Goodbye Hong Kong, Hello Acapulco

Ask a Hong Kong ricksha boy or postcard vendor to name the biggest, busiest, most beneficent U.S. corpora tion, and chances are that he'll answer chop-chop. General Motors? No. U.S.

Steel? Guess again. As far as Hong Kong cares, it is Gibson -- which is short for the Hupp Corp.'s Gibson Refrigera tor Division of Greenville, Mich. This month Gibson has been discombobulating the city like nothing since the Japa nese invasion.

Shuttling into Kai Tak Airport, 24 chartered Pan American 707s daily un load waves of Gibson dealers and their wives who have won a "High Adventure in Hong Kong" trip by filling sales quo tas on refrigerators, washers, dryers and air conditioners. Before the month-long series of visits is over, 3,700 Gibson girls and boys will have sampled Hong Kong for four days, spent another day in Tokyo for good measure.

Tea & Tiger Balm. More and more, U.S. firms are using free travel as a sales incentive; this year 8,000 compa nies are sending crackerjack salesmen to such faraway places as Venice (RCA) or Pago Pago (Ford). Nobody does it as grandly as Gibson. The company is paying out $2,000,000 for jet charters alone, will spend another half million to quarter guests in Hong Kong's Manda rin and Hilton hotels and entertain them. Each dealer is furnished with a 40-coupon book of tickets entitling him to everything from a pot of Oriental welcoming tea on arrival to a tour of the Tiger Balm Gardens and dinner at the floating restaurants of Aberdeen.

The fun begins at Fairbanks, Alaska, where the 707s refuel. Waiting at the runway is an Eskimo with a Gibson refrigerator. The idea is that the not-so-dry Gibsons can snap pictures, brag back home that they sold an icebox to an Eskimo. At Tokyo, a Hong Kong tailor comes aboard to measure for suits and shirts, and between organized activities visitors get an opportunity to spend their own "fun money." "My wife bought herself ten glass-beaded sweaters," complained a Nevada dealer. "I'll have to sell glass-beaded refrigerators when we get home to get even."

College for Profit. Gibson accounts for about 50% of Hupp sales, and although the parent company showed a $2,600,000 net loss last year, nobody--except perhaps a disgruntled stockholder or two--frets about the expenses of the yearly travel. Neither does the Internal Revenue Service, which accepts it as a business expense. Early mornings are devoted to sales pep talks at "The Gibson College for Profit"; the college awards diplomas. Gibson President Charles J. Gibson Jr., 46, holds awards luncheons, hands out Hollywood-type Oscars to supersalesmen. "They go over particularly well with the womenfolk," he says. Each planeload of 160 husbands and wives is briefed on next year's line of refrigerators on the way over. On the way back across the Pacific, the travelers take a "quiz in the clouds" about what they have learned. Nobody flunks.

Gibson Sales Head William C. Conley, who plans the trips, says that they have increased Gibson sales 300%, v. an industry rise of 60% since 1956. Conley is already planning another. "Next year," cries Conley, "we're all going to Acapulco!" Ole.

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