Retail Gangster Audiobook Libro.fm

Description

A biography of the spectacular rise and fall of Eddie Antar better known as Crazy Eddie whose home electronics empire changed the world even as it turned out to be one of the biggest business scams of all time

Back in the fall of 2016 we heard the news about the passing of Eddie Antar Crazy Eddie as he was known to millions of people the man behind the successful chain of electronic stores and one of the most iconic ad campaigns in history Few things evoke the New York of a particular era the way Crazy Eddie His prices are insaaaaane does The journalist Herb Greenberg called his death the end of an era and that couldnt be more true Whats insane is that his story has never been told

Before Enron before Madoff before The Wolf of Wall Street Eddie Antars corruption was second to none The difference was that it was a street franchise a local place that was in the blood stream of everyones daily life in the 1970s and early 80s And Eddie pulled it off with a certain style an in your face blue collar chutzpah Despite the fact that then US Attorney Michael Chertoffcalled him the Darth Vader of capitalism after the extent of the fraud was revealed one of the largest SEC frauds in American history after Crazy Eddies stores went public in 1984 Eddie was talked about fondly by the people who worked for him They still dothere are myriads of exCrazy Eddie employee web pages that still attract fans and the Crazy Eddie fraud scheme is now taught in every business school across the United States

Many years have passed since the franchise went down in spectacular fashion but Crazy Eddies moment has endured the way that iconic brands and characters doone only need Google the media outpouring that accompanied his death Maybe its because it crystallized everything about 1970s New York almost perfectly the merchandise and rise of consumer electronics stereos the ads cheesy the money cash In Retail Gangsterinvestigative journalist Gary Weiss takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most unbelievable business scam stories of all time a story spanning continents and generations reaffirming the old adage that the truth is often stranger than fiction