Product Description

“There are three rules for running a business; fortunately, we don’t know any of them.”


In 1978, Paul Newman and A. E. Hotchner decided that rather than just distribute Paul’s own salad dressing at Christmas to neighbors, they would offer it to a few local stores. Freewheeling, irreverent entrepreneurs, they conceived of their venture as a great way to poke fun at the mundane method of traditional marketing. Much to their surprise, the dressing was enthusiastically received. What had started as a lark quickly escalated into a full-fledged business, the first company to place all-natural foods in supermarkets. From salad dressing to spaghetti sauce, to popcorn and lemonade, Newman’s Own became a major player in the food business. The company’s profits were originally donated to medical research, education, and the environment, and eventually went to the creation of the eight Hole in the Wall Gang camps for children with serious illnesses.

In these pages Newman and Hotchner recount the picaresque saga of their own nonmanagement adventure. In alternating voices, playing off one another in classic “Odd Couple” style, they describe how they systematically disregarded the advice of experts and relied instead on instinct, imagination, and mostly luck. They write about how they hurdled obstacle after obstacle, share their hilarious misadventures, and reveal their offbeat solutions to conventional problems. Even their approach to charity is decidedly different: every year they give away all the company’s profits, empty the coffers, and start over again. The results of this amazing generosity are brought to life in heartwarming stories about the children at their camps.

With rare glimpses into their zany style and their compassion for those less fortunate, Newman and Hotchner have written the perfect nonmanagement book, at once playful, informative, and inspirational.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #418728 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-04
• Released on: 2003-11-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
One of the most unusual philanthropic enterprises of the 20th century almost never happened: Newman's Own was the name intended for a restaurant the movie star wanted to open near his home in Westport, Conn. But the idea never went anywhere, freeing up Newman to start a business in the early 1980s with his friend Hotchner, a bestselling author (Papa Hemingway), selling a salad dressing made from Newman's personal recipe. The rest is history. As this breezy memoir recalls, the two broke every rule for launching a new food business, ignoring the failure rate for celebrity-themed products, demanding all-natural ingredients and bypassing nearly every aspect of market research (although they did hold one taste test at the home of local caterer Martha Stewart). Despite all this, they managed to pull in nearly $1 million in profits their first year, all earmarked for charity, and have since launched many more products and donated nearly $140 million. This part of the story doesn't really have a lot of meat to it, but it is an entertaining string of anecdotes, song parodies and wacky customer letters. The book's second half becomes more somber as it shifts focus to the Hole in the Wall Gang, the organization they created to build and run camps for children with serious illnesses. The origins of each of the eight camps are recounted in detail, along with letters from some of the campers. A slew of appendixes, including several recipes utilizing Newman's Own products, rounds out the text.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Movie actor Newman and his writer friend Hotchner broke all the business rules to become significant players in the food industry--and used their profits to open summer camps for critically ill children. They started selling Newman's "home brew" salad dressing in 1982 as a joke, but in the following 20 years they gained national recognition with an expanded product line, allowing them to give away $150 million. Their Hole in the Wall Gang camps (named after the outlaw band led by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, immortalized on film by Newman and Robert Redford), which serve children with life-threatening diseases, became very successful. Noted for strict attention to the quality of staff and operations, the camps have been replicated in several states and in other countries, too. This is a witty and inspiring tale, not coincidentally also excellent public relations for the authors, their food products, and their fund-raising efforts for the children's camps. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

PAUL NEWMAN (known as ol’ PL to both friends and enemies.)
The L stands for “Leonard” or “Lunkhead.” He answers to both. He is probably best known for his spectacularly successful food conglomerate. In addition to giving the profits to charity, he also ran Frank Sinatra out of the spaghetti sauce business. On the downside, the spaghetti sauce is out-grossing his films. He did graduate from Kenyon College magna cum lager and in the process begat a laundry business which was the only student-run enterprise on Main Street. Yale University later awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for unknown reasons. He has won four Sports Car Club of America National Championships and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest driver (70) to win a professionally sanctioned race (24 Hours of Daytona, 1995). He is married to the best actress on the planet, was number 19 on Nixon’s enemy list, and purely by accident has 51 films and four Broadway plays. He is generally considered by professionals to be the worst fisherman on the East Coast.

