Art by the Numbers

Max Klein is a 36-year-old Detroiter who wears flashy sports jackets and sharp shoes, and uses the gee-whiz vocabulary of Henry Aldrich. He has also become rich (two Cadillacs, a 32-ft. Chris-Craft and a private plane) by inducing thousands of Americans without skill or talent to take up oil painting. Klein, a graduate chemist, got his training as a patron of the arts by running a garage and working at General Motors, where he bossed 40 men ironing out production bugs for G.M.'s subcontractors. But he longed for something more creative. Recalls Klein: "Gee whiz, it got terrible being stuck there at General Motors. I began to look around for a way to get out."

Mannequins & Skaters. The way out was Oak Park, Mich.'s Palmer Paint Co., which he bought with a down payment of $4,000 that he had saved (and $4,000 he borrowed from friends). With two full-time employees and a part-time office girl, the company grossed $2,500 a month selling poster paint to artist supply houses. "I saw right off the bat," says Klein, "that the field was too confined." He soon expanded it by selling his paints to mannequin makers and skating rinks (for painting designs under ice). "Well, today we are a big supplier of paint used by the mannequin industry; we have also become the biggest supplier of ice paint."

But Klein soon noticed that one Minneapolis customer was sending in big orders for poster paint in tiny bottles. "Being of an inquisitive nature." he went to Minneapolis and found that the paint was going into paint-it-yourself kits containing unpainted plaster figurines. Before long, Klein was making and selling so many similar sets to Woolworth and Kresge that he was the "world's biggest manufacturer of figurine kits."

Dogs & Dollars. Though he knew nothing about art, Klein soon had an idea that was even better. He hired a chart and poster man named Dan Robbins to turn out sentimental scenes of landscapes, flowers and dogs for an oil-painting kit containing a palette, paint, brushes, and a canvas printed with designs divided off into numbered sections. By just filling in the numbered areas with the correspondingly numbered paints, anyone could turn out a copy of the original picture.

By last week Klein had 800 employees in plants in Detroit, Oak Park, and Tiffin, Ohio, turning out 50,000 sets a day (retail price: $2.50 and $5.00) for a gross of more than $1,000,000 a month. This week, to meet the demand, he will lease another factory in Paterson, N.J. and add another 400 people to his payroll.

Klein is popping with new ideas to make his business even bigger. His latest: paint-it-yourself portraits. The customer sends in a photograph and about $20 along with a completed questionnaire describing the subject's coloring. Within a week, he will get back a printed canvas divided into color areas, plus the paints needed to fill them in. Klein is sure the idea will go over big with such paint-it-yourself devotees as the Baltimore housewife who wrote him: "I am sorry I ever saw your pictures. My home is disgraceful, and I sit here all day and paint. I am also spending my husband's money, which I ought to be saving. Please send me a list of any new subjects you have."

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