PPB May 2015

“Well, we had no idea what they were talking about, but we loved

the idea of selling 200 watches,” he recalls.

A bit later, when a distributor representing Phillips Petroleum Co.

inquired about creating sell sheets for the company’s eight different

divisions, Abels’ interest grew even more.

“He said ‘Can you fulfill?’ We had no idea what he meant by that,

but we said ‘Sure, we can fulfill,’” Abels says.

The order resulted in Abels supplying approximately 5,000 watches

to Phillips’ employees.

“They sent us orders, and we sent each person a watch,” Abels

says. “It turned out to be a great thing, and we were doing it by

accident.”

Eventually, the company opened a separate division called

Motivation, Inc., dedicated to selling jewelry to the industry. In its

heyday, Motivation, Inc., had a showroom in Dallas, Texas, and for 30-

35 years it produced items for Coca-Cola’s catalog.

Abels and his team started exhibiting at industry trade shows and

joined the Association in 1965. “There were other watch suppliers that

came and went, but once we hit it in 1965 we never left it,” he says of

the industry.

Big Business

In 1968, Abels’ jewelry business had became a publicly traded

company with 50 retail locations, lease departments and precious jew-

elry salons in specialty stores such as Dillard’s and J.C. Penney, and

others now gone that were on par with luxury retailer Neiman

Marcus. By 1975, Abels was president.

“I became president of the company on my 36th birthday,” he says.

“When I think about that, I think they were crazy to make a 36-year-

old president of a public company. But I guess it worked.”

Abels oversaw both the retail and promotional products divisions,

managing between 800 and 900 employees and living the high life of a

jewelry executive.

“Have you ever seen

The Devil Wears Prada

?” he asks. “That’s the

jewelry industry as well.”

Abels attended jewelry trade shows in New York and was lucky

enough to be invited to black-tie “24-karat dinners” for industry insid-

ers. These men-only events featured world-class entertainment and

were held at the Waldorf Astoria.

“I thought I’d just be in the jewelry business for the rest of my life

when I got in it,” Abels says. “It’s not that I didn’t like it. I liked it. I

just loved the promotional products industry.”

A Graceful Exit

By 1980, Abels was approached by the owners of Zales Corporation

about merging the two jewelry companies. He agreed to the deal with

one caveat: He would keep the incentive division and the Selco name.

So Selco became a privately owned company once again. Abels

was the sole owner and kept the name, the customers, any inventory

he wanted and an 18,000-square-foot office space in Tulsa.

“Retail was very, very tough,” Abels says. “It was not near as much

fun as the promotional products business, and I still feel that today. In

promotional products, we became very good friends with our cus-

tomers. Some of my best friends have come out of the industry.”

With more time to focus on selling incentives, Abels launched The

Summit Group. “I wanted to learn from what other people were doing

because my background was retail jewelry. I had been in promotional

products a long time, but I never had a lot of time to spend in it.”

The Summit Group began with seven owners of supplier compa-

nies and met twice a year, once at a different manufacturing plant and

again in a resort setting. “We’d literally be like a board, telling each

other all of our problems and asking what we were doing right or

wrong and so forth,” he says.

Abels also brought a bit of his retail background to the industry.

Inspired by the 24-karat dinners he attended as a jewelry exec, Selco

hosted its own parties at Dallas’ Bank of America Plaza before Expo

moved to Las Vegas. “It was a blast, but it got to be too expensive for

one company to do,” he explains.

So he paired up with Mark Gilman, CAS, of Gill Studios, Inc. to

host industry shindigs during Expo. They formed a group of approxi-

mately 30 other companies and called it The Club of Specialty

Advertising, hosting hot-ticket parties with live entertainment.

All Work And No Play

Like all good parties, Abels’ time leading Selco came to an end.

He handed the reins to his son, Mark, 15 years ago but still keeps an

eye on the business from his home in Florida, where he spends the

winters, and his other home in Tulsa. When in Oklahoma, he reports

to Selco four to five days a week, spending anywhere from two to six

hours per day in the office.

Though it sounds like quite the life, Abels advises entrepreneurs to

forget about vacation homes on the beach and to focus on their busi-

nesses instead.

“At 76 years old, it’s been a fantastic and mostly fun time,” he says.

“Let’s hope it continues, and I look forward to seeing everyone in Las

Vegas at The PPAI Expo 2016.”

MAY 2015 •

PPB

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