RTO Legend: Ed Winn of APRO

What does it take to turn a scattered, misunderstood trade into a recognized industry with real rules, clear disclosures, and political staying power? We sit down with Ed Wynn, APRO’s longtime legal counsel, to trace rent-to-own’s rise from yellow-pages meetups to model legislation and major wins in statehouses across the country. Ed walks us through the early federal gambit that sailed through the Senate but died in the House, and the pivotal realization that a state-by-state strategy was the only practical path forward.

You’ll hear how Michigan’s late‑1983 breakthrough set the tone with price controls tied to early purchase options, and how APRO leveraged the Council on State Governments’ 1987 model law to bring coherence to a patchwork of statutes. Ed breaks down the toughest battlegrounds—Wisconsin’s stalemate, Minnesota’s costly dual‑regulation trap, New Jersey’s class action hammer—and why California took a decade to land. He also explains North Carolina’s unusual balloon purchase rule and the lessons it taught the industry about precision and compliance.

Beyond the politics, we explore the cultural shift that made rent-to-own sustainable: transparency over secrecy. APRO pushed for honest, readable agreements, total cost visibility, and modern practices—even when some dealers feared customers would walk away. Ed recalls the 1998 FTC study that became an unexpected asset, the careful positioning during Dodd‑Frank that protected short‑term rentals from CFPB reach, and the rise and fade of state associations once laws were on the books. We close with a look at APRO’s evolving mission under forward‑looking leadership: staying vigilant, improving standards, and using new tools—yes, AI included—to create value well beyond legislative defense.

If you care about how industries legitimize, scale, and earn trust, this story delivers strategy, scars, and a clear blueprint. Subscribe, share with a colleague who loves policy and business history, and leave a review with your biggest question for Ed—we may feature it in a future episode.

Transcript

Meet Ed Wynn And APRO Origins

SPEAKER_02 0:09

As opposed to looking at my nose.

SPEAKER_05 0:18

Let's see.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

That's a good spot. That's better, isn't it? That's a great spot. All right. Okay. So we're going to go in three, two. Hello, and welcome to the RTO show. I'm your host, Pete Channel, and today we have another legend. Actually, you probably know this legend from the podcast before. Not that he needs an introduction, but the what used to be the legal counsel for April, and now he's enjoying his retirement. I've got Ed Wynn here, who is going to get shed some light on some of the things that happened early on. I tell you, when we say legends, you know, sometimes I don't know if we can say it enough. Ed, how are you doing today? How's everything going? How are you enjoying retirement?

SPEAKER_02 1:05

I like it fine. My bones tell me that man is put on earth to work. That's why we're all here. And so suddenly not to have work is is uh troublesome, quite frankly. I've got to figure out something to do, but I'm not in a hurry to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Well, you know, at least you can do it on your time. There you go. There you go, for sure. So, one of the reasons we wanted to do with this Legends podcast and and interview a lot of the legends that we have, such as yourself, because there's so much history involved in what you guys have done and the things that you guys have had to get through in order to kind of be where you're at. And to make sure that we are getting there and we're doing the things that we need to do, we've got to actually talk about what happened in the beginning, I should say, late 70s, early 80s. You know, that's a bit that's a big crunch time. Um, and in that crunch time, we had a lot going on as far as we didn't have the legislation we have now. As a matter of fact, we didn't have a lot of the states on board like we did now. And, you know, when you started the, and you were there day one. I remember we talked about it before. You were there day one on the first meeting of April to get this done. Um, and the first the first president was Bud Holliday back then, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Correct. But Bud and uh Chuck Sims were really the organizers and inspiration for the creation of APRO.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Let me ask you a question, Ed. How so as you're going into this, this is your first meeting, everything is starting to kick off. What was the idea or how to get all these independent dealers from all these states who have a lot of different ideas to come together under one banner, like APRO, to advocate for the business?

Early Players And First Federal Push

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Well, I don't think that there was any grand scheme. They just thought some of those dealers at that very first meeting uh didn't could care could have cared less about any laws. They were they were gonna make a quick kill and get out of town, uh, renting TVs to poor folks at high prices uh until they got caught. Others, Bud Holliday, Chuck Sims, and uh others recognized that they really had a uh potential goal mine if they could not be sued out of existence. And so they were very intent on uh making rent owned legal. At the time there were no laws at all about rent owned, and there were Ed.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

I don't know if you can hear me, but I don't see anything. I think I'm coming back. Okay, there you go. You're coming back. So it it cut off.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

I didn't I lost it for a minute there, but so so we organized, we we came together, we organized. The thought was we're gonna run up to Congress and get a federal law passed. That was the goal. And we talked to ColorTime, had a uh law firm that did their franchise work, Brownstein, Zeitman, and Schomer, who had some lobbyists. We talked to them, they said, we get this law passed. You only need to talk to about six guys. And we got we we prevailed upon Paul Senator Paula Hawkins in Florida to introduce a bill uh in the Senate. It got attached to some banking legislation, it passed the Senate 98 to nothing. And then that bill died in the House.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So I hear for rent to own, because this is something that I've been talking to Charles about and some of the other legends, that Texas, Florida, and California were some states that were really, really hard to get some legislation passed, almost ground zero in the state, in the sense that they were hard to get something done. It took a while to get it passed, but I think we did succeed in two out of three, correct?

SPEAKER_04 5:38

Let's see, I think I lost you again.

