SMALL BUSINESS: Too Big to Handle

Said the ad in the Wall Street Journal: “Management needs person or corporation to take complete charge of sales and production. With or without investment.” In this way, Detroit’s Charles S. Langs, 36, the harried inventor of Posēs (pronounced pose-ease), a strapless, wireless, adhesive brassière, hoped to get out from under a mushrooming small business which had grown too big to handle.

Langs thought up the stick-on bra when his wife complained that she could not get an even tan in a bathing suit. Last May, after lengthy experiments, he put the adhesive cups on sale. He expected the bra to be just a sideline to his business of chrome-plating grilles for autos, and hired two girls to fill orders in the basement of his home. The orders poured in so fast that he had to hire 43 more employees, rent the entire floor of a warehouse. Many orders remained unfilled for weeks.

Last week Langs confessed: “I don’t know anything about merchandising. It will take a big outfit to market this properly.” If the right company answered the ad, Langs said he might turn over the gadget and just take a royalty.