Philip Kives is a Winnipeg

Winnipeg

Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...

 business

Business

A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

 executive and innovative marketer

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

. He is best known for founding K-tel

K-tel

K-tel International is an "As-Seen-On-TV" company, which is most noted for its compilation music albums, such as "The Super Hits" series, "The Dynamic Hits" series and "The Number One Hits" series...

, famous for it "As seen on TV" marketing strategies.

A farm boy of Turkish

Turkish people

Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...

 extraction, born in Oungre, Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

, Kives showed a youthful passion for salesmanship

Sales

A sale is the act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity....

. After completing high school, he gravitated into itinerant salesmanship in Winnipeg and at fairs, hawking gadgets as far away as Atlantic City, New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

.

In 1962, he returned to Winnipeg to create K-tel International Inc and used it to sell novelty consumer wares such as the Veg-O-Matic

Veg-O-Matic

Veg-O-Matic was the name of one of the first food-processing appliances to gain widespread use in the United States. It was invented by Samuel J...

 food slicer and the Miracle Brush lint gatherer. In 1965, a "greatest hits

Greatest hits

A greatest hits album is a music compilation album of successful, previously released songs by a particular artist or band...

" line of records was added. K-tel eventually expanded to serve 34 national markets, and after a very successful 1970s, the company heavily invested in real estate, oil

Oil

An oil is any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents. This general definition includes vegetable oils, volatile essential oils, petrochemical oils, and synthetic oils....

 and gas

Natural gas

Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...

 exploration, films and video games in the early 80's. This led to losses of $60 million in 1984 and the company eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection only to be rescued out of hard times by new CEO Mickey Elfenbein that same year.

Kives excelled in identifying innovative products (e.g. "jazzed up" classical melodies played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It tours widely, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's national orchestra"...

). Financial overextension led to receivership in both Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and the US in 1984. Undeterred, Kives reactivated K-tel in the US and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and launched a new company, K-5 Leisure Products, in Canada. By 1987 reorganization of K-tel International had been completed and the company was again profitable. In 1998 it achieved net sales of $85.6 million and launched a web site through which consumers can purchase its products on-line.

His nephew is Bartley Kives, a Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press

The Winnipeg Free Press is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Founded in 1872, as the Manitoba Free Press, it is the oldest newspaper in western Canada. It is the newspaper with the largest readership in the province....

reporter.