Senate Win, House Loss

SPEAKER_02 5:48

There. What were your three states? California, Texas, and Florida. Texas wasn't hard to get, Florida wasn't hard to get. California was very hard to get. So I don't know about who you I don't know who you heard that from, but that's inaccurate.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

I actually that was Charles, but we'll see. We'll see about that. I'm gonna have to talk to him about that one.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

We sped through the Texas legislature and uh Ernestine Glossbrenner, a celebrated liberal from uh the south of Texas, a school teacher, came out hard against us, but we were able to turn her and get her to accept reasonable legislation in Texas in uh in a month. Florida was not any harder. California took years because California is California, land of fruits and nuts.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Absolutely. So talking about getting this done, was the approach of April, when it was coming time to, you know, we had to tackle what was going on, no laws, state level. Was the idea to do a domino effect that April would approach it as let me knock one state off of another until I, you know, until we had enough to make this worthwhile campaign for April and the rent-owned industry? Or was it I'm gonna take you know this state uh or or with somebody's this state, you guys are gonna take that state and try to tackle as many as you could at one time?

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Well, as I say, early on, we weren't gonna mess with the states. We were gonna get a federal law passed, and we tried that um for the first few years in the early 80s, 81, 82, 83, 84. Then there was a uh Michigan rental dealer who had friends in the Michigan legislature. Uh her name was Brown, Representative Brown.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

I don't I don't know if you can hear me on times like this. I don't see you at all. Uh and I don't hear anything. I'm just waiting for it to clear up though.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

There we go. There you go.

Pivot From DC To States

SPEAKER_02 9:14

We'll see. Uh so the very first law that got passed was at the behest of a rental dealer who had a dozen stores in Michigan and a friend in the legislature, and he was willing to spend whatever it took to make his transaction legal in Michigan. And so in the uh waning hours of 1983, the issue on the table was price controls. That somebody in the Michigan legislature said, we want to control um your prices as a function of the early purchase option. The formula ended up being that we had to give they they wanted they wanted price controls. And we had to scramble literally on New Year's Eve to uh see whether the industry could live with that. And we decided that we could. And so Sam Choate went to South Carolina. I went to Alabama, I lived in Texas, and uh we got we knocked off those three states that year. And over time in the 80s, we began to realize that trying to get a federal law was going to be tough. It was gonna it was gonna cost a whole lot more money than we were willing to spend, and we seemed to be fairly successful at the state level. And so uh April formed a a government relations committee that studied the states. I will say uh Rena Center sort of drove that train, and Rena Center said, hey, we got a lot of stores in this state, and we want to get a law passed there, uh, and we'll spend the money to get it done, we'll hire the lobbyists. And so we we watched and helped as best we were able and um you know began that process state by state of uh getting those laws.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

And were there was there, you know, each individual state has its own heartbeat. Were there a lot of differences? And when I say a lot, I mean I know that there are some differences between state and state, some of them very little, some of them quite a bit. Were there was was it hard to navigate from one state to the next because of their differences that it created uh a little bit of backlash, or was it just easy enough to kind of go through once they started getting knocked down?

Michigan Breakthrough And Price Controls

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Well, no, we had to fool with every state. Every state's very proud of its legislature and its laws and its people and its businesses, so they're they were all independently uh negotiated. Now, Rena Center had a uh lobbyist sort of state nationwide. Her name was Connie Campanella, and she owned stateside associates that had lobbyists on the ground in every state capital, and she was on retainer with Rena Center. She was able to get the uh Council on State Governments to come up with model rent-to-owned legislation. It's in a book, 1987. And once we had that book, Council on State Governments is is generally viewed as as neutral. It's neither it's neither uh left nor right. They just try to fashion and and they do lots and lots of model legislation, lots of bills. They they create you know dozens and dozens every every year. So they came up with a rent-to-own bill, and we were able to take that bill with the imprimature of the Council on State governments around at the states, and we probably got, if I had to guess, a dozen states to adopt that model legislation almost verbatim.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Well, I mean, it's it's good to have that handbook to kind of go by. Um, I got a question though. You know, I mentioned some states earlier. They weren't as high on the list as I thought they were. What were some of the states that were very difficult to get to come along uh as far as the rent or own legislation within the state?

