Playing the Markets, Any Markets

The New York Times, Jan 24, 1992

From Copper to Jeans to Doctor's Degrees,
See Robert Ross

   Robert Ross pulled out a gun.

   "Calm down," he said. "I won't shoot."

   The weapon, in any event, provoked no alarm. After all, it didn't look anything like a gun. It looked like a sawed-off flute. Mr. Ross explained that it was from China, and the reason he had it lying around, along with other germinal ideas like the anti-snoring nostril drops and the no-run nylons, was because it might be something worth marketing.

   "But I don't really care for it," he said with a dismissive shrug. "I have to care for something." He thrust it back into his desk drawer.

   That's Robert Ross. He is an old-fashioned diehard New York entrepreneur, an individual filled with rhapsodic fantasies who is always playing hunches and looking for angles. At the age of 73, he remains obsessed with the new, the different, well, the outlandish. In his profession, diversity is vital. As one undertaking becomes a pale memory, something new must step forward.

   "Everyone in the world has something to sell," Mr. Ross said, "I've been shown bulletproof vests, cheap suits. People even want me to look at missiles. What do you do? You look at them."

   With some, Mr. Ross feels in his atoms that they are ripe. "For instance, I think these anti-snoring drops are winners," he declared," Absolutely, if you talk to the average individual about a product to stop snoring, he'll stand up and applaud."

Wheat for Fax Machines

   The biggest share of Mr. Ross' money derives from commodities, products like copper, fertilizer and crude oil that he buys and sells in bulk. What is bulk? He sold China 50,000 tons of fertilizer.

   His customers are primarily foreign companies and organizations, quite a number of them in Eastern Europe, a market Mr. Ross exploited years ago when Iron Curtains were still drawn. Hence the name of his principal commodities company is Eastern Europe, Inc.

   He does in excess of $100 million of business a year, the preponderance of it through barter. Someone wants tennis shoes, he'll take lumber as payment. Give him wheat for fax machines, steel for jeans.

   There is inevitable heartbreak in the work. Last January, Mr. Ross had a savory deal lined up to acquire some cement. The seller was Iraq. Before the deal was closed, the Persian Gulf war inconveniently broke out and parties were hard to reach. "You have your ups and downs," Mr. Ross said.

   Some 20 years ago, Mr. Ross had a memorable up moment when he sold Alexander's department store a three-piece suit from Romania that carried a retail price of $29.95. Customers lined up around the block to buy the suits.

   Mr. Ross is craggy-faced, with a somewhat knobby nose and wispy white hair. He resembles the person you are directed to see when you wish to get a home-equity loan. He affects a feel-good style. He talks volubly, and never seems in a hurry to stop.

Steel for Doctors

   Mr. Ross operates out of wood-paneled, never orderly offices in a stark tower on West 34th Street near 12th Avenue. The name on the door says the Ross University School of Medicine. That's another project.

   "In 1976, a member of my staff whose son was having trouble getting into medical school said "How would you like to start a medical school?" Mr. Ross explained, "I said ' You're really crazy,' Then I did It."

   The school opened in 1979 in a motel outside Portamouth, Dominica, with 11 students. He chose the West Indies because he felt it was too costly and arduous to open a college in the United States. In Dominica, all he needed was a charter from the government, which involved annual fees of $100,000, and eight faculty members and a dean from the United States.

   The university now sprawls across 46 acres in Portsmouth and has graduated 1,500 students who are practicing medicine in this country.

   He became transfixed by this education business. In 1982, he founded a veterinary school on 18 acres in St. Kitts in the West Indies. About 500 graduates are practicing in the United States.

   But it saddened him that some of the foreign students wishing to enter his college were penniless, and thus he recently decided to accept applicants who could get their country's government to offer bartered goods to meet the fees. The students would repay the amount by performing medical services for their country. In lieu of a check, Mr. Ross would take corn, magnesium, crude oil. A few tons of steel could make a person a doctor.