Signature Classics - Pride and Prejudice

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!±8±Signature Classics - Pride and Prejudice

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Uniquely designed, this 6" X 9" deluxe edition of Signature Classics features a padded leatherette casing enhanced by gold gilding on all three sides. Highlighted by a full color picture insert on the cover surrounded by gold foil stamping, this series is sure to become a collectable. A Standard Jacketed Edition is also available.

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Divorced, Desperate and Delicious (Sukey Reynolds Mysteries)

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!±8± Divorced, Desperate and Delicious (Sukey Reynolds Mysteries)

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Divorced, Desperate and Delicious (Sukey Reynolds Mysteries)

A police officer on the trail of in-department corruption finds himself framed and on the run from the law—right into the house and arms of a woman divorced, delicious and too good to be true.

Pathophysiology: The Biologic Basis for Disease in Adults and Children, 6e

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!±8± Pathophysiology: The Biologic Basis for Disease in Adults and Children, 6e

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Well-known for its authoritative and comprehensive coverage, complete treatment of pediatric pathophysiology, and the most extensive illustration program in its field, this textbook features expert content on everything from the general principles of pathophysiology to detailed discussions of genetics and specific diseases. Chapters on alteration present the pathophysiology, clinical manifestations, and evaluation and treatment of each disease to help you learn to identify normal anatomy and physiology, as well as alterations of function in adults and in children.

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• An Introduction to Pathophysiology section at the beginning of the text provides a solid start to the basics of the study of disease.
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• New animations, review questions, Key Points, and an audio glossary have been added to the Evolve companion website to strengthen your understanding of key concepts.
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May 1, 1962 - The First Target Opens