Building A State-By-State Strategy

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Well, let's see. Wisconsin has been impossible. We've never gotten a law there, and we've been trying since 1983. We've thrown bills in the Wisconsin legislature, and even with the assistance of uh the largest uh furniture manufacturer in America that's home-based in Wisconsin and and sells a lot of uh furniture to rental dealers, the name of which is lost in the mists. Um, Ashley Furniture. Thank you, Ashley, thank you. Uh Minnesota was a nasty, nasty fight. Uh, and we passed a law, but we didn't get the language that we wanted in that law. And as a result, uh$35 million later in class action lawsuits, uh, there is no rent-owned in Minnesota because rent-owned transactions are not only rent-to-owned transactions regulated by the rent-owned statute, but they are also credit sales under the uh Minnesota Consumer Sales Act with a finance charge cap of 8.5% a year. So you just can't do business at all in Minnesota, and we don't. And then uh New Jersey, we have no law in New Jersey. We got hammered with a big class action lawsuit,$110 million class action lawsuit, and the legislature said uh, you know, we don't like you guys, and we don't want you in this state, and we ain't gonna help you. So those were obviously the three toughest states. Other states that were difficult. Uh New York is we we've had trouble in New York. The New York um we came out with a good bill early on. They wanted to amend that law in 2010, and we let them with um increased price controls, and now they're at it again uh in New York. So New York is a troublesome state, Massachusetts, troublesome state, Connecticut, troublesome state. The Northeast states are have paternalistic governments, they think their job is to uh help people manage their money, and so we have trouble in those kind of places. California, you mentioned we worked on California for I know a decade uh before we finally got a law passed, and there's still opposition to that law in California from the AG's office today, as far as I know. What and I got I I I'm curious North Carolina. North Carolina, I spent I'm from North Carolina, uh, and the the cocktail hit the fan in 83, and they were uh the the Joanne, not Joanne Faulkner, um well, there was a legal aid lawyer there who had been working Raleigh before we knew what was going on. They'd already passed a law bill through the House. So we were on the defense. We hired a former governor to be our lobbyist and ended up coming up with a strange compromise at the very last minute that requires rental leaders to have put up have a balloon purchase option on their rental agreements, which is against the law in most states. So North Carolina is truly unique and was a very difficult uh state for us. It's not now. And periodically there have been efforts to bring the North Carolina law in line with the other states and get rid of the balloon and recognize our RTO transactions as distinct from credit sales, but none of those efforts have been successful yet. Will they keep it?

SPEAKER_01 17:42

I know that we do have uh we do have rental dealers in in North Carolina, but that I I actually didn't know about the balloon payment at the end. That seems actually counterproductive, but well, let me tell you something.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Deal as it don't know about that, it's cost them a lot of money. It cost one guy three million dollars because he forgot to calculate his balloon. It's gotta be more than 10% of the cash price. That's they've been we've been doing business like that since 1983 in North Carolina. So uh it works. And and there are dealers because if if you add the balloon, the transaction is otherwise unregulated in North Carolina. No caps on late fees, no caps on any other fees. And dealers in North Carolina sort of like that, some of them. Others, especially the guys that the multi-state dealers, North Carolina's a little bit out of step, and they would like to have more uniformity among those uh laws. I don't know where that lies today.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

So when the beginning, when everything got together, you said that the idea was that we're gonna get together, get a federal law passed, and it would help throughout the states. And that didn't happen. When did the strategy shift from this is not working on a federal level? It might be a better idea to tackle this head on in 50 different states.

Model Law And Lobby Networks

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Mid-80s. Mid-80s. We recognized having gone to Washington for, I don't know, three, four years and getting absolutely no other than almost lucking through with the um the very first try, we got hammered after that. Uh and I told dealers, we're spending about a million dollars a year in Washington. I'm not sure we couldn't get a law, I'm not sure we could get that our rent-to-home bill passed if we spent 10 million. And they kind of said, Well, we ain't got 10 million, so um forget it. And and we sort of we we sort of abandoned the federal effort. Mid-80s. We kept a presence up there. We hired Tip O'Neill's son, Kip to uh be our lobbyist, just to kind of watch things, and the Legal Services Corporation threw bills in the hopper to turn rent owned into credit sales, but those bills didn't go anywhere. We threw bills in, we threw bills in every Congress up till gosh, mid-90s. Every two years we'd throw a rent-own bill in the hopper, no hearings, no nothing. Then there was a final push in the late 19 uh 2001. We we got we muscled a bill. We were uh the the Republicans are in charge. We finally muscled a bill through the House six w with six votes. It was however the math is, 2000 and I mean 214 to 206, something like that. We we we got a standalone rent-owned bill passed through the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. in 2001. It died in the Senate. We we we made another throw at it in 2005, but it it it was just gonna cost way too much money. Uh and plus by then we had we already had 47 state laws, so we didn't really need a federal law anymore. So I'm not aware that the federal laws even, I'm not sure that anybody, other than us keeping a presence there to make sure nothing bad happens, I'm not sure that uh there is a serious effort to try to get a federal law anymore.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

No, as far as I know, it's not. And you know, when we talk about it, there's there's always so many different names that come up, and and it's it it always seems like a wee effort. But in the beginning, you know, you and I think you even had mentioned it, there was a lot of different views on how rent-to-owned should be done. Some regulated, some not regulated, so we had some bad actors and some good actors. How was it going through these laws and also trying to unify some of these dealers under the same banner to get some of these laws passed?

SPEAKER_04 21:48

How did we do that?

Tough States: Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Jersey

SPEAKER_01 21:50

By the hardest You know, after everybody like I I would imagine that, you know, as some people come in now, and it it even happens to this day. You've got some people that are like, I don't know if I need A Pro. I don't know if I need to be a part of this, you know, association. I think that somebody else is going to do the work for me, right? If I, if I pay my dues, it's great. But if somebody else pays their dues, you're going to do it either way. Back then, I think there might have been probably even more of a diverse group that kind of felt like, I haven't done it. I've I'm kind of working my own. I'm kind of, you know, this is the this right now, for lack of a better term, is the Wild West. Why would I need to join? Um, was the advocacy group's ability to start knocking out some of these states and getting those laws passed? Did that help unify a lot of the different dealers and under the April banner?

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there were we had board members who said, I don't want to be doing, I don't want any public relations, I don't want to be in the newspaper, I got a sweet little business, I want to hide under a rock. I don't want anybody to know what I'm doing. And so, you know, let's not do this. That voice existed. But once we started getting the laws passed and people started breathing easier in those states saying, hey, I got a real business, there's a law that protects me, those voices got got silenced. And and they they either changed their minds or they left they left the industry.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

So with the people that so you had a certain set of people that thought this is not where we need to go, we could probably just keep it quiet. You had a certain set of people that said, by all means, we need to get this passed. Who were some of the people on on the team of of APRO to say we should probably push for this and get this done?

