BARBER
RETIRES WEALTHY ON STOCKS
You may have heard the stories of the early days of DPI when Roy Score would go to his barber shop and the next door beauty shop in Los Altos to sell stock in DPI so he could meet the payroll. In fact, just last year a columnist with the Wall Street Journal wanted to do an article on the barbers (they cut his hair too) and include the story of their DPI investment which almost turned them sour on investing (they should have held for the rewards that came after many years). Peggy Rutherford sent the following story from the San Jose Mercury. I don't know the date it was published, but was probably summer of 1999.
BARBER
RETIRES WEALTHY ON STOCKS
BY TRACY SEIPEL
Mercury News Staff Writer
When he finally threw in the towel, the scissors, and his Los Altos barber-shop razor last weekend, 63 year-old Louie Piro walked away a millionaire.
Not bad for a haircutter, but then Piro has - along with Al Galedrige, the shop's founder and Louie's partner of 46 years - catered to some of Silicon Valley's most prominent executives and profited handsomely by it
"I think Louie has been referred to as the Warren Buffett of Main Street," said Bob Puette, a longtime patron and CEO of Centigram Communications Corp. "His (Buffett's) whole philosophy is to buy great companies and hold onto the stock And that's exactly what Louie has done."
And while Piro has done exceedingly well paying heed to investment tips offered by his customers, his retirement marks the end of both an era and a unique partnership to a legion of loyal customers. The 51-year-old Al's Barber Shop on Main Street is being torn down. Galedrige, 73, will continue the tradition alone when a new Al's opens behind the original building this fall.
"This is my first day working without Louie in 46 years," Galedrige said Tuesday, from his temporary headquarters, a beauty shop a few doors down the street. 'I didn't hear even one dirty joke all day."
Customers were still mourning the loss.
"It was a Norman Rockwell time capsule," said Fred Gibbons, founder of Software Publishing Corp., and a loyal barber shop customer for the past 10 years.
"It's sort of one of the last of the original real man's barber shops," said Bill Krause, former chairmanr and CEO of 3Com. "No fancy stuff. is, Plain chairs. The same pictures on the walls. I think they painted it once or twice. No frills. Just a good hair cut for a good value."
Teary send-off
Krause had his hair cut at Al's for 32 years, which he calculated added up to about 500 visits. And he was one of hundreds of friends and customers who showed up teary-eyed at last Saturday afternoon's going-away party for Piro and final goodbye to the old shop.
The tears were real, all right. After all, where will these men find another home away from home?
For the past five decades, Al's Barber Shop, located at 368 Main St., was the last of their old-fashioned Clubby bastions, where guys could be, uh, boys.
They could pass along naughty jokes and thumb through girlie magazines, smoke pipes and cigars (mostly outside, but sometimes inside); watch endless televised golf and ballgames, and still walk away with a durable $16 haircut.
For all but five of those years, Piro worked alongside Galedrige.
"We've been working longer than we've been married to our wives," Piro said. "In fact, we said, as this a divorce or just a separation?"
Patrons say the two men cut hair the same, and the partners shared clients. One was Hewlett-Packard Co. confounder David Packard, who apparently had his own idea about what made a good haircut
"He did not like his hair short," Piro recalled "He didn't judge it by how long you kept it, but by how long he was in the chair. He would sit there for a certain period of time and say, 'OK We're through.' And that was that. Sometimes you weren't finished with the cut, but as far as he was concerned, you were."
The two barbers fought only over politics. Galedrige is Republican, piro a Democrat. "We fight like cats and dogs during elections," Galedrige said.
No one expects the new business to be the same. Not that clients didn't try to convince Piro to stay.
They begged him to consider part time work. They brought him $100 bills, bottles of merlot and champagne - one client even presented him with a home putting green.
"It wouldn't be fair to get in a few and not the others," Piro said wiht a sigh. "They've all been so nice through the years. The've given me nice gifts."
None more dear, perhaps, than' stock tips.
Both men have fared well with stocks over the years, but Piro got a head start, beginning his investment hobby in 1954 on his own. His patrons, he admitted, have helped.
"They are unusually great people, a higher echelon of people," Piro said. "They would give us tips and It tell us things to buy. Sometimes they would work out, sometimes not. You know how the marketis."
Piro, a high school graduate who never had the money or the time to go to college, said he came to rely on the investment advice of one particular "old-timer" who gave him this tip decades ago:
Only purchase those stocks you believe can grow with the country. Don't buy fly-by-night.
They have also done well with more recent advice.
"We got a hot tip for Viagra Galedrige said. "We found out that Pfizer was coming out with this pill to help all these poor old guys, and I said, 'That's going to be a real winner."'
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