[2] During his tenure, he expanded the company into a catalog showroom business that also sold small appliances, housewares, electronics, and jewelry.
[2] Upon his father-in-law's death, Roitenberg was unable to obtain a satisfactory equity interest in the company and ventured out on his own founding Creative Merchandising & Publishing[2] in 1960.
[3] As he had little in the way of resources, he could not support his own showroom so he instead developed a new business model which focused on producing catalogs for small businesses who wanted to develop a catalog presence but did not have the expertise, resources, and buying power to secure lower prices from manufacturers.
In 1982, Modern Merchandising, then the 3rd largest catalog retailer, was acquired by Best Products in a stock transaction worth $109 million.
[4] The merger was accretive as Best Products' showrooms were mainly on the East Coast, Texas, and California while Modern Merchandising was mostly in the Midwest and Northwest.