Billy Mays

B.M.: Um, geez. One was a propane caddy.

L.G.: What is a propane caddy?

B.M.: To carry your propane on a little wheel-which I thought was just kind of not D.R., direct response. Another was a siphon, or an anti-siphon, so that you can stop people from siphoning gas, because it's a big thing now with the price of gas. I think things like that-the grill tamer.

L.G.: What does the grill tamer do?

B.M.: It keeps the grill open a certain length or a certain area so that you can get the smoke to come out and so you don't burn your food. And it adjusts, has different gauges on it. The guy invented it from a beer can, just smashed a beer can.

L.G.: But you passed on that.

B.M.: Yeah, he got really sophisticated about it, he's made it nice-looking-it's made out of high quality material and you know, "40 million grills, 40 million people that own grills!"-that was his pitch.

L.G.: Why did you pass on that? Why do you pass on something?

B.M.: I have a checklist. It has to have mass appeal. When you have 40 million grills out there, he thinks that he's going to sell 15 million. First of all, you don't sell 15 million of something. I've sold that much of OxiClean. That's different because that's ongoing. Mighty Putty is way up there. That's one of my biggest products, and of course OxiClean is a standard that everything is set by. And Kaboom. The company was sold to Arm & Hammer. I started with OxiClean, or Orange Glo International, which is a family company. And it was sold for $325 million.

L.G.: And you were one of the lucky stockholders?

B.M.: No, I wasn't. I wasn't even involved in anything. It made me, Lloyd, such a strong pitchman after that. I worked for OxiClean, and Orange Glo, I worked with them four, five, six times a year, shooting commercials. It made a stronger pitchman.

L.G.: In other words, everybody would know you as the guy who insured the success of OxiClean, so you were the go-to guy for that kind of thing?

B.M.: Yeah, and I felt that I built all three brands-also Kaboom and Orange Glo. [Not profiting from the sale] was a hard thing to swallow but I used that. I think that he [Max Appel, the head of Orange Glo] would probably have done things differently but it's not too late, it's only been a couple years. I felt that I should have got something. Look, I believe things happen for a reason, I'm a much more successful pitchman. People say that I have more hits on TV than anyone. I like it that way. I don't want to be handed this and handed that.

L.G.: And it's not like you're living on a grate here. And even though you drive a Rolls-Royce or whatever it is, you manage to keep your feet on the ground?

B.M.: Right, it's a Bentley.

L.G.: Like James Bond.

B.M.: [Laughs.] I enjoy what I do. I think it's just beginning. I'm going to go and take this to another level, and really legitimize the business that we're in, not that it needs legitimization. But there are skeptics out there that are still a little leery about "As Seen on TV," even though we're regulated so much.

L.G.: You're regulated by what?

B.M.: The F.T.C. [Federal Trade Commission]. We're very regulated. You better have the claims backed up and if they call you on them, and that demo is not actually documented, you're in trouble. A lot of trouble.

L.G.: You're not facing jail time if you try and fool the people, but it's a civil penalty, right?

B.M.: Yeah. I'm the frontman, I'm the quarterback, I have a good relationship with everyone I work with. I know that their priorities are to be clean about it, and that's important. I won't work with some of the ones that are a little leery. There are a few out there. I think in every business, there is.

L.G.: Right, well there's a tradition that goes back to the medicine shows, obviously. But they didn't have an F.T.C. then.

B.M.: Oh no, you could pretty much get on TV and say anything you wanted. But now we're really carefully watched.

L.G.: Do you write your own copy?

B.M.: Pretty much. I'll tweak it, I'll buy a vowel. So yesterday, we did five 15-second commercials for OxiClean at Blue Moon Studios in New Jersey, and started off with Pat Benatar saying, "Hit me with your best shot," then I come in, "Billy Mays here! OxiClean has four-in-one power to tackle your toughest stains, the toughest laundry stains there are. So why not hit me with your best shot?" So we're really looking forward to that one.

L.G.: How many commercials for which products do you have in rotation right now? Is it too much of a memory trick to get you to list them?

B.M.: No, not at all. OxiClean foremost, Kaboom, Orange Glo wood-floor polish, the Mighty Putty, Mighty Mend-It, another line extension of that, it's more of the glue, which you'll be seeing a lot here in the next couple weeks. HandySwitch, Simoniz Fix It, which is a scratch remover, Zorbeez, which is the shimmies. Hercules Hook, which is kind of off the air, but we bring it on if there's time available just to drive the retail a little bit, where they split the revenues with us. Now Steam Buddy is a big one, the steam iron, which is very big for us. And then there's the Samurai Shark knife sharpener.

