Word: barre
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JOHN ANDREW BARR, 51, handsome Hoosier, is the best proof in U.S. business that ugly ducklings do indeed turn into swans. As a vice president, secretary and legal counsel for Montgomery Ward & Co. under depression-minded, penny-pinching Chairman Sewell Avery, Barr was as undistinguished as a duckling; his chief claim to fame was that he showed a rare ability to survive the purges and resignations that cost Ward's five presidents and 30 vice presidents in 23 years. Barr managed to stay by avoiding open conflict with Avery, kept quiet about things that he knew he could...
...WHEN Barr took over, Ward's itself had an unpromising future. Fearing a crash, Avery had piled up a huge reserve of $327 million in cash and Government securities, but in every other way the company was sick. Says a Ward's executive: "Avery was actually liquidating the company, though he didn't realize it." Avery had hobbled the entire firm with his one man rule (he had to okay every expenditure over $100), and knocked employee morale to the bottom. Net sales dropped from $1.1 billion in 1950 to $999 million in 1954. Barr...
...four independent stores in the Chicago area, opened some 20 new modern retail stores in major shopping areas and equipped them with consumer-drawing features that would have shocked Sewell Avery: check-cashing booths, hunting and fishing license departments, gourmet and shoe-repair shops. By the end of 1958, Barr had reduced Ward's cash hoard from $327 million to $94.7 million. Says he: "By the end of 1959, we will have put all of our excess cash, previously invested in low-earning securities, to work in higher-earning merchandising assets...
SOME stockholders grumble that Barr has spent so much on expansion that earnings have suffered (they dropped below 1957 in 1958). But Barr argues that money spent now will bring benefits in higher profits later. The rise has started. Earnings in the first half this year jumped to $10.6 million from $8.6 million last year. In the next five years, Barr plans to spend $500 million on expansion. By 1963 he expects sales to be running at $1.8 or $2 billion a year...
...Cole's first love: the Cadillac engine. Even at parties Cole slipped out to his car to tinker with it. Once, working to tone down engine noise, Cole tiptoed into a party while everyone was standing around a piano and singing. He hauled out his longtime crony, Harry Barr, now Chevy's chief engineer. Said Cole, starting the car, "Listen!" Barr listened, said it sounded fine, and went back in to sing. But Cole stayed outside, listening to his engine music all night. "That," says Barr, "was the way Ed went to parties...