Anybody else would have considered this as an unwelcome sight: A reporter with a hacking cough and a congested head, a man obviously impaired in the duty of spreading information but clearly capable of spreading germs.
Instead, Jerry Schulman looks at me and sees an opportunity.
Before I can make myself comfortable in the chair in front of his desk, he is upon me with a tube of Everlasting.
”Greaseless THERAPEUTIC stainless Everlasting a penetrating pain relief ointment containing ALOE VERA,” to quote directly from the purple tube. ”For arthritis, backache, aching muscles & tension pain. . . .”
The tube does not mention colds.
But Schulman, who is a very energetic 78, is a great believer in the healing powers of his product. ”You got a cold?” he inquires. ”How are your sinuses?”
He opens the tube and rubs some under my nose. ”Inhale it,” he instructs.
This creates a stinging sensation in my nostrils. My eyes begin to water. ”You don`t have to worry because I have insurance on it,” he assures me.
More Top Picks Best Water Filters For Home
Schulman not only developed Everlasting, he also distributes it, markets it and uses it.
”Last night I had a pain in my shoulders, an arthritic condition,” he says. ”I put it on and I don`t have the problem anymore.”
– – –
Jerome Milton Schulman is a one-man, two-company, multi-product show.
”I`m an old man, but I have the stamina of someone about 25,” boasts Schulman, who runs Jerome Milton Inc. and Stuart Hale Co. from a West Side industrial park.
He studied chemistry at the University of Illinois for three years during the Depression and has made a good living for four decades manufacturing and selling no-stick compounds to bakeries.
Along the way, he has experienced occasional entrepreneurial failure. A soda-pop manufacturing operation in Kentucky fizzled in the 1940s. About that time, he had some initial success with Stuart Hale chocolate syrup, but then he added iron and vitamins, which sabotaged the taste.
”It was a wonderful product until I tried to make it better,” he says.
About eight years ago, he got off to a good start with another new product, Shane toothpaste. Shane resembles Everlasting in two ways: It is made with aloe vera, and it is pushed by Schulman`s adrenaline.
The toothpaste got some good press. Schulman ran television and radio ads filled with the testimonials of satisfied customers.
Then the Federal Trade Commission spoiled the party. It objected to the commercials because they were not backed by clinical studies. Without the ads, the Shane phenomenon quickly faded.
Schulman holds out hope for a Shane resurgence, though customers lately have been complaining about defective tubes.
As we talk, a woman calls from Seattle. She`s tried Shane, likes it but now can`t find it in stores. Schulman promises to mail her a couple tubes.
”It`s a great product, isn`t it?” he tells her. ”Not only is it good for canker sores, don`t you notice your teeth are cleaner?”
– – –
Schulman is having trouble getting the chain stores to carry Everlasting, his latest product, so he is taking it directly to small pharmacies. He calls them on the phone or calls on them in his midnight-blue Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue.
The pitch: He asks stores to carry Everlasting on consignment. He promises that when he runs his newspaper ad, he will list all the pharmacies that stock it.
He says he`s signed up 67 pharmacies in the Chicago area. Face to face, he says, he has never been turned down.
As I accompany him inside a pharmacy in Wilmette, the string comes to an end. ”Not interested,” the owner says, barely looking up.
”You gotta try,” Schulman says as we drive away. ”You can`t sit by and wish and hope and pray that something good is going to happen. You gotta make it happen. But if I didn`t do anything, I`d probably die.”
Persistence is rewarded at Renneckar`s pharmacy, Glenview. The pharmacist notes that Everlasting has the same active ingredients as competing brands.
”I`m not saying it`s a bad product,” the pharmacist says. ”It`s not a miracle product.”
The manager, though, remembers Schulman from when he was peddling Shane, and the store still carries the toothpaste. He expresses respect for a guy like Schulman who is willing to take on the conglomerates, just as his business is competing with the large chains.
Renneckar`s will take Everlasting on consignment.
More Top Picks Best Snowboard Bindings
Schulman wants him to go further; he asks him to recommend it to customers. Everlasting really works, he says.
”It`s great,” he says. ”Last night, I had a pain in my shoulder. . . . ”