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Once again, another legendary retailer celebrates theirgolden anniversary. It’s none other than Target, “the upscale discounter”,which officially launched 50 years ago today yesterday. Pictured above is the very firstTarget store, located in Roseville, Minnesota, a suburb just north of the TwinCities. From this humble beginning came one of today’s most successful andinfluential retailers, and one of the world’s most iconicbrands.    As mentioned ad nauseam on this site and in many otherquarters, Target’s founding year, 1962, was the year of the discount storerevolution. Walmart and Kmart, the industry’s other two key players, were alsofounded that year, as were a number of others, including Woolworth’slong-departed Woolco division and Big K, a southeastern chain that waseventually acquired by Walmart. These chains and their coincidental founding year were allmentioned in our previous observance of Kmart's 50th a couple ofmonths back,  but no sooner were thepixels dry on that post (Don’t you just hate expressions like that?) than Irecalled some others that trace their origin to 1962 – Shopko, a Green BayWisconsin-based chain, still exists. Sky City, based in Asheville, NorthCarolina with locations throughout the Southeast, unfortunately no longer does.I’ll probably think of some more within minutes after posting this. Target differs in a fundamental way from Walmart and Kmart,its two key competitors over the last 30 years or so (and for the foreseeablefuture), and this difference can be traced back to the companies’ roots. “Kmartwas founded by a dime store company (S.S.Kresge) and Wal-Mart was a varietystore company (Sam Walton’s Ben Franklin franchises),” said former Targetexecutive Norm McMillan to Laura Rowley, author of On Target, an entertaininglywritten history of the company, while “The background of the Target enterprisewas the department store business – so that influenced our strategic planningand the way stores were run.”Indeed, The Dayton Company, founded in Minneapolis in 1902,had long been considered one of America’s best run department store firms. Sowell run, in fact, that they found themselves having to fend off a good deal offlak from their prestigious department store cohorts about their decision to goslumming in the discount world. Rowley quotes Target president Douglas Daytonin a 1966 speech to the Associated Merchandising Corporation: “I start with theassumption that all of you …wish that discount stores had never been invented,and I have no quarrel with that wish. It is a perfectly natural one. The catchis that it doesn’t seem to have impaired discount stores’ progress one iota…Tosome I may be laboring the point; to others - and I have to be perfectly frank -you have underestimated what is going on.” (This would have made a nice extraverse for Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin'”, don’t you think? Just need to come up with a good quadruple rhyme.) A major change in consumer buying patterns was afoot,and Dayton bravely chose to jump into the fray. Generally conservative, the Dayton Company could nonetheless claim a pretty bold move in their recent history. In 1954, they developed thenation’s first enclosed mall, Southdale Shopping Center, in Edina, a southwestsuburb of Minneapolis. Dayton took the then-unusual step of inviting a keydepartment store rival, Donaldson’s, to join the project. They engaged VictorGruen, an Austrian-born architect with visions of the mall as a ‘civilizingforce for the sprawling suburbs’, to design the center. Southdale jump-startedGruen’s career as an architect of unparalleled influence over the ensuingdecade. For Dayton, it proved to be a financial winner and an anchor for theirsuburban “branch store” strategy.In one sense, however, the concept of the discount store wasreally just an update of a time-honored department store tradition – the“basement store”, usually a basement or sub-level of a downtown flagship storereserved for bargain and closeout merchandise. Dayton’s had one in theirNicollet Avenue home base, as did many well-known department store operatorsacross the country. While bargain hunting has been a great American pursuit foreons, in decades past there was often a certain stigma (unfairly) conferredupon those who consistently shopped “downstairs”, whether out of need orpreference, instead of on the main floor. The discount stores, having no“upstairs” per se, erased this stigma, and their suburban locations put themcloser to the fastest-growing base of customers.  After some months of fact-finding “undercover missions” todiscount store chains across the country by Dayton managers (Topps in Chicago,on a growth tear at the time, was one they particularly liked), the firstTarget store opened on May 1 in Roseville. It was a 68,000 square foot storewith a surprisingly large grocery department -25,000 sq. ft., leased out toApplebaum’s Food Market of St. Paul. (Somewhere I remember seeing a photo of avery cool-looking ice cream carton with the original Target “bullseye” logo onit. Hopefully I’ll come across it again one of these days.)   