Word: amanas
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...seven handsome villages near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, some 1,400 members of one of the nation's strangest sects sat down last week to sausages, hams, homemade cheeses, beer and wine. The Amana Society was celebrating the 100th anniversary of its charter in Iowa, and the neat homes, the television sets, the modern appliances and the new cars all testified to prosperity-a prosperity that Amana has enjoyed since it rejected communism and turned with all its zeal to capitalism nearly 30 years...
Among them are Iowa's Amana Refrigerator, Inc., which concentrates its advertising budget on home freezers, claims to be the biggest producer of them; Michigan's Ironrite Co., which grosses $6,000,000 a year by renting ironing machines, letting housewives apply payments toward later purchase of ironers; Philadelphia's Proctor Electric Co., which turned out an iron with steam holes over its entire sole rather than just the tip, now has sales galloping 300% ahead of last year...
...sets as the No. i seller in home appliances. In Los Angeles, Sears, Roebuck is selling its Coldspot freezers along with arrangements to stock them with food at 25% below retail prices; the Bank of America is financing the Sears food plan on six-month loans. Big Amana Refrigeration, Inc. (TIME, Jan. 16, 1950), which makes freezers for Maytag, got a head start on the freezer boom because one of its distributors, John Bess, pioneered one of the biggest food plans in the East. Through his Freezer Owners Association of America, Bess has made his pitch in 22 East Coast...
...plant turned out household refrigerators and butcher's display cases, pioneered in freezers and air-conditioning equipment. By the end of World War II, Amana's leading line, a $500 home freezer, was being sold in nearly 5,000 retail outlets, backed by national advertising. By last year, the refrigerator plant, still run by Foerstner, employed 350 workers in the peak season (including non-Amanists), and grossed nearly $3,000,000. Such capitalistic prosperity proved too frightening to the 1,500 Amanists...
...Manufacturer Howard Hall and half a dozen associates, for $1,100,000 plus outstanding accounts receivable, bringing the total to about $1,750,000. Why? Storekeeper William H. Zuber summed it up: "Too many eggs in one basket." With 40-50% of its total income coming from refrigerator sales, Amana feared that it might go broke if the bottom dropped out of the refrigerator market. And the expense of keeping up with high-powered competition ($300,000 to tool up for a new line) seemed like too much of a gamble to frugal German farmers...