse in Dallas and Seth is a computer guru in Washington, D.C. Weisblatt describes himself as a “gentleman rancher.” He just doesn’t know yet whether to open stores and continue with the “gentleman” moniker or whether he wants to get serious about his cattle and donkeys. Either way, the drive and insight that have propelled this West Texan for the past 40 years should keep him at the top of whatever game he chooses well into the future.


Ed Winn III is APRO’s general counsel. His e-mail address is edwinn@ibm.net. 56 PROGRESSIVE