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Where were some of the the big guys, the big guys, the big guys, Renaissance, Remco, uh Color Time, they all wanted they approved of our legislative efforts. They may have not approved of our uh instructional efforts since they had their own ways of training their employees, but but they the big guys there was then to some extent there is still a a at least a debate.

Northeast Resistance And California’s Long Road

SPEAKER_01 24:03

It doesn't rise the level of a it looks like we're we're we hit a bump again. Um I don't see you, but I'll wait for it to come back on the crazy how sometimes, uh and and I I can't hear anything, but I'm just saying, it's crazy how sometimes it seems to go through just fine and then it's okay. Something went wrong, we're not able to record anymore, everyone else recorded.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

You got me?

SPEAKER_01 26:38

I got you. All right, we're good. Can you hear me okay?

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Yeah, I hear you fine.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

I or what that's it seems like uh uh and I don't know if you can hear me, when I'm looking at it, the camera starts getting staticky. Uh it actually just did right then. It got real staticky and then it just disappeared.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Yeah, I'm I see I mean I see what you're I see what you see.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Oh, you're seeing that? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Yeah, I'm seeing it. It's curious. That's all I can say.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Curious. Okay. So right now, let's let's go back to the late, we're gonna say late 70s, because I think Apro was born in 1980, correct? Correct. So what got everybody together to say, you know what, we're gonna need an advocacy group. We're gonna we're gonna have to create something and get this together. What kind of led to that decision?

North Carolina’s Unique Balloon Rule

SPEAKER_02 27:33

Well, uh once again, that was Bud Holiday and Chuck Sims. Chuck Sims was uh probably the largest, Color Time had more stores, franchise, but Chuck Sims had 50 Remco stores, and Bud Holiday had 15 ABC stores, and and they were you know they were enlightened. They were they had vision about the prospects of the making rent own a real industry because until then it wasn't. Um and so I'm not I'm not aware that the reason for the first meeting was to come up with some sort of advocacy uh philosophy. They just were gonna meet. They had never met before. They were just stray rent-owned stores around the country, and Bud Holliday wrote a letter to all the ones he could find going through the yellow pages saying, hey, we're gonna have a meeting of rental dealers, you're invited, it's free. And so people came just to uh chew the fat. They talked about uh accounting issues, they talked about finance issues. They didn't really talk about rent, they didn't talk about legal issues at that very first meeting. Uh I was the only lawyer there, and I didn't I never heard of rent-town. I didn't talk about rent-owned legal issues or any I talked about the Federal Trade Commission and the overreach of government regulation very generally. So that was really not, to my mind at least, the purpose of that organizational meeting. That came very quickly later. Once they decided, yes, let's have a club. If we're gonna have a club, what are we gonna do with it? Well, let's go get some laws passed. I mean, that that's to my mind that's the order of things. That's how it came about.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Do you remember at the time how they devised how people would be uh a member and the membership dues and how that would how that would come along?

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Oh, you bet. I was at all those meetings. Uh and it was very important. The original board of directors, there was a substantial percentage of that membership of the board of directors said, we don't want to help, you know, we we're we want to help make rent-owned legal, maybe. We do not want to help people get in the rent-owned business, and you can't we're not gonna let people who just want to rent TVs be members. So the very first version of the bylaws was that you had to have standalone location and 150 BOR before you could be a member. You had to already be in the rental business before you could join APRO. That was a huge issue.

Abandoning A Federal Law

SPEAKER_01 30:16

I I I actually have never even come close to knowing that. I'm very glad that you mentioned that. You know, talking about the the bylaws and and some of the things that were created, there was some framework um that you know, I I believe I see it in every April magazine. It's somewhere, somewhere in there, it has like these, and I believe it's uh, I don't think it's 10. I think is it 20, 20 different, you know, areas of of what it is that you know, APRO um, you know, basically the do's and don'ts of of that. And you know, back back then there was so many different views on rent to own. We had a PR problem. Uh, I think somebody else put it very you know elegantly. We had a PR problem in the rent to own industry. And uh when did when did that when did the FTC kind of really start looking at RTO as an issue and then become a kind of a thorn in the side of of the rental dealers?

SPEAKER_02 31:11

Well, we got a very favorable uh the FTC wasn't very that the FTC's been around, was was around before April was around, and but they they were they left us alone.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Oh, I hear something. You do? I do. I I can hear you. I don't see you, but I can definitely hear you.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

Okay, well good. Well at least we can talk while I wonder what the hell is going on.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

So the FTC was never really a big problem, not as much as the CFPB was.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Uh no. Answer no. Okay. And uh the the Federal Trade Commission uh in '98, I think, studied the rent-owned industry. We helped them, we gave them some statistics and let them look around our stores, and they published the uh they published a report on on the rent-owned industry, and we liked the report. The only thing that we didn't like was their their analysis of the keep rate. They said it was two-thirds, and and we just knew that was incorrect. That that two-thirds of the people were not renting long enough to own. That that our percentage was under 30%.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

It was kind of the opposite way.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that but otherwise, it was a fairly good report, and we used it politically as as needs required. And my recollection was that came in '98. Uh and the CFPB, we were able to work that the Dodd-Frank Act. We had some very good friends in Washington by then, because we've been going up there for 25 years. Uh, and so we were able to be kept out of the Dodd-Frank Act. That made the Dodd-Frank people very unhappy that because the law is pretty clear that uh if you have an initial term of your rental transaction of less than 90 days, the CFPB has no jurisdiction over you. And so they've they've whined and moaned about that since 2010 when the law was passed. But we've been largely successful. They they've taken a few shots at the big guys, but but they haven't heard anybody. They've sort of been gutted here lately.

