Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 23, 1995                   TAG: 9508230031
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BE A STAR! SELL YOUR IDEA! BE ON TV! PAY FEE HERE

But you might, just maybe, end up with something even more valuable than a free bottle of garlic tablets: an infomercial of your very own.

For just $1,995 (watch the decimal point on that one, home shoppers), you can spend three days pitching your E-Z-Defroster or Line Dancing Made Easy video to the nation's top infomercial and home shopping gurus at a conference in Telluride, Colo.

The conference, scheduled Sept. 10-14, is being coordinated by Los Angeles-based Steve Dworman, who publishes a monthly newsletter called "The Infomercial Marketing Report."

"The hardest thing about these conferences is coming up with good products," Dworman said. He has held these conferences twice before - once last year, and again in February - and he has seen just about everything. Like the time Rodney Dangerfield's wife came to the conference to hawk her exotic Amazon jungle roses, with their fist-size blooms and 3-foot stems.

Almost a third of the entrepreneurs who attended the last conference ended up with contracts to produce infomercials within a few months of schmoozing with the industry bigwigs, Dworman said.

But wait a bit before you start dreaming of mansions purchased with the profits from sales of your Tum-E-Tuck plastic surgery in a jar. Plenty of would-be millionaires never even made it through the doors at the last two conferences because they didn't survive Dworman's strict screening process. This time around, there will be room for only 50 companies at the conference, so Dworman and his staff will be picking and choosing carefully from among the entries.

"We throw out most of the garbage before it ever gets to the buyers," Dworman said. "We turn more money away than we take." The meeting is a logistical nightmare as it is, he said. The math speaks for itself: Each of the 50 entrepreneurs gets a private half-hour meeting with each of the 10 to 15 buyers, for a grand total of 500 to 750 separate sessions that must be scheduled during the three-day period.

So what's hot in the world of infomercials? Products that result in immediate benefits, such as exercise gadgets or kitchen machines. And passe? "Prevention never works," Dworman said. In other words, fire extinguishers, smoking-cessation programs and smoke detectors probably won't become best sellers.

Although the Telluride conference is designed for small start-up companies, infomercials are no longer the exclusive realm of back-room manufacturers selling thigh-busters for $19.95. According to NIMA International, the Washington, D.C.-based trade association of the infomercial industry, companies including American Airlines, McDonald's, Revlon, Coca-Cola and Estee Lauder are now using the half-hour format to market products.

Infomercials are even going online. A recent article in Advertising Age magazine reported that many of the companies that buy half-hour blocks on late-night TV have discovered the sales potential of the Internet, and specifically of World Wide Web sites with addresses such as:

http://impulsetv.com/drtv and http://asseenontv.com.

But off-hours TV remains the prime medium for infomercials. The half-hour format is ideal for pitching products that are too complicated to demonstrate in a 30-second commercial, said NIMA's Justin Del Sesto. Focus-group research has shown that viewers must watch a typical commercial an average of six times before they completely remember the seller's message. For infomercials, one viewing is usually enough.

Average infomercials cost from $100,000 to $200,000 to produce for TV, Del Sesto said. But if a small company can win a contract with an infomercial giant, then up-front money isn't usually a problem.

"The big advantage for this conference is that these companies will put up all the money to launch a new product," Dworman said. "There's no financial risk for the entrepreneur."

Royalties paid to infomercial entrepreneurs typically run 2 percent to 5 percent of gross sales, he said.

Hey, if you sell five of those $19.95 Garden Whackers, you'll have enough for lunch.

If you think you've got what it takes to become the next Ginsu master and would like to make your pitch at the Telluride conference, call Dworman at (310) 472-5253.