According to Rowley, the general merchandise mix was 65percent hardlines (“auto supplies and appliances”) and 35 percent softlines (“clothingand accessories”).  Roseville was thefirst of four units launched that year – three in the greater Twin Cities area(Crystal and Knollwood/St. Louis Park being the others) and one a bit furthernorth in Duluth. This 1965 photo of the Duluth store shows just how quickly thechain’s architectural style evolved from the very modest design of the first Target. Throughout the balance of the 1960’s, growth was “steady andmethodical” when compared to Kmart at least, who were burning up thecountryside with some 35 new stores a year at the time.  Three years passed before the opening of thenext Target in Bloomington, Minnesota in 1965. The next year, 1966, sawTarget’s first expansion market, Denver (Glendale and Westland Centers),followed by two more on the home turf, Fridley and West St. Paul, Minnesota in1967. In 1968, Target expanded into St. Louis with North and South Countystores. A third store was added in Bridgeton the next year. The close of thedecade saw Target stores in Dallas (North Dallas and Garland, with a VillageFair location added in 1970) and Houston (Hedwig Village and South Loop, withSharpstown added in 1970), along with a unit in Colorado Springs.  One probable reason for the measured approach was the simplefact that Dayton had a lot of things on their plate in the late 60’s, puttingit mildly. In 1969, Dayton bought out the Detroit-based J.L. Hudson Company,“the nation’s largest independently owned department store operation”, as their1968 annual report put it. Now called Dayton-Hudson Corporation, and with morethan double the department store operations as before, the acquisitions didn’tstop there. That same year they picked up Lechmere, a Boston-based electronicand appliance retailer, whose operations were lumped in with Target’s as partof D-H’s “Low-Margin Division.”  Thesemoves coincided with a major expansion of Dayton’s bookstore operations, whichwere launched in 1966. Bruce Dayton, the company president, decided to name thecompany’s bookstores after himself, substituting one letter in the last name,of course – “B. Dalton Booksellers”, a mainstay of shopping malls for decades.    Whether or not it was a deliberate part of the strategy, therewas certainly an added benefit to the slower rollout of the Target stores. Itenabled Dayton-Hudson to hone Target’s upscale image – the key differentiator thatled to the furious post 1980-growth and high repute the company enjoys today- over time. Their faux French nickname, “Tar-zhay”, surfaced almost right off thebat, according to Douglas Dayton, Target’s original division president, whotold author Laura Rowley he first heard customers using the word at the Duluth storeway back in 1962. For a time, they even used “Miss Target” (actually pronounced“Miss Tar-zhay”!) for their private label line of women’s shoes.  Eventually a stronger graphic image was needed, and for thatTarget reached out to Unimark International, the legendary Chicago-based designfirm responsible for some of the most enduring corporate identities in businesshistory, including those of American Airlines and Ford Motor Company. (And onethat many of us wish had endured - the 1971-2011 JCPenney logo.) It’s hard tooverstate Unimark’s effect on the world of corporate design, especially in thelate 60’s and early 70’s, when the world seemed to change overnight from a graphicalstone soup to solid-color backgrounds and Helvetica.  In 1969, the new logo was introduced -a single, thicker ringaround the bullseye replaced the double-ringed earlier versions, and Helvetica supplantedthe multiplicity of fonts Target previously used. Another very significant Unimarkcontribution was the widespread use of the color red, which all these yearslater, Target virtually “owns” from a retail standpoint.  Gotta love those red plastic shopping carts, right? And the “Target Lady”. And those retro products (like cereals and detergent) they keep featuring.Here’s to another 50 years!   The photo above is from the fascinating book UNIMARK INTERNATIONAL – The Design of Business and the Business of Design by Jan Conradi and appears here through the courtesyof Kevin Rau, the book’s designer and archivist of the stunning collection ofartifacts that illustrate the book. This book is essential for design fans and isan incredible business history as well. Forget Mad Men, this was the real thing!(Ok, don’t forget Mad Men. Sorry for even bringing that up.) Kevin has his own design firm,Rauhaus, based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he specializes in corporateidentity, publication design and wonderful printed work using classic letterpresstechnology. Thanks also to Michael Doty for the tip on the greatcirca-1970 Target commercials below. Note the combination of the new Target logowith some of the “hodgepodge” mentioned above. Fun stuff!