Unifying Dealers And Cleaning Up Practices

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Well, they they have been, and I agree with you that. I'm not I'm not actually uh too bothered. It doesn't keep me awake at night, but I could tell you what. I'm I'm curious though. Henry B. Gonzalez comes up a lot. What do you remember what exactly it was that sparked his initial disdain for rent to own and his drive to get rent to own kind of shut down?

SPEAKER_02 34:13

We'll never know that. I mean, I I asked his office and they were not forthcoming. Uh, that was in '93, '94, when he had public hearings. Uh, and we don't know the genesis of his interest in rent to own. But it was it was a it was a scary moment because he was a powerful figure. He was he was head of his committee. Uh the Democrats were in control of the House, but we were successful in keeping his and he and he threw a bit he had a four-hour hearing. We had 15 minutes, three and a half, we had three hours and 45 minutes of rent-owned bashing. And then we got to talk for 15 minutes, and he said, Thank you very much. He threw a bill in the hopper, but he was unable to get his bill out of his own committee. So we were we we were fairly well organized by the mid-90s and sort of knew how to fight politically. So it we got a lot of bad publicity. The Wall Street Journal came out with uh couch payments and assorted other ugly things on the very front page of the Wall Street Journal.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Shortly after the uh after the Gonzalez hearings. You know, we we know how to take a punch.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

I think that's one thing I can definitely say.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

We've taken a few, and uh, you know, we whipped we whipped him. We whipped him. He couldn't get it, he couldn't get his own bill out of his own committee. And that's now there was that's that's weak politics. That's what that is.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Right, absolutely. Um so in the beginning, there's these, there's a lot of different viewpoints on how rent own works, how rent throne gets done. Um, you know, do we want to approach the laws? Do we not approach the laws? Do we form a committee? Do we not form a committee? We get it all, it starts going through. That's exactly the way it started out. We start you know, we start getting together, these letters are sent out, people start showing up. At what point in time did April start taking uh, you know, a reasonable idea that through April, these rent-to-own practices and tactics should be on a level playing field, universally, as much as possible throughout rent-to-own?

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Well, I think a lot of us always felt that way. You know, we wanted, yeah, sure, we want to, we would love to have had a federal bill. We couldn't get one. And to the extent possible, the the state laws are reasonably uniform. I mean, you know, some guys have$5 late charge, some guys have$10, some guys have no processing fees, some guys have a$10 processing fee, but they all recognize the RTO transaction as separate and distinct from a credit sale, and then they go about different kinds of disclosures that they want. And you know, we can live with those. We can live with those. And and over the years, what it has meant is multi-state dealers have to have a different agreement for, if not every state, for most states. Occasionally you can combine uh rental agreements. That's not the end of the world.

Transparency Fights And Agreements

SPEAKER_01 37:31

So when you have back in the beginning, um, there were certain dealers that that did certain things that kind of looked that that left a black eye in the industry as far as to their collection practices or their sales practices. And we've mostly come all the way through that. But what was it what was it that April was able to do to kind of change the viewpoint of our industry, at least from April's point of view?

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Well, I mean, we always thought at APRO we were going to put the industry's best foot forward. We were gonna make the industry look good. And if you didn't uh if you didn't subscribe to that philosophy, you didn't want to be a member. I mean, we we we had we had huge fights early on about whether you could disclose the total cost or not. Some guy said, Oh hell, if I put the total cost of those TVs in my rental agreement, nobody'll ever rent one. And we say, Well, yeah, they will. We don't care. You know, some guy's been doing it all along. And and so they came back and said, Well, if I have to put that number in there, I'm gonna bury it in the fine print. I'm not, you know, I don't want people to see it. So uh they just lost. Those guys lost. And and the better, the the the better angels prevailed and and have and have ever since. And so they there ain't many bad guys left.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

How long so if if you were to if you were to put a time frame on when the you know it tipped for we're gonna do this the right way, we're gonna put our our numbers out there all the way, we're not gonna kind of shy away from that. What time frame would you say? Was that early on in in April's induction or did that happen mid eighties, late 80s?

SPEAKER_02 39:13

From the very first time I ever met rental leaders, I said, fellas, because I I you know I wasn't a rental leader, and um I just was making an observation as a uh lawyer and a college professor. I said, fellas, if you got something to hide, you ain't gonna make it. And so uh get over it. Get over it. You tell them any damn thing you want to. You're not a credit sale under truth and lending and under the state laws, so you're safe there. But you've got to you gotta you know you've got to tell the truth about this transaction. And and if you're not willing to do that, your days are numbered. That was my message from the get-go. It it's still my message. And uh, you know, that that message that message won the day. We're not to my the industry's not hiding anything.

