DAVID LONGABERGER,

BASKET MAKER, DIES AT 64

Dave Longaberger, a born basket weaver and business visionary who figured out that the way to make basket weaving pay was to get a lot of other people to do the weaving and a lot more to do the selling, died on Wednesday at his home outside Newark, Ohio. He was 64 and had turned a small basket-weaving venture into a $700 million-a-year business even as he transformed a slice of central Ohio into a sprawling theme park based on Longaberger baskets.

His family said the cause was kidney cancer.

There is no denying the charm of an old-fashioned hardwood maple basket, especially one made by hand and signed and dated by the maker. Still, it seems far-fetched to suppose that there would be a modern-day demand for more than eight million such baskets a year, or that they would become such soughtafter collectors’items that they would support a flourishing Internet trade with more than 1,000 Web sites.

Then again, Mr. Longaberger was a master of the far-fetched. He was, after all, the man who celebrated the success of his Longaberger Company, which was based in Newark, by building as his corporate headquarters a $30 million, seven-story structure in the form of a market basket, complete with a pair of 75-ton handles on the roof.

Even his childhood was far-fetched. The son and grandson of basket weavers, Mr. Longaberger was born in the little town of Dresden, about 25 miles northeast of Newark, and grew up in a house with three bedrooms, one bathroom and 12 children, all schooled in basket weaving by their father, J. W. Longaberger, who made baskets for local potters and farmers.

Mr. Longaberger, who got a job stocking grocery store shelves when he was 6, always demonstrated a certain tenacity. Partly because he had a severe stutter and suffered from epilepsy, he repeated the first grade, was held back in the fifth grade twice and did not graduate from high school until he was 21.

After holding a series of jobs, including one as a Fuller Brush salesman, and serving in the Army, he began his business career by buying and operating a small restaurant in Dresden and later acquiring a local grocery store and pharmacy.

It was not until 1973that Mr. Longaberger, noticing that baskets were becoming popular in shopping malls, began his basket business, coaxing his father out of retirement and taking on four other weavers.

Sales were so sluggish in the first years that in 1978, he revamped his business. Taking the Tupperware page from the direct-sales book, he enlisted sales associates to hold Longaberger basket parties and added an Amway twist, giving associates a percentage of the commissions earned by associates they recruited.

The appeal of the baskets and the standard sales pitch, which incorporated lore of the Longaberger family and the Dresden basket-weaving tradition, were so powerful that the business grew rapidly. Today the company employs 7,000 people, including 1,500 weavers, and there are more than 47,000 salespeople.

In addition to 80 styles and sizes of baskets, which sell for $25 to $150, the company also sells, but does not make, pottery, wrought-iron products, curtain fabrics and bedding. But it is the baskets that have made Longaberger a household name.

From the beginning, the women who bought the baskets were so enamored of them that they began making pilgrimages to Dresden, which Mr. Longaberger obligingly turned into a tourist town, complete with Longaberger restaurants, Longaberger shops and a Longaberger museum.

A man who gave away millions of dollars, Mr. Longaberger bought and restored several Dresden buildings and even provided new sidewalks.

When the company outgrew Dresden, Mr. Longaberger moved its main operations a few miles down State Road 16 to Frazeysburg, which also became a tourist destination, as Newark did, in turn, when the Longaberger basket building opened at the end of 1997. An estimated 500,000 tourists visit the area each year.

After his cancer was diagnosed two years ago, Mr. Longaberger promoted his elder daughter, Tami of Zanesville, to company president and put his other daughter, Rachel of New Albany, in charge of the family foundation.

Although Tami Longaberger seems to be a shrewd manager, it remains to be seen whether she, or anyone else, can match her father’s soaring vision. She tried to talk her father out of building the basket building.

In addition to his daughters, Mr. Longaberger, who was married and divorced twice, is survived by his mother, Bonnie of Dresden; six sisters, Genevieve Hard of Thornville, Ohio, Wendy Little of Dresden, Mary Ann McCafferty of Frazeysburg, Judy Swope of Dresden, Ginny Lou Wilcox of Dresden and Carmen Fortney of Dresden; five brothers, Larry of Newark and Jerry, Rich, Gary and Jeff, all of Dresden, and five grandchildren.

March 22, 1999