A Farewell to Mr. Paperback

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Today I'm honored to present to you thefirst ever guest post on Pleasant Family Shopping! It’s written by Kendra Bird,a native of Bangor, Maine, anthropology student, avid retail history fan and a friendof this site from almost the very beginning.  For those from or familiar with Maine (especially the Bangor area),this will be of particular interest, but Kendra writes about something so manyof us can relate to, regardless of location– the closing of a lifelong favoritestore and the decline of the local mall. Shown above are some photos, vintage ads and articles she provided for this post. Enjoy!   
I wentto say goodbye to my childhood bookstore today, but by the time I arrived, itwas too late. The lights were off and the shelves, once bursting with books,magazines, gifts, stuffed animals and other items, were bare; some of them hadeven already been removed from the store’s now-lifeless confines. 
Thiswasn’t the first trip that I’d made to Mr. Paperback, located in Bangor,Maine’s 42-year-old Airport Mall, in the last week. Prior to today’s pilgrimage,I had wandered in a handful of times, purchasing various discounted items fromthe dwindling stock on its shelves. I had also been fortunate to acquire somememorabilia from the store itself; now in my possession are a number of rescuedwooden signs that, for as long as I can recall, stood atop the variousbookshelves, advertising the type of offerings present in each section.“SPORTS,” “HISTORY,” “CHILDREN 8-12,” some of them declare to no one inparticular. Others, whimsically, show their age: “TIQUES & COLLECTIBLE,”one reads, while another proclaims, “ILDING CONSTRUCTIO.” One, perhapspoignantly, using hand-cut blue adhesive letters, reads simply: “MAINE.” 
Mr.Paperback was not just a bookstore…it was a local, independent bookstore, basedhere in Maine, with several locations around the state. At one time, its reachhad been even more widespread, but some of the stores in the chain shuttered asthe decades passed. The company had its origins in a downtown Bangor location,half a century ago, and the location to which I personally have such anattachment has been operational since its host mall opened its doors in 1970.Over the years, the mall saw each and every original tenant go out of business,or relocate -- some of them moving across town to the larger Bangor Mall, whichopened in 1978 -- aside from Mr. Paperback, Radio Shack, and Doug’s Shop ’nSave; the latter is technically still in operation today as a state-of-the-artHannaford supermarket, which is now the flagship anchor of the entire shoppingcenter. 
Even in1990, according to a supplement to the Bangor Daily News issue of April 26^thof that year, “only a few stores remain[ed] from the stores that [had] openedin the mall” twenty years earlier. Original anchors Freese’s and Woolco, both departmentstores (the first local to Bangor, the second a nationally-known discounter),were long gone, as were many of the mall’s interior names. Nevertheless, Mr.Paperback stayed in business, first absorbing the space belonging to Spencer’sGifts, which had relocated to the Bangor Mall, and then part of an adjacentrestaurant, the remainder of which is now a Rent-a-Center.
Duringthe same year that the Airport Mall was celebrating its twentieth birthday, Iwas eight years old going on nine, and starting to purchase my own books andmagazines with my allowance money. There were only two places that I regularlydid this: Mr. Paperback, and the B. Dalton store that was in the Bangor Mall(astute followers of the ebbs and flows of retail will note that the B. Daltonchain has also met its demise). I vividly remember the day that I purchased myfirst issue of Disney Adventures magazine at the Airport Mall Mr.Paperback. I remember seeing it on the shelf, finding out that it had a TaleSpin comic in the back of it (back then, we didn’t use the terms “fangirl”or anything like that, but I totally was one in regard to that particularcartoon), and insisting to my parents that I purchase it. This was in the fallof 1990, and I was only nine years old, yet this memory is still etchedprominently in my mind over two decades later.
Untiltoday, the children’s magazines and comic books still filled that same sectionof shelving on the back wall, and, despite no longer belonging to thatdemographic, I would always wander by there whenever I stopped by the store.The shelves were the same, the carpet was the same (though it seemed to be heldtogether with mailing tape in progressively more places over the years), the(I‘m assuming) anti-shoplifting mirrors that ran above the shelving along theback of the store were the same. I only knew one other store that had mirrorslike that, predating the fancy cameras and whatnot that stores boast today: theBangor Mall CVS, which is also no longer in operation.