APRO’s Role Versus Legal Counsel

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Well, no, if you've ever gone through a rental agreement nowadays, uh, I I couldn't imagine anything that's not in it now. I've always been in out of the state of Florida, so I only know the state of Florida's rental agreement front and back, and I could probably read it to you and kind of quote every corner of it. But I couldn't imagine anything in there that's not being said. Everything from how much to weekly, monthly, and and say monthly rate is, what do you know, the what your fees are, what your total cost is, what you can and can't do, the ability to return service loaners, uh, you know, contacting you. I think everything in there is is is pretty simple, easy, and and step forward. Who actually, and I never really asked this question, but was April a part of devising the rental agreements per state?

SPEAKER_02 40:51

No, no, we didn't want that liability uh in case in case we did it wrong. So I've written a lot of rental agreements as a lawyer. I have malpractice insurance and I've written a lot of agreements uh for rental dealers because I got malpractice in case I screw it up. But APRO was never in the business of providing, believe me. Uh members said guys would say, Yeah, I want to join APRO, give give me a rental agreement. And we said, No, we don't do that. And they sort of groused about it and said, geez, that's awfully cheap of you. And I tried to, I'd have to explain it's a it's a liability issue. That if your rental agreement gets screwed up, we don't want April being sued.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Well, I mean it makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Sue your lawyer if you want to, but don't sue April. And so April's never done that.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

So I do have a question. This is a personal question. This is somewhat of a personal question, but this is definitely an Edwin question. I heard that at some point Elizabeth Warren was actually your neighbor. She was. She was my next door neighbor. We had was that was that in Texas?

SPEAKER_02 41:55

Yeah, it was in Austin. She was teaching bankruptcy. She was she was a bankruptcy uh professor in the law school, and I was a B law professor in the business school, and she I was single and wrote a Harley. And she was uh she was married, had two kids. Her husband had to commute to St. Louis. He was a he was a college professor, uh a law professor, teaching legal history at the I want to say University of Washington in St. Louis, maybe. And so he had a he had a fly up there. Uh and she was uh yeah, she was a very well-known uh bankruptcy lawyer, professor. So we had lunch once, and she could tell, and I could tell, that we were coming from different views. Different sides would be polite. So we didn't have dinner beyond that one time, but yes, she was my next door neighbor.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

I I you know when I when I heard that, I was like, really?

FTC Study And Dodd‑Frank Exemption

SPEAKER_02 42:56

That's great, it's amazing. She put on a headdress and moved on to Harvard.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

She did. She did well, I you know, I I do know that she was born in Oklahoma, born and raised. She had to going down to Texas to teach in several different places, and then eventually ended up in Massachusetts. And uh, you know, when I heard that, I was like, there's that's you know, it's it's a small world no matter how you look at it. Talking about people in the in the government, were there anybody in the government that stood out to you as advocates for what we did? So we can always say Henry B. Gonzalez was somebody who did not like the rental transaction and did everything he could to kind of go against us. Was there somebody else in the other side of the fence that was on the side of uh APRO and rent to own in the industry and said, you know what, I think this is a great idea?

SPEAKER_02 43:41

We had numerous friends in the legislature. Uh Lacey Clay was a representative from Missouri, a black guy, uh one of our real champions, and helped us stay out of Dodd Frank. Uh Barney Frank was a good friend of ours. And um there'd be a long I'd have to I I don't do names my brain won't do names very well. We had a lot of very good uh friends in the legislature, people that we supported and and uh met with and knew very well, people who visited our stores, understood the transaction. Uh there was another uh black rep trying to remember where he was from, who had who had rented a you know his dorm, his bed and his TV when he was in college. So he understood Rentone and was one of our champions. Name is gone. I'm lucky to remember Lacey Clay. Uh yeah, we had good friends. We we had good friends. Um and probably this day and time, we got more good friends than we have enemies, quite frankly.

Gonzalez Hearings And Media Heat

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Well, that's you know, it's comforting to hear because a lot of what happened in the late 70s or early 80s, and a lot of people what they're telling me that there was there was this basically this fog, this cloud of we don't really know what's going on. We we don't see a lot of others, and it's not as connected, the world isn't as connected uh back then as it is today. I mean, you know, when you say uh, you know, that Bud Holliday was sending out letters uh from the yellow pages, which is something that I remember, a lot of people now can, you know, literally go on Google and type in, you know, real dealers in this state or, you know, how many within five miles, and you have an answer within seconds, and you can send them an email and probably get that all done in 10 minutes, where back then, you know, you literally had to look it up, write it down, send out a letter, and then hopefully get a response. Um, so it's you know, there was this veil of, you know, almost like the fog of war. It was you don't know what's going on. You don't know how it is. And then as the association got together and started creating what they started doing with you and others, Bud Holliday and and Chuck Sims were able to kind of start molding together, I think that kind of cleared away the fog and and kind of made up you know a clear path. As you were doing this, I I do have a question, two questions. Where did the name April come from? Who who where did that who created that?

SPEAKER_02 46:07

Chuck Sims had a uh advertising agency, and he went to them and he said, We're coming up, we're we're gonna create a trade association, come up with some names. So they gave us four or five pages of words matched together. It started out as the association of professional rental something. It wasn't uh organizations, agents, companies, and that and that morphed into I I to this day I don't remember how it moved from uh professional to progressive, but it did. So uh historical accident is the best I can offer.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

And that wasn't an Edwin thing you didn't come up with that name, Ed?

