Felix Sabates - Business Success

Business Success

Compelled to accept the position as a manufacturer's representative, Sabates worried that a new starting pay, considerably lower than his success with selling new cars, would be a financial burden to his family. Realizing his ambition and true potential, his friends and family encouraged him to accept the job. The decision to accept would be a turning point in Sabates' career. Sabates' driven ambition combined with an eye for exceptional product lines, generated record breaking revenues for the company which enabled his boss and the owner of the company, Walter Riche to take an early retirement. In 1974, by age 32, Sabates conquered the American dream and bought the company. As the CEO and with control of the company in his hand, Sabates benchmarked a new direction for the company which focused on growing the company. Expanding offices throughout the Southeast, Mid Atlantic and South Central United States and adding a new sales force to handle the distribution of product lines for those areas of the country, Sabates positioned the company to be a viable necessity to the factories he was representing.

Sabates' potential in business-plan design and implementation became apparent immediately. Recognizing various products for having guaranteed propensity for future success, he instructed his company to carry them for distribution. Sabates' top selling product lines that served as springboards for company included, Atari and the video game Pong and Pac Man, Teddy Ruxpin, the talking Teddy Bear, which Sabates had exclusive distribution rights nationwide. After a promise Sabates made to a large customer that he would deliver the Ruxpin bear in time for Christmas, when the popular Ruxpin bear became the gotta-have-it and then sold out before the Christmas holiday, Sabates chartered a Boeing 747 aircraft, removed the seats and filled the entire aircraft with Teddy Ruxpin bears and then delivered his promise to his loyal customer. Next, by popular demand Sabates entered the big leagues once again with distribution rights to the phenomenon of the next generation still popular today, Nintendo with games such games as Super Mario Bros.. Selling these popular products placed Sabates in the industry's Lime light creating a lasting mark of the name Felix as the example of selling power in the industry. Although Sabates had been receiving weekly purchase orders larger than most similar firms total annual sales, Sabates insisted that his company continue selling products to the same small mom and pop retailers called on when the company had first started selling products. Sabates attributes a great deal of his success to what he calls, The Core Business. Windermere, Black and Decker, Emerson Electronics, and Uniden are a few examples of other product lines which were considered far less exciting and much harder to sell. It was those less-exciting product lines sold by the company that collectively generated a more stable cash flow and also represented Top Sale's core business.

In the early 1990s, Top Sales Company, a successful, multi-billion dollar manufacturer in the corporate world began manufacturing products to be sold in the retail channel. Compaq Computer turned to Top Sales Company for the distribution and sales and marketing of the home and small business personal PC into the well established and growing retailers of Sabates' current business. As a positioned leader in the industry, Top Sales successfully generated billions of dollars in revenue for the computer power-house company and helped to establish the Compaq brand name to retailers and their customers throughout the United States almost overnight. At the top of his game, Felix Sabates' Top Sales Company, became the largest, most successful manufacturer's representative company in the United States with over $12 billion dollars in sales. Once again, Top Sales Company and their products proved to be an industry force.

With tremendous success in the 1980s and 1990s and after expanding internationally, Sabates turned his focus in a new direction. In a move that shocked the business world, Felix Sabates sold Top Sales Company to his employees at an undisclosed amount. The price however, was said to be much lower than he could have secured on the open market; rewarding the people that helped him to build the business and accomplish the feat of delivering over $12 billion in merchandise sales, Sabates' generosity enabled all the employees to become an owner in the company.