Deaver Brown grew up in Chicago where his father was a Professor of English at the University of Chicago and author of numerous books, many of which are still in print, such as his biography of Willa Cather and Matthew Arnold. After Deaver’s father died in 1951, the family moved to Rochester, New York where he attended public schools until he entered The Choate School. He was on the honor role, Captain of the Wrestling Team, Treasurer of the Current History and Chess clubs, and graduated in 1962. He then entered Harvard College where he graduated with an AB, Magna Cum Laude in History in 1966. He was a member of the Iroquois Club (later Fly Club), Hasty Pudding, and started the Columbia Public Housing project Big Brothers club after being a coordinator for the Prison Committee’s educational outreach
program to all Massachusetts prisons. After graduating, he entered Harvard Business School where he learned how to form, manage, and operate a business. He graduated with an MBA in 1968.
Work Experience: General Foods/Birdseye Division. After graduation, he moved to the New York City area and worked at the Birdseye division of General Foods in product management. This work and training prepared him for a life of working in consumer products. He was fortunate to work for Ervin Shames and James Ferguson, both who later became Presidents of General Foods. Both men taught him a great deal about consumer marketing and business in general.
Cross River/Umbroller Stroller. In late 1970 he started Cross River Products with his former Choate roommate and friend Alex Goodwin. The company produced the first stick folding baby stroller, the Umbroller stroller. It received a great deal of notice in the press because this was the beginning of the new entrepreneurial wave in America. The company was ultimately sold to Rubbermaid in the late
1970s and subsequently on to Newell. The Umbroller is still widely distributed in mass merchants that Deaver and Alex set up many years ago, such as Wal*Mart, Target, and Toys R’US. America Power Conversion (APCC-NASDAQ). In the early 1980s, Deaver helped launch American Power into the UPS (uninterruptible power system) business after meeting the CEO, Bud Lyons, through a seminar Deaver was giving based on his new book published by Macmillan, The Entrepreneurs Guide (the book was later released in paperback and more recently on CD by Simply Media as Business Startup). Deaver became the first VP of Marketing and Sales as well as securing the only venture capital funding APC required before going public in 1988. The company wisely hired a CEO dedicated to sticking to the knitting, emphasizing profits and product quality over sales and hype, and has
kept the company on course ever since (no small feat)! Deaver Brown Associates/Cosco. During this period, Deaver helped Peterson Baby Products sell itself to Cosco, Cosco to implement an LBO, and later assisted Cosco shareholders to obtain a buyout offer from Dorel of Canada. Deaver also served as a consultant to Peterson and Cosco, as well as running a sales representative agency that represented the companies in the Northeast. Pride Retail Systems. In the late 1980s Deaver became its CEO of Pride Retail Systems. In 1995 he become CEO of CD Titles. CD Titles. In 1995 Deaver became CEO of CD Titles on behalf of its major shareholder, Palomar Medical Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ-PMTI). In 1997 PMTI refocused its mission to concentrate exclusively on medical lasers and let CD Titles go. Certain rights to CD Titles were bought and funded it through selling those interests to Simply Magazine and that funded the company until it ran out of funds in 1998 due to no longer being supported by PMTI. With PMTI no longer providing financial support, Deaver resigned to help launch SimplyMagazine.net which sells 155 titles. He is now retired writing.