SPEAKER_02 46:53

I did not. I did not. I came up with a lot of crap, but not that. Not the name.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

And so as we create APRO, we get the name, we're starting to go forward. Do you believe, in your mind, and in your opinion, that the creation of APRO and having some of these legendary names that helped create it with you kind of started allowing more people to come into the business uh than probably would have if you didn't create it?

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Absolutely. Yes, yes. It it first of all, people became aware of rent-owned because rent-owned was really just in a crack. I mean, if you advertising was minimal, you might have had an ad in the yellow pages, you but you weren't gonna you weren't on TV. There was nobody advertising rent-town on TV back in those days. Uh and remember when we first started, all we rented was TVs, 19-inch collar portables, and then when when they came, big 25-inch collar consoles. That that was the that was our product mix. Two. We had two. And uh so we you know, we just evolved from there. But but yes, I I think APRO's existence and our you know, we fought back. I I used to keep these notebooks of negative press and positive press about the rent-owned industry. Negative press was that big, positive press was that big. I mean, they just weren't people weren't saying very many nice things about rent owned, but the fact that we were that that that we existed, that we were out there, we had a trade association, we had conventions, people could see, hey, this is a real business, count me in. I don't think it would have grown like it did without April.

SPEAKER_01 48:41

As as it grew back then, like you said, it there wasn't a lot known, it became a lot more known as as it formed. Was there any problem with the with the uh uh the CPA at that point in time?

SPEAKER_02 48:58

The what?

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Um I just lost it. I just had it here right here, and I had it right in front of me, and and I just lost it. I can't believe I just lost it. You know what? You know what, Ed, when you say sometimes that it just goes away, it happens, it's a real thing. The customer protection uh advocates, um, you know, I was a discussion that rental dealers, some of them, didn't want to put their numbers out because fear of retaliation. Somebody also has the ability to look at that and go, you're not doing everything that you should for the customers. Was there any associations that actually challenged April and said, you know, this could be better? And in turn, APRO was able to say, you know what, this could be better and and kind of went along with it.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

Well, I'm not sure I'm following. We certainly had battles with the at the time um furniture rental industry, Grantry, Court, and Aaron's. Aaron's was not in rent owned until the late uh eighties. So early on in the early 80s, I mean Ahrons was there and it was a big company, and it I think it was publicly traded, but it was a rental company. They they uh they rented apartments full of furniture to visiting executives six-month deals. So they were under the Federal Consumer Leasing Act, uh, they weren't doing rent-owned. And they barged into our board Charlotte Charlotte Alter Milk and some of his colleagues from Court and Grantry barged into our one of our board meetings and said, You you rent-owned scallywags being polite, are ruining the good name of rental. We want you to change your name. Quit being quit calling yourselves rent-owned, quit calling yourselves rental, be something else. We are the we're the rental industry. And your your your collection practices and your pricing and all the bad things that you're doing are hurting our image.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

I can only imagine how that conversation went.

SPEAKER_02 51:06

Our guys jumped up, you know, fists clenched. Jump on in here, fellas. You want some of this?

SPEAKER_00 51:14

I can only imagine how that conversation. I could, I would have, I would have loved to be a fly on that wall. It was testy. It was testy.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

But so let me let me rephrase that question in a different light so that maybe it uh it sounds a little bit different. There were other agencies around, there's always agencies, you know, the FTC, the CFPB. Was there any agencies that kind of worked with APRO in order to help advocate for the rental industry or to help correct it and guide it and give it a northern star? Or was it just APRO?

SPEAKER_02 51:45

Just APRO. There were no government agencies interested in assisting the rent-owned industry in that day or in this day, in my mind. So no, no, no, never. Never.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

Wow. Was there any consumer groups that that wanted to help out?

SPEAKER_02 52:05

No. Consumer groups, by definition, want to help consumers, they don't want to help businesses.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

That is true.

SPEAKER_02 52:11

That is true. They were always on the other side. By default, they were on the other side. I hear I suppose, I suppose we we may have prevailed upon some uh local chambers of commerce. We made friends with the Better Business Bureau here and there. Nebraska Better Business Bureau. Uh Lynn Leach is tight with the Better Business Bureau in his state. So they were never antagonistic. Were they helpful? No, I'm not so sure. Uh Chambers of Commerce, you know, we're businesses, so they might have thrown us a fig leaf. I don't know. Uh I I certainly don't remember any champions of rent to own other than April.

SPEAKER_01 52:57

Now, were there any agencies, or I should say, any organizations that were formed throughout the years that didn't last like APRO did? Was April a one-time wonder, a lightning in a bottle where it was started 1980s and despite trials and tribulations, has made it all the way through? Or were there other agencies that started uh, whether it be the early 80s or anytime, that were either somewhat around the area of of what April did or their own advocacy group as far as Rentone is concerned and just didn't make it?

State Associations: Rise And Fade

SPEAKER_02 53:26

Well, you had state groups. So um when the when the when the Texas bill, Ernestine Glossbrenner's bill, was being debated in the early 90s, there was a another group besides APRO that they were in the small loan business, but had a few TVs out on rent, and they wanted a voice as to what how this bill was going to look. And so they they created the Texas Association, TERRA, Texas Association of Rental Agents. And they had a voice. And so any number of any number of states, once we went into a state, they would form a state group. The Alabama rental dealers, the Pennsylvania rental dealers, New York rental dealers. And the problem with those states two problems. One, APRO's never really been able to figure out how to mesh state associations and APRO. It's always been awkward. Number two, once the law got passed, state associations said they kind of went the way of all flesh because they lost. Now, Florida is a notable exception. Y'all have a very viable and lively uh state association. You go to the legislature every year, and it's alive and well. That is not the case with many states. Once the law gets passed, dealers say, eh, we don't need a state association anymore, or I quit, I'm not paying dues anymore, leave me alone. So um, but but we did have state associations that they had their own kinds of connections in the state houses that we didn't have, APRO necessarily. So you had all those, you had those groups. Almost every state where there was a law work being worked on had a state association at one time or another.