Over theyears, I have bought fewer and fewer books, despite being a voracious reader asa child. This is largely due to simply being too busy to read for leisure;academic pursuits and gainful employment take up the majority of my time, andwhat little reading that I do manage to do is predominantly related to my areasof study. Despite this, I did pick up one book last week during Mr. Paperback’s“Going out of Business” sale; it was a graphic novel, which is not a literaryformat that I typically gravitate towards (though my husband is a big comicbook guy), but it looked appealing to me. I think back now to that day in thewaning weeks of fall 1990 -- it was not the potential intellectual merit of DisneyAdventures that leapt out at me; it was the comic in the back. So, too, wasthe root of my initial interest in Gene Luen Yang’s Level Up, which Iread cover-to-cover a couple days later and found greatly enjoyable. Will it,decades from now, hold as firm a place in my memories as that now dog-earedDisney magazine from days long past?  
Thebrick-and-mortar bookstore is an endangered species, much like another belovedinstitution of mine, the brick-and-mortar record store. Both of these are beingreplaced by commerce centered around electronic books (ewww!) and mp3s (yuck!) inexchange for physical formats. While I jest somewhat -- these media formatsboth have their uses and their merits, and I have been known to utilize both atvarious times -- there is nothing like holding a physical book in your hand,and seeing the words come alive with the turning of each page, or carefullyplacing a record on a vintage turntable and hearing its music, crisp and cleanand warm, emanating from your speakers. That said, Mr. Paperback’s resiliencein a dying industry, especially within the confines of a mall that has teeteredon the precipice above “dead mall” status at least once or twice during itslengthy history, is nothing short of impressive. All good things do seem tofind their way to eventual endings, though, and it is into the annals ofhistory that the longstanding local book chain must now transition. 
It isinto those same annals of history, too, for the memories of Mr. Paperback thatI hold so dear. All the bookstores that I frequented in my childhood are gone,as well as the stores at which I bought my first cassette tapes years ago. TheAirport Mall itself, too, bears little resemblance to the mall that I grew upwith, in which I went shopping with my mother, my grandmother, or otherrelatives. The closing of Mr. Paperback is almost the final death blow to themall that I knew. Rines, the local women’s clothing store that my mother usedto drag me into, despite my pleas to not have to endure another store full ofclothes and devoid of toys? It’s now the county DMV office, though it bearsmany architectural vestiges of its former self. Twin City Coin, where I boughtbaseball cards with my dad as a kid? It’s now a sketchy establishment hawking“For Tobacco Use Only” paraphernalia. Dream Machine, the arcade that my brotherand I used to take our report cards to in order to get free tokens for games?It’s now the “Maine Smoke Shop,” a considerably less-kid-friendly place.Freese’s Department Store? I bid farewell to that local legend back in the late1980s, when a much younger version of myself peered through a darkened doorwayinto a lifeless store, where countertops and registers were covered by whitecloths, almost like a room full of inanimate ghosts; this I vividly remember asthe moment that I became interested in retail history, and the lives and deathsof individual stores, an interest that, obviously, remains with me now.
As Mr.Paperback goes gentle into that good night (apologies to Dylan Thomas), I findmyself both regretful and relieved that work and academic obligations preventedme from getting to the store in time to say goodbye on this day, which I hadbeen informed would contain its final hours of operation. It felt like I was ina film as I walked hastily into the mall after driving over directly from myworkplace. I saw the darkness behind the plate-glass windows before I evenrounded the corner. I knew it was over, and I was greatly saddened, but I alsoknew that I had been spared the inevitable emotional awkwardness of sayinggoodbye to a space that was so crucial to my childhood.
Isnapped a few photos, peered wistfully through the glass into the darkenedinterior of the store, and walked back outside. I called my husband, told him Iwas at the Airport Mall, and said, “I didn’t make it in time.” He understood.
Somemight find it silly, the act of saying goodbye to a place. But sentimentalityis powerful, and while some are not burdened by it, others form greatattachments to those things which provoke feelings of nostalgia -- the sights,sounds, tastes of our pasts -- the “good old days” that were rarely actually asgood as we consider them to be in retrospect. I am in the latter camp, and Ifind no shame in that.
Sofarewell, Mr. Paperback. You will always have a place in my memories, andthose, I’m sure, of many other people as well. 
Oh, andthanks for selling me that big computer desk for five dollars the other day,the one from the back room that had the cobwebs and price stickers from 1995 onit. It’s found a good home, I assure you.
Maybesomeday, I’ll even write a book on it.
Mr. Paperback closed on March 26, 2012. The first photo is from their now defunct website, the others were taken by Kendra.  

