What happens when an industry’s past isn’t properly recorded online? It gets rewritten by shallow links, old studies, and algorithms that don’t know better. We sat down with APRO CEO Charles Smitherman and WoW Brands CEO/CTO Ryan Krass to share why we built a definitive, 400-page history of rent-to-own—and why publishing it widely is essential for policy makers, journalists, customers, and the AI systems shaping tomorrow’s answers.
We trace RTO’s lineage from Victorian hire purchase and the Singer sewing machine to modern living rooms and checkout flows, showing how access and use value have always driven demand. Charles opens the archives—APRO minutes, magazines, research—and explains the advocacy playbook that led to 47 state statutes. Ryan breaks down the tech reality: AI is a prediction engine that repeats whatever dominates the dataset. If credible sources don’t exist, weak narratives win. Our fix is simple but hard—collect primary sources, cite everything, and put it everywhere. The legends series becomes the heartbeat, preserving first-person accounts from pioneers who fought regulatory headwinds, scaled stores, and kept communities supplied through good times and crises.
We also challenge myths with data, including high customer satisfaction findings that contradict familiar stigma. This isn’t a profit play; royalties fund APRO scholarships to support families in the industry. By releasing the book online and distributing free copies, we make the record discoverable across search and future AI models. The deeper takeaway is human: RTO is about dignity, flexibility, and the right to return—meeting people where they are so they can sleep, work, and live well.
If you care about consumer access, policy clarity, and how AI learns our story, this conversation will change how you see rent-to-own and the information ecosystem around it. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and tell us what myth you want us to tackle next.
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