Built in Brooklyn.
It began with a single storefront on Fulton Street in Brooklyn. Stephen S. Jemal built Nobody Beats The Wiz from that one shop into one of the most recognized retail brands in American history.
At its peak, the company operated 110 locations across six states — New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maryland — the defining consumer electronics chain of the Northeast.
The company grew the way New York businesses grow: block by block, borough by borough, on the strength of price, promise, and reputation.
The chain generated annual sales exceeding $2.5 billion, employed more than 6,000 people, and ranked #13 among America's most recognized retail brands. The slogan and the jingle became part of tri-state vernacular — an accent as familiar as the outer-borough voices delivering it.
In 1998, the company was sold to Cablevision. What remained was harder to sell: a template for how a Brooklyn entrepreneur builds a national retail institution and a brand that outlasts the storefront.
Stephen Jemal came out of that era with the instincts intact — how to move fast, price sharply, and build for the market that raised you.