J.C. Penney, King of the Soft Goods

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Reaching its silver anniversary in 1927, the J.C. PenneyCompany found many reasons to celebrate. The amount of Penney stores had morethan doubled since 1920 to more than 750 locations “in practically every Statein the Union” according to the New York Times (close to it - 45 of the then 48 states),and annual sales of nearly $116 million.  

By this time the founder himself, James Cash Penney, hadlargely turned over leadership of the company to others while he vigorouslypursued various philanthropic interests, most importantly a program to enhanceAmerica’s agricultural production. A farm boy at heart, Penney donated millionstowards the development of dairy cattle herds, soil improvement initiatives andcrop science, particularly in the South. An October 10, 1929 article in the Atlanta Constitution summed it up asfollows: “In his breadth of vision, unselfishness of purpose and devotion tothe upbuilding of our agricultural interests, Mr. Penney is doing a work whichstamps him as one of America’s outstanding citizens”.    Two weeks after the article appeared, though, came the greatWall Street crash - the prelude to years of hard times for many Americanindividuals and institutions. J.C. Penney the company weathered the depressionreasonably well, although it would be five years before it again reached thelofty peak of its 1929 sales of $209 million. For J.C. Penney the man, however,those years were devastating. 

As it happened, Penney literally “gave away” his personalfortune during the 20’s and early 30’s, funding the various farm interests and othergood causes to the tune of millions, with little awareness of the increasing gravityof the country’s (and his own personal) economic situation. In 1931, Penney’slawyers advised him he was “virtually broke”, a story recounted in author Bill Hare’s“Celebration of Fools: An Inside Look at the Rise and Fall of JCPenney”, arattling read. A number of top Penney managers, in an effort led by Penneypresident Earl Sams, pooled money to buy the founder a new set of shares in ownnamesake company, and for the first time in years the company paid him a salary.These were the first steps towards setting Penney, “an incalculable asset tothe company that (he) founded and built”, as Hare wrote (in Sams’ voice), backon his feet. “After three years he would cease taking the salary, and by 1940,when the company declared a dividend of $5 per share, he owned 51,000 of them. Butthe going was rough at first.” This incident also sparked a much-publicized spiritual awakeningin the despondent Penney’s life, which occurred during a visit to the famed BattleCreek (Michigan) Sanitarium, founded by John Harvey Kellogg (brother of W.K.Kellogg, the cereal king). Mary Elizabeth Curry, in her fine book Creating AnAmerican Institution: The Merchandising Genius of J.C. Penney, tells the storyof one early morning when Penney walked the halls of the sanitarium andoverheard a chapel service where an old hymn called “God will take care of you”was being sung. Penney joined the service, “and asked God to help him, and whatoccurred next was so personally dramatic he liked to call if a miracle. He feltas though a heavy burden, all his fears and worries, had immediately lifted fromhis shoulders”, Curry writes. Penney himself wrote numerous books and gavehundreds of talks on the subject in the ensuing decades, alongside and as part ofhis emissary work for the company. Penney was by no means the only “famousbusinessman - preacher” of his time, but certainly among the best known. Such a combination is relatively rarein high profile business today.

As if the economic conditions of the 1930’s weren’t difficultenough, the Penney Company faced another hurdle in the form of the brewing “Anti-ChainStore” movement. As early as the mid-20’s there were rumblings in the pressabout the “So-Called Menace of Chain Stores”, as a December 1926 New York Timesarticle phrased it. The company generally offered a “low-key response” to suchchallenges, according to Mary Elizabeth Curry, preferring to “emphasize serviceand values for customers”. “It isn’t the purpose and it isn’t the desire forour organization or to destroy the independent merchant. Our job is to servewell a community through our plan of economic distribution”, Curry quotes aPenney executive from 1930.Push came to shove a few years later with the advent of thePatman Bill, a proposed piece of legislation that would have literally taxedmany chain store operations out of existence. Faced with this, the company wasforced to take a much stronger tack, and it was Penney’s chairman, Earl C.Sams, who took the lead in the matter, testifying before Congress in 1940.  He laid out Penney’s case against the bill infive main points, as quoted in the landmark book “Chain Stores in America1859-1950” by Godfrey M. Lebhar: “1) It would destroy the Penney company or anysimilar company. 2) It would destroy the finest field of opportunity that hasever existed in retailing for the young ambitious man born without familymeans. 3) It would add to the cost of living for every American family oflimited means and would lower the American standard of living. 4) It would deala staggering blow to the entire economic life of this country and would beespecially destructive of the smaller cities and towns for the benefit oflarger cities. 5) It would hurt and tax this entire nation for the protectionand enrichment of a small minority of self-interested middlemen and of anothersmall minority group of ill-advised marginal retailers.”

Beyond that, Sams attempted to debunk the theory “that chainstores were ruining the smaller communities”. The real culprit, he maintained,was the proliferation of quality, paved roadways that now enabled Americans totravel far afield to shop – no longer were they captive to the ‘local townsquare’ for the necessities of life. On the contrary, the chain stores hadindeed served “as a check on the drying up of towns and small cities”(Godfrey’s words) because according to Sams, “(they) have brought  to these small centers the same values, thesame crisp new styles, and the same modern stores that were available in thebigger cities. And the customers know it.” As it turned out, the arguments putforth by Sams and others did much to swing public opinion to the chains’ side.On June 17, 1940, Patman’s “chain store death sentence” bill “suffered thedeath sentence itself”, Godfrey wrote, when it was killed in committee, neverto reach the House floor for a vote. While J.C. Penney was known (and would continue to be forsome time) as a “small town chain” despite its impressive sales and burgeoningstore count, there were a growing number of exceptions to the “small town”aspect. In 1931, the company opened its largest store to date in Seattle, a newbuilding on the former site of the Bon Marché flagship department store. (Someyears later, Penney’s San Francisco unit would claim the distinction of largeststore.) Around this time Penney opened other large stores in key Westerncities, including Oakland, Ogden (Utah), Salt Lake City and Reno, all of which“(did) a large volume of business”, as the New York Times put it at the time.