SPEAKER_01 55:20

And how with when it comes to you being legal counsel at April, how involved were you in helping forming those state associations?

SPEAKER_02 55:31

Oh, we went we went around and helped him. We had the the state uh Tiger John Cleek out of Missouri, took that, he he strapped that on. We created the State Association Coordinating Committee, S A C C maybe, uh, and you know, flew to Oregon. He and I went around various places. We had modeled bylaws for state associations and would give seminars about here's what you need to do to organize your state. You need to, you know, uh, I can remember sitting in Tennessee trying to organize a Tennessee rental leaders. Nobody wanted to be the president. And I said, listen, folks, it's it's three o'clock this afternoon. We're not leaving until somebody stands up and says, Okay, I'll be the president. And shortly thereafter, somebody stood up. I don't remember who, Lowry Schrader, somebody. Uh Shannon struck, somebody. Shannon was there, I remember. Um, so we we had growing state associations had growing pains, and uh a few, California, California had a good association, but as soon as the law got passed, disappeared. Um Terra. Terra used to be, Terra used to have a hundred thousand dollars in the bank in dues. The Texas Association of Rental Agents, separate and apart from APRO, used to have big conventions. Uh I I I gave a seminar at a TARRA meeting where there were 200 people there. Terra's disappeared off the face of the earth. It's just gone because because rental is not a legal issue anymore in Texas. It hadn't been for a long, long time, other than the theft of rental property issue, which is it's really not an issue now. You can't do it. You can't throw people in jail for stealing TVs in Texas.

SPEAKER_01 57:20

Well, so so going into the close, I gotta know. You were there since the induction of the very first meeting and made it all the way through. Edwin's names is all over the halls of rent to own. If you had to say uh something, and and and now that you're retired, you kind of get to sit back and look at everything maybe from a different point of view. Is there something that APRO isn't doing now that probably you think that they should do or get into or possibly look into in the future?

Coordinating States And Lasting Impact

SPEAKER_02 57:50

Let me tell you, us finding, and and I and I can't claim responsibility, although I was on the committee, I suppose, uh the search committee, finding Charles Smithgall was a it's like going to Arkansas and finding a diamond there. You can you can you can sip for diamonds in Arkansas, I think. Uh Smithgall has great vision, and uh, you know, he's working on this artificial intelligence project of his. Uh we're talking about Smith herman, right?

SPEAKER_01 58:19

Smitherman.

SPEAKER_02 58:20

Yes, yes, yes. What did I say? Smith Gall. Smithgall, sorry. Those were those Smith Gall was a um Aaron's franchisee, the largest Aaron's franchisee. I'm talking about Smith. Yeah, Charles, thank you. Uh apologize. He has great vision. Uh he is moving APRO forward in ways that I never even contemplated. So high energy and uh great insights. So I I predict great things for the association. As long as the legal issue confronted APRO, trade associations do well when they've got a big specter that they've got to defend against. We lost that. You know, I mean APRO APRO hasn't been threatened with legal uh extinction in 30 years. So what did it what do you do if you're a trade association and you don't have a common enemy anymore? Charles has figured that out and and how to keep people interested in a cohesive uh group of competitors. So my I tip my hat to him whenever I see him and say he's doing a great job, and he is.

What APRO Should Do Next

SPEAKER_01 59:30

I'm gonna I'm gonna agree with you 100% on there. I believe that he is. I love the direction that's going on. As a matter of fact, you know that this is also part of what uh the research project that he's doing, and and to put us an APRO up front and personal with with the new way of things, the AI, the chat bots, and everything in between. I think he's doing an amazing job as well. So I will make sure I pass that along. But you guys, I appreciate you sitting here with my with our conversation with Mr. Ed Wynne, who is now retired, the ex-legal counsel for April for over 40 plus years. If you have any questions for Ed or me at the podcast, please hit me up at pete at the rtoshowpodcast.com, or you can go on the website at www.thertoshowpodcast.com, see what's going on there, check us out. Don't forget that LedgeCon happens every single year. I'm discussing a lot of legal issues with the legal counsel, Mr. Edwin, but the reason I'm doing it is because he has all that experience. And you know what? It's great to have advocates like Mr. Edwin, who's done it for many years, Charles Smitherman, and a whole bunch of names that we can mention. We'd love to see you on Capitol Hill and LedgeCon in April coming in 2026. So if you can do that, make sure that you listen to the show to be aware to find out how to do that. And you can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube where you're gonna find us. Make sure you subscribe and make sure you go to the website and buy some swag. Ed, I appreciate you taking out your time today. I know that we had a little bit of a change this morning. We are today that you had to kind of go into the office, which I know is probably not what you're used to anymore, but I'm so glad that you were able to do it and make some time for us. I do appreciate that. And I and I will tell you guys as always get your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one. Thanks, Ed.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:11

I really appreciate it.