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Billy Mays

Childhood

  • Born July 20, 1958
  • grew up in Pittsburgh
  • father had a hazardous waste trucking company.
  • attended West Virginia University
  • dropped out and worked for his father's company
  • 1983 Mays moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey, with a high school friend
  • They were going to become a salesman there.

One of the first things he sold was called the WashMatic, or the Magic Brush

Around this time he also sold mops, knives and other "as seen on TV" items.

Mays spent the next 12 years selling whatever he could, wherever he could.

  • Mays meets Max Appel
  • Didn't like eachother
  • Mays lends him a microphone
  • BOOM! they are friends
  • Appel hires Mays and makes him national spokesman of Orange Glo International
  • 1999 Mays starts apearing on commercials
  • He sold Oxi-Clean, Orange Clean, Orange-Glo, and Kaboom!
  • Gradually progressed to selling any thing from wrenches to mini burger makers.
  • Durring the next few years he became very succesful
  • He got to choose which products he wanted and didn't want to sell
  • May started to get a ton of attention
  • He not only had fans but he had people who swore they would never buy any of his products, EVER!
  • He had whole websites deticated to insulting him and his work
  • "I'm a sensitive guy. I don't want to be brought down, so I just leave it at that. As long as there's good and bad, it evens itself out."
  • Mays and another famous TV salesman, Anthony Sullivan decided to get together and make a reality TV series called Pitchmen
  • It premiered in April of 2009
  • Mays passed away only two months later

William Darrell Mays, Jr.

Source Citation:

"Billy Mays." Biography Resource Center Online. Gale, 2009.

Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

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