From the mid-30’s to the mid-50’s Penney sales volume, fromstores large and small, ballooned from $225 million to over $1.3 billion. Aninteresting side note, related in a September 1950 Fortune magazine article entitled“Penney’s, King of the Soft Goods”, was the way Penney store managers shared inthe company’s good fortune, no pun intended. (Granted, they shouldered a greatdeal of responsibility, including all hiring, training, advertising decisions andordering of all products stocked – no merchandise was “pushed” on a Penneystore by the home office in those days.) The rewards were substantial, however- “A good manager in a fairly large store can make fancy money” (“fancy”meaning 1/3 of the store’s after-tax net –yikes!), the article said, citing theexample of the aforementioned Seattle store’s manager who pulled $125,000 inone year. The plan was later modified to allow assistant managers and other keyemployees to share in the pie. Still, a good many managers earned $30 to 50,000a year, and nearly a third (of then 1,600 store managers) raked in at least$15,000 annually – fancy money indeed when nice houses could be had in most cornersof America for well below ten grand.  By 1950 J.C. Penney was a solid third place in America’sdepartment store sweepstakes, behind the mighty Sears, Roebuck & Co. andthe faltering yet still formidable Montgomery Ward. One of the keys to continuedgrowth, the Fortune magazine article surmised, was increased presence in theEastern half of the country. Up to that time, Penney was still thought of as a Westernretailer (with “a Penney store in practically town above 5,000 and many smallerones”) despite recent inroads into some key Eastern and Midwestern markets. “Inthe East, nobody knows a damn thingabout the Penney Co.”, one manager was quoted as saying.  To be sure, building up the Penney reputationto the same level it enjoyed in the West would take time, with rough going in anumber of markets. In Camden, New Jersey for example, Penney went head-to-headwith Gimbels, Strawbridge & Clothier and Lit Brothers, “(whose) heavy advertisingpull(ed) customers away from Penney’s, not toward it”. And in Cincinnati, wherePenney opened a stunning new store in 1948, fierce competition from Shillito’s andothers kept the store in the red for nearly two years after opening, a mostunusual occurrence for Penney.

Over time, Eastern Penney store managers, many of whomstarted with the company in its native West, would adapt to the unique needs oftheir new markets.  The article cites theCamden store manager, for example, who began with Penney in Spokane, Washington,transferring to Milwaukee then to Quincy, Illinois before landing at the helmin Camden, a market where a constant barrage of advertising was necessary todrive sales, a situation he hadn’t experienced in his earlier tours of duty. The manager of the Springfield, Massachusetts unit worked inPenney’s San Francisco flagship store, moving to Santa Barbara before traversingthe country to run the Springfield store. New England customers, as a rule,were very different from those in California. “In buying curtains a Californiacustomer wants to know first how wide the ruffle is, how full it is, and whatthe colors are; the Springfield customer asks whether the organdy (a type of fabricoften used in curtains) is permanently finished, how securely the ruffles aresewed on and how long it will last”. Another cited example concerned towels, thenas now one of Penney’s strongest product lines. Whereas bath towels typically outsoldface towels 2 to 1 “presumably because a bath towel can serve either purpose”,in the Springfield store the opposite was true. The manager was undecided as to“whether the frugal New Englanders use face towels after they bathe, or whetherthey are just trying out Penney face towels before shooting the moon and buyingthe larger size.” (They also tended to say “ayuh” when responding affirmativelyto questions, a point the article curiously omits.)

