John Shalam is the epitome of the American dream. In 1948, the 14-year-old Shalam, his parents and three sisters sailed past the Statue of Liberty ready to start a new life in America. Today, more than 60 years later, he continues to lead Audiovox, the $600 million company he built that is one of the strongest mobile and consumer electronics entities in the market today.
Born December 10, 1933 in Alexandria, Egypt, Shalam was the only son of Vicky and Murad Shalam, one of the city's more successful merchants. He grew up watching his father build his own import/export business. Were it not for the growing anti-Semitism in Egypt precipitated by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Shalam would likely have taken his family business to the next level.
The family took up residence in New York in 1948, and Shalam attended the Peekskill Military Academy and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a BS in economics in 1954.
Shalam began his career working for the Continental Grain Company in New York. It did not take long for the entrepreneur in him to take over and, within four years, he partnered with a friend to form his own small trading company, which handled sales of equipment to schools and other institutions. Four years later, he founded the Custom Imports Company, which sold Japanese-made goods such as baseball gloves, fishing reels, porcelain dinnerware, photo albums, transistor radios and, in 1965, 2,000 car radios.
Those 2,000 car radios would be the cosmic accident from which Audiovox would be born. Stuck with a shipment that a client had ordered and then cancelled, Shalam faced his first excess inventory problem. He pounded the pavement until he unloaded the radios and, satisfied he was out of the car audio business, celebrated with a ski trip to Vermont and treated himself to a champagne toast.
But customers started calling looking for more car radios. He initially told each he was out of the car radio business, but by the fourth call he realized maybe he ought not to be and Audiovox was born. Audiovox went on to play a key role in establishing the after-market car audio, security and mobile video businesses.
Audiovox has ridden the wave of technological innovation from its inception from simple car radios to four- and eight-track tape players to cassette and CD players to today's iPod/Bluetooth/navigation-ready systems. By 1975, Audiovox crossed the $100 million sales threshold and moved beyond the core car audio market into car security products and then cellular phones. To fuel the rapid growth of the Company, Audiovox went public in 1987 on the American Stock Exchange and moved to NASDAQ in 2000. By 1998, the company had sold one million handsets and a year later reached $1 billion in sales.
In 2004, Shalam was instrumental in the sale of the company's cellular division for $323 million, and Audiovox has since been busy expanding its CE business, acquiring some of the most respected brands in the industry including RCA, Acoustic Research, Jensen, Advent, Phase Linear, Code Alarm and Terk.
Although Shalam passed the day-to-day control of Audiovox to his son, he is the company's majority share holder and continues to play a significant role in guiding the company's strategic direction, such as the decision to expand into the accessory market as well as to establish a presence in Europe, Latin America and, most recently, Asia.
Shalam continues to serve on several CEA committees, and is chairman of the Investment Committee. He also was instrumental in CEA expanding into the cellular industry. He established CEA's Wireless Communications Division in 2001, and served as its first chairman.
Married to Jane for 40 years, the Shalams have three sons Ari, David and Marc and six grandchildren. In the New York area, the family is known for its support of a variety of philanthropic causes. Shalam also is an avid horseman.
In 1997, in the shadow of that same Statue of Liberty, Shalam, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, given to U.S. citizens who exhibit outstanding personal and professional qualities while maintaining the richness of their heritage.