A. E. HOTCHNER
fully intended to be a career lawyer but after two stultifying years practicing with a St. Louis law firm, he escaped into the wild blue yonder of the Air Force, vowing never to look at another Corpus Juris Secundum. After the war, Hotch became a literary bounty hunter, and in the process met Ernest Hemingway, with whom he buddied around for fourteen years, an adventurous period that Hotch chronicled in Papa Hemingway, which was published in 34 countries in 28 different languages. In between selling salad dressing, Hotch has written fifteen books, a dozen plays and musicals, and scores of television dramas. In 1999, Washington University conferred on him an honorary Doctor of Letters to go along with his doctor of law degree, but he is proudest of the fact that he was crowned marbles champion of St. Louis when he was in the sixth grade.

Customer Reviews

A day to read and worth your time
'Shameless Exploitation' is actually two books in one - you get the tale of how the 'Newman's Own' started as a germ of an idea in Paul Newman's garage. Newman was legendary back then for commandeering the kitchen of restaurants he would frequent and whipping together his own salad dressings. He and co-founder Hotchner make light of their lack of business knowledge, but it's worth noting that much of their success is based on their innate sense of what is right, for example their unwillingness to compromise on the freshness of their product.

The latter third of the book details the duo's efforts in starting up the 'Hole in the Wall Gang' camps for sick children. The authors are passionate about this endeavour, as well they should be. It's outstanding work they're doing. Newman personally drives these projects, sometimes through the force and magnetism of his personality.

In fact, that's the thing that stands out in the book - this is no 'slap the celebrity name on the bottle' exercise. These two gentlemen are intimately involved in all aspects of the business. There's a comparison in the book to other celebrity food bits good bad - Frank Sinatra's tomato sauce venture is one example. It ran aground in less then two years, an unmitigated disaster. The difference? Sinatra simply loaned out his name and looked to scoop up the profits. By contrast, Newman and Hotchner are in this thing heart and soul. Plus, the product is superlative. That's the only way to get repeat buyers.

As of the book's printing, Newman's Own has donated over $137 million to charity. When they write Paul Newman's epitaph, that first paragraph is going to be a real stemwinder to capture the essence of the man.

The Paul Newman Story
This is the story of Paul Newman, aka the hustler, the sting, butch cassidy, cool hand luke and superman (almost). He is an Oscar winning actor, car racing champion, philanthropist (215 million dollars and still counting), successful businessman and an alien (I heard this recently through a psst..psst network). Read the book. It will expand your horizons. Anything is possible.

Humorous Account of New Dimensions for Philanthropy
Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good details the almost accidental development of the Newman's Own line of foods, its eventual success, and how the founders, Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner, developed a new kind of charity to allow seriously ill children to attend summer camp. The book is filled with humor, good-hearted fun and a will to do good. Most people will find the overall effect to be heart-warming . . . except for the tendency to self-congratulation.

The book's is one part self-deprecating personal narrative, one part "advanced moving and shaking", one part "legend-making" tales, one part "I told you so" to the corporate "experts", one part funny stories from customers and one part business history mixed with two parts serious stories about young peoples' illnesses, three parts lessons about establishing a new charity, with a dash of recipes and cartoons for final humor. The mixture, while quite unusual, has a zestful freshness that leaves a taste for more.

If you are like me, you've never quite understood how Newman's Own came into existence and became a big success. I've tasted some of the products and find them to be of good quality. But there must be something more than that to it.

I was even more surprised to read in past news articles that all profits are distributed to charity annually. "Where in the world did the company get the working capital to stay in business?" was the question on my mind.

I also wondered how anyone would decide which charities to support and which to shun.

Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good answered all those questions and more for me.

I was deeply moved by the tale of starting up and running the Hole in the Wall camps for seriously ill youngsters, and intend to tell others about this good work.

What intrigued me most about the book was that it showed that doing the right thing could be amazingly commonsensical. The products are good because Paul Newman would not be satisfied until he thought they were. The packaging copy and promotional activities are zany, and reflect the good humor of the authors . . . not some copywriter. Profits and cash flow are good because the authors paid attention to setting up their business model so the company would need very little capital. Making the profits go to charity allowed the authors to have fun with the business in a way they could not have done if they had been trying to line their own pockets. The psychic and emotional satisfaction of establishing the camps and helping other charities are probably worth much more than any money can buy.

I hope that other talented people, whether they are prominent or not, will consider how they could follow some parts of what the authors did with their business or their charity. I thank them both for sharing the story in this entertaining book.