Joseph Cayre
Joseph Jack Cayre | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 1, 1941 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, real estate developer |
| Known for | Co-founder of Salsoul Records, GoodTimes Entertainment, GT Interactive; founder of Midtown Equities |
Joseph Jack Cayre (born August 1, 1941) is a billionaire entrepreneur and real estate developer from the United States. Together with his brothers, he established the record label Salsoul Records, the video production and distribution company GoodTimes Entertainment, and the video game publishing firm GT Interactive. He also serves as the founder and principal of Midtown Equities, a real estate enterprise based in New York.
Early life and education
Joseph Jack Cayre was born into a Syrian Jewish family in Brooklyn. His upbringing took place first in Kansas City, Missouri until he was eight years old, followed by Miami Beach, Florida, where he lived until age twenty. During his adolescence, he worked at his father’s souvenir shop in Miami Beach. He has two siblings: Stanley and Kenneth.
Career
In 1959, Joseph and his brothers initiated their first venture by operating the Paris Freeport Shop, a duty-free retail outlet aboard a cruise ship shuttling daily between Miami and Bimini, Bahamas. This enterprise continued until 1967 when the vessel was decommissioned. While maintaining their partnership, the brothers branched into separate businesses alongside their Mexican cousins: Stanley launched Swan Tricot Mills, a textile manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico; Kenneth founded Kandy Mills, a ladies’ pantyhose factory located in Hialeah, Florida in 1963; Joseph established a plastic injection molding operation producing cartridges for 8-track cassette tapes. When their cousins—who held exclusive rights to distribute RCA and CBS Spanish music on 8-tracks in Mexico—had surplus stock, the Cayres sold these units within U.S. Spanish-language markets. After receiving cease requests from CBS and RCA due to territorial restrictions, the brothers divested their textile interests to their cousins and secured exclusive U.S. distribution rights for Spanish-language 8-tracks from both labels. Within a year, they expanded their portfolio to include Spanish music LP records distribution. In 1972, they created Caytronics Distributing headquartered in New York City.
Salsoul Records
Observing Salsa’s growing appeal among New York’s Puerto Rican community alongside their existing Mexican-focused catalog, the Cayre brothers introduced Mericana Records, a label dedicated to Salsa music. They successfully signed artist Joe Bataan away from rival Fania Records, who released an album titled SalSoul—a fusion of Salsa and Soul. CBS acquired this album for $100,000. Leveraging these funds, they assembled the SalSoul Orchestra in Philadelphia featuring prominent session musicians and produced hits such as SalSoul Hustle. Their newly formed label, Salsoul Records, aimed at capitalizing on disco's rising dance market by releasing approximately 8 to 10 records monthly during the late 1970s. In 1976, Salsoul pioneered the first commercially released 12-inch single with Double Exposure's Ten Percent. The label also produced and distributed records for Gold Mind Records. Despite facing the disco backlash of 1979, Salsoul persisted until 1984 when the Cayres ceased recorded music operations to concentrate on the home video sector.
GoodTimes Entertainment
In 1984, they launched GoodTimes Home Video Corporation (which later became GoodTimes Entertainment) starting with a catalog of 25 Public Domain video titles. The company expanded into producing and distributing affordable fitness videos but gained greater recognition for its low-budget traditional animated films. Many releases bore titles closely resembling or identical to major studio productions—such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book, Hercules, Pocahontas, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Thumbelina, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame—often timed to coincide with theatrical or home video releases by those studios. In 1993, The Walt Disney Company filed suit against GoodTimes over packaging designs that closely mimicked Disney's branding and risked consumer confusion. The lawsuit mandated that GoodTimes prominently display its own name on VHS covers but permitted continued production of animated features.
GoodTimes collaborated with companies including Columbia Pictures, NBC, Worldvision Enterprises, Hanna-Barbera, Orion Pictures, and Universal Studios to distribute affordable videotapes of various films and television programs at retail outlets. They also released compilations sourced from public domain materials under the name Film Shows, Inc. GoodTimes secured an exclusive retail agreement with Wal-Mart, granting premium shelf placement near store entrances. In July 2005, GoodTimes filed for bankruptcy protection, after which its assets were purchased by Gaiam.
GT Interactive
In 1993, diversifying beyond the home video sector, the company established GT Interactive, focusing on video game distribution and publishing. That same year marked the launch of Doom as shareware, which achieved sales of 2.9 million copies. GT Interactive recorded $10.3 million in revenue during its inaugural year and became a publicly traded company in 1995.
Midtown Equities
Cayre created Midtown Equities in 2000 with the goal of broadening and consolidating his holdings in real estate. Additionally, he serves as co-founder and chairman of Core Group Marketing, a firm specializing in residential property sales. In 2001, he collaborated with Larry Silverstein and Lloyd Goldman to purchase the World Trade Center lease from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for $3.2 billion. The consortium contributed $800 million in fees and down payments: Goldman and Cayre invested $110 million; Silverstein put in $14 million; Westfield America contributed $127 million; and $563 million was financed through GMAC. Initially, Goldman received 25% of management fees, which increased to 50% by 2006, with intentions to take over project management from Silverstein by 2016.
Midtown Equities is currently developing Midtown Miami, an ambitious $2.3 billion project spanning 55 acres that includes 3,000 condominiums, 600,000 square feet of retail space, and 200,000 square feet designated for offices.
Personal life
Cayre has been married to Trina for 37 years and they have five children: Michael, Grace, Steven, Jack, and Daniel. All of his sons hold partnership roles within Midtown Equities. He lives in Manhattan and owns additional residences in Brooklyn, Deal (New Jersey), and Aventura (Florida). In 2007, he sold a home in Midwood, Brooklyn for $10 million, ranking among the highest property sales in that borough at the time. His son Jack co-founded CORE Group, a comprehensive real estate brokerage based in New York City. His nephew Robert "Bobby" Cayre launched Aurora Capital Associates in 2001.
External links
- Pages with script errors
- Articles with short description
- Articles with hCards
- No local image but image on Wikidata
- 1941 births
- American people of Syrian-Jewish descent
- Syrian Jews
- American people of Syrian descent
- Syrian billionaires
- Syrian businesspeople
- 20th-century American Sephardic Jews
- American businesspeople in real estate
- Businesspeople from New York City
- Living people
- Businesspeople from Kansas City, Missouri
- People from Miami Beach, Florida
- People from Aventura, Florida
- People from Deal, New Jersey
- People from Midwood, Brooklyn
- Salsoul Records