The World’s First Infomercial by Soloflex

It’s every young boy’s dream; to look like a man is supposed to look. There’s only one way to get there; pump some iron. Soloflex was the first product to make standard barbell and free body exercises safe to do at home, alone. This video was the first one produced, with a little help from Dan Weiden and Dave Kennedy, one of their first accounts, in 1983. Originally mailed in beta and vhs, we began broadcasting it when program length commercials were decriminalized with the Cable TV Act. The time was practically free. There were about 8,000 cable systems then, about half of them with enough subscribers to be worthwhile. Not one of the 4,000 stations we bought time from had anyone to take our money. It didn’t take long to teach them what they had to sell, and if they didn’t sell it to us they wouldn’t get any money at all when the time passed. We thought surely GM, or their advertising agency would spot the opportunity and Soloflex would have to act quickly before the rates skyrocketed. It never happened. Our selling cost per unit fell to almost nothing and our volume went through the roof. We’d automated the selling factory! Eventually of course, the costs did rise as more and more infomercials competed for the time. But…Soloflex didn’t invent infomercials, TV preachers did…the world’s oldest profession.

Jerry, Founder

• Published by molly on January 15th, 2009 in Soloflex, Inc., Videos.
• 2 Comments
• advertising, exercise, fitness, infomercials, marketing, soloflex, weightlifting