In any event, Americans were buying more face towels, bathtowels, washcloths and all manner of other linens from their local J.C. Penneystore than anywhere else, in addition to clothes for the whole family. “King ofthe Soft Goods”, indeed, but big changes lie ahead.The first four photos above appear by courtesy of the J.C.Penney Archives at the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University, thelast is from an original slide in my collection. From the 1950’s, the followinglocations are depicted: Stockton, Long Beach and Glendale, California, followedby Rockwood, Tennessee (apparently a much older store, refaced) and Albuquerque,New Mexico, with a very nice hat tip to the area’s traditional adobe architecture.Note the gas stations represented in the picture – a Phillips 66 sign rightnext door, with a Conoco station across the street from it. Across the streetfrom the Penney store itself, reflected in the store windows, is what appears tobe a “Teague” Texaco. If you have a free week this summer, you can read aboutthose and more here.      

July 2, 1962 - The First Walmart Opens

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Ben Franklin could’ve had it made. I’m not referring to the “foundingfather”, of course – the one Americans will honor tomorrow, he of the long hairand granny glasses, kites, keys and lightning bolts, Almanacks and The SaturdayEvening Post. I mean the famous variety store chain that borrowed its name fromol’ Ben, the “Ben Franklin 5 and 10 cent stores” that dotted communitiesnationwide for a big chunk of the 20th century.   Samuel Moore Walton of Bentonville, Arkansas was far and awayone of Ben Franklin’s most successful franchisees. Starting with a lone storein Newport, Arkansas in 1945, by 1962 he had 16 profitable stores in Arkansas,Missouri and Oklahoma. In addition to being an unusually savvy retailer, Sam Waltonwas a researcher - a true “retail scientist.” An idea sponge. His laboratories,in this case, were the pioneering discount stores of the Northeast – Korvette, Annand Hope, Mammoth Mart and others who by the late fifties were sowing the seedsof a full-scale retail revolution that would bloom within a few short years.  Walton saw the enthusiastic response to theseexciting stores and saw no reason why their concept couldn’t be duplicated inthe rural towns of the South, areas that were primarily served by small chainstores and mom-and-pop shops. In many places, even those were few and farbetween.Having formulated his ideas and drawn up his plans, Sam didthe loyal thing – he flew up to Chicago to meet with the execs of hisfranchisor, Butler Brothers, the parent company of Ben Franklin. There, he mappedout his discount store concept in great detail, covering all of the key aspects– the larger stores, the plethora of departments, the everyday low prices, the streamlineddistribution model whereby Butler would do most of it themselves, eliminating thecostly middlemen wholesalers. Then he offered it them, lock, stock and barrel,if only Butler would be willing to carry the plans out. They told him to stuff it,so to speak.  Rejected, he returned home to Bentonville, and on July 2,1962, fifty years ago yesterday, he opened the store pictured above – the firstWalmart store, in nearby Rogers, Arkansas. (The photo itself is circa 1970. The“Discount City” sign was added shortly after opening, a tagline they used forover three decades.) Not long after the first store opened, the Butler brasstraveled to Rogers and saw firsthand the favorable customer reactions. They pulledWalton aside and told him “Don’t open any more of these Walmarts”, lest hejeopardize his relationship with their company. His exact response isn’t recorded,but through his actions Walton essentially told them to stuff it. So to speak.Within four years, there were five Walmarts, and by 1980 therewere nearly 300. Today, the company has over 9,000 stores internationally andthey are the undisputed King of Retail. Best I can tell, no one is even vyingfor the crown.   Here is the grand opening ad for that landmark store,boasting 22 departments! (And some way-cool specs!) For those interested in learning more about the Walmart story,let me commend to you the fine book pictured below. “Mr. Sam: How Sam Walton Built Wal-Mart and Became America’s Richest Man”, written by former Wall StreetJournal reporter and editor Karen Blumenthal  and published last fall. I was able to help Karensource some photos for the book, and she very kindly sent me a copy. Writtenfor the “young readers” market, it’s an intelligent, entertaining,well-illustrated biography that will definitely appeal to adults with an interestin retail history and/or modern-day commercial culture.  Walmart books (with the exception of Walton’s autobiography “Madein America”, an essential read) tend to fall into one of two categories – the “fawningover Walmart” group or the “Walmart as scourge of humankind” group.  Blumenthal takes a very balanced approach, and“young readers” notwithstanding, gives a great amount of historical detail andinsight into the events and personalities that shaped the company. Importantly,the book doesn’t shy away from the controversies of recent years. It’s a verysatisfying look at an important historical figure.