“So I was fooling around with different kinds of cable that you can connect a speaker with. I got different grades of copper and I listened to each one and by ear I came up with something that sounded better than ordinary wire.” What made the difference was the quality of the winding, the quality of the copper, the quality of the insulation material, greater surface area on the copper to enable it to conduct more of the current from the amplifier.
“The connection points were all gold-plated so you get a better transfer at the connection to the speaker.”
Having come up with a superior speaker wire, Lee faced the more challenging task of selling them to people used to getting speaker wires thrown in for free.
[CONTINUED BELOW]
“The business model was kind a tough,” recalls Lee. “It was a product that nobody knew they needed. I had no business experience, I had no money, and I had no marketing or sales experience.” In other words, conditions were ripe for an entrepreneur to be born.
Lee quit his job at Lawrence Berkeley and invested some of his meager savings to get a quantity of the special wire fabricated. It was 1978, and Lee, his wife and son were living in a small two-room garage flat in the Avenues section of the Richmond District rented from his in-laws. Lee set up a small assembly line staffed by his first three employees to turn the wire into salable stereo cables. He moved his son into the laundry room to make room for a marketing office and began making sales calls on stereo shops to demonstrate his cable.
“I wanted to animate the wire, make it come to life and give consumers an idea of what the sound would be,“ says Lee. “So I said, Let's call it monster cable because it's strong and dynamic and powerful. But I didn't have any business experience. I didn't have the money. I didn't know how to do it.”
His wife was “reasonably supportive”, recalls Lee. “We were pretty young at the time, so we didn't know what the hell we were doing.”
But Noel Lee had enough faith in his product to buy plane tickets to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) being held in Chicago. He talked a friendly vendor into letting him use an end of his table to demonstrate his cable. The warm reception from audiophiles convinced Lee that monster cable would be able to find a place in the market.
Without the money to advertise the product, all sales depended on how many demonstrations Lee could personally give. Hearing is believing, became his working philsophy. He set up side-by-side comparisons of speaker sound quality.
“It was really difficult to convince people to carry monster cable and sell it.” But one at a time, stores began carrying it. The product's reputation spread by word of mouth. It took five years for Monster Cable to become an established business. The big struggle shifted to finding money to finance ever larger inventories to feed the rapidly growing demand. “In those early years we were growing hundreds of percent each year,” says Lee.
One of the casualties of those difficult, hectic years was his first marriage. About five years ago Lee remarried. Today he and his wife live in Las Vegas, a situation he blames on her fondness for playing the slots. Lee doesn't gamble, he says, except “every morning when I get up.” They have no children, making it easier for Lee to lead a peripatetic life of shuttling among his home, Monster Cable's Brisbane plant and its San Francisco headquarters.
Now Monster Cable employs 750, of which about 400 are involved in manufacturing at the Brisbane plant. Another 1,200 people are involved in producing Monster Cable products at various subconstractors. Lee himself remains in charge of product development, marketing and sales. That means not only rolling up his sleeves and doing engineering work in the company lab, but also traveling regularly to visit major accounts. Monster Cable's product line has grown to over 4,000, and it has become the largest audio accessories brand in chains like Best Buy, Circuit City, RadioShack, Target, Good Guys and Fry's.
Even today, after a quarter century of selling stereo accessories, Noel Lee's biggest satisfaction comes from his products.
“It's great to see people you don't even know recognize who you are and say, Hey this is a fantastic product! To be recognized all around the world for the quality of your products is a pretty good feelings, especially when you started with nothing.”
But one gets the impression that Noel Lee won't be content to sit atop his Monster Cable empire and watch it grow. Beyond his continuing love of music, is his fondness for cars — one indulgence that isn't hampered by his walking disability. Especially in connection with his Monster Park deal, Lee has expressed strong interest in adding to the happiness and welfare of the general public. On a hunch we asked whether he has any interest in politics.
“I don't have any disinterest,” says Noel Lee, “but I just haven't thought about it.”
“The business model was kind a tough,” recalls Lee. “It was a product that nobody knew they needed. I had no business experience, I had no money, and I had no marketing or sales experience.” In other words, conditions were ripe for an entrepreneur to be born.