Come Out of the Kitchen

NEW PRODUCTS Come Out of the Kitchen As the $50,000-a-year president of Chicago's Cory Corp., one of the biggest U.S. makers of glass coffee brewers, James William Alsdorf, 37, considers himself his own best customer. He drinks 21 cups of coffee a day, all made in a Cory coffeemaker. One afternoon last week, Jim Alsdorf bubbled with excitement as he showed off another product which can be used after each cup is emptied. It is the "Cory Made Maid," a 23-lb. electric dishwasher, compact enough to fit on the kitchen drainboard, cheap enough ($89.95) to undersell most existing electric models by more than 50%. With it, chipper Jim Alsdorf cockily predicted that he would revolutionize the home-dishwasher market.

Alsdorf quit the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce as a sophomore in 1933, took a selling job with his father's A. J. Alsdorf Corp., one of Chicago's oldest export businesses. Among their exports was the vacuum coffeemaker made by Cory Corp., then a small company run by Founder Harvey Cory. Young Alsdorf did so well selling the coffeemaker in coffee-drenched Brazil that he began to think of what he could do with proper salesmanship in the U.S. In 1942, when Founder Cory retired, Alsdorf and a group of friends scraped up enough money to buy control of the company. He added electric fans, stoves and air humidifiers to the Cory line, and in five years boosted sales from $2.5 million to a 1947 peak of $10.2 million--and profits from $151,500 to $1,200,000.

Alsdorf picked up his dishwasher from California's Applied Products Co. on a royalty deal (a minimum of $20,000 a year plus $2 for each machine sold in excess of 10,000). The machine, which has an adaptation of a powerful hydraulic pump previously used for cleaning airplane parts, needs no installation; just plug it into a socket and hook it onto the kitchen faucet.

Last week, Alsdorf was stepping up production of his Matic Maid to reach 400 units a day by month's end. To sell it, he planned to go after the man of the house, not the woman. Says he: "Seventy-four percent* of the men in this country help their wives with the dishes. Now they can duck the job without feeling like heels."

*A private guess, based on the reading of women's magazines.

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