L.G.: So all those kinds of products are in the $19.95 range or less and your high-end product is ICanBenefit.com. Since we're in the middle of a presidential campaign, I have to ask, would it be possible to use you as a pitchman for a presidential campaign?

B.M.: Well, Chuck Norris does.

L.G.: Right, he did for Mike Huckabee, but that was more sort of a humorous thing, I suppose. A lot of the fundraising is done on the internet, in small increments-indeed, in many cases in $19.95 increments. Could you see a situation where you're selling Barack Obama or John McCain in that way, or is that just too nutty?

B.M.: I think if I was approached by the McCain camp. I'm a Republican.

L.G.: Maybe this is unfair to ask, but how would you pitch John McCain? Would you say, "Billy Mays here for John McCain?"

B.M.: Security. The world's a safer place. Country first. "Billy Mays for John McCain! If you want to keep you and your family safe, vote McCain!" I'd have to think about it, I wouldn't like to bash anything. I'd like to keep things positive.

L.G.: Of course in the case of a political candidate, you wouldn't have to worry about legal and vetting and whether or not what you said was true.

B.M.: Yeah, you're right. You know, the campaign is going to get really dirty here soon. Not that it already isn't, but it's going to get dirtier.

L.G.: What would be the solution to that? Would that be OxiClean?

B.M.: Yeah, we're going to clean up both these candidates' acts.

L.G.: Put them in a bucket full of activated water and OxiClean?

B.M.: That's right, the world's a much cleaner place because of it. You know, one thing I like to say, I owe it to the pitchmen from Atlantic City who taught me and kind of vetted me. They didn't have to do that. These guys saw something in me and I hung in there in Atlantic City, and they gave me little snippets here and there to apply, and I hung in there, hung in there, and they kind of just passed the baton to me and said, "Look, kid, take this to the next level." I'm a pitchman, my business comes from the pitch, nothing else. My voice, my likeness, is my livelihood. That's it. I keep it simple. I pick good products. The reality show coming up on Discovery is going to take us to another level.

L.G.: Let me ask you a question before we talk about that. What is the Billy Mays brand? What are you selling?

B.M.: Trust. And I'll stop the channel surfers, get a lot of people saying, "He annoys me," he does this and that-but some of those people are the first to buy. And people have bought so many different products off me that they trust I'm going to give them a quality product. My style is my style. I may offend a few people, my over-the-top-ness sometimes, but if it's not broken don't fix it. They look at me as the average Joe. I'm going to sit down, talk with them, have a beer, nothing real special. I'm myself and I have a good time living life. I have a 3-year-old and a 22-year-old.

L.G.: Does your wife like your beard?

B.M.: Oh yeah.

L.G.: Because you can never shave it, can you?

B.M.: No.

L.G.: You're 50 years old. Do you have to make sure you don't go gray?

B.M.: Yeah, I touch it up here and there. My beard is part of that image, and I think that people wouldn't recognize me without a beard. Sometimes they don't recognize me, they think they know who I am, but-"I know you, I just know you."

L.G.: You get a lot of that?

B.M.: Sometimes, like on the flight from Newark yesterday, I must've signed 20 autographs on the plane, from all the flight attendants, a couple of the guys, a couple of the kids sitting behind me.

L.G.: Now what happens if somebody for whatever reason is dissatisfied with a product they bought because they saw you pitching it on television? Do you get people who come to you and very bitterly complain?

B.M.: I'll either call the company or I'll just out of my own personal money send them a refund. Just recently I got a letter from a guy who's in the Air Force and bought the Awesome Auger-that's another big product I have. That's the one where you hook up to a drill and you plant bulbs by the dozen. It's kind of a cultivator, you can till, cultivate, with attachments to hook up to your drill.

L.G.: The Air Force guy bought it, didn't like it?

B.M.: He got two attachments the same, and he couldn't use it in there properly and he had some trouble with the customer service. He wrote me a letter and I immediately took care of it. He was out something like $72, because he brought the drill and he bought everything. He bought the maximum of what you can get.

L.G.: Did you send him a personal check?

B.M.: Yeah, I sent him a personal check, a company check, but I apologized. He said "I've bought products off you in the past, and with a lot of success, and now I'm a little deterred to buy it again, I'm a little disappointed." So I sent him his money with a letter saying, "I hope that you'll give us another chance, here's a reimbursement on that, stay with me and we'll see this won't happen again." Then he wrote me a letter back, and he was stunned. He was like, You've got to be kidding me!

L.G.: That's hilarious.