Word: berkey
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...unhappy hiatus in Berkey & Gay's life, the solid citizens of Grand Rapids blame the well-meaning but ill-timed effort of Zalmon G. Simmons, then head of Simmons Co. (beds), to break down the conservative tradition of Grand Rapids merchandising. This was a tradition of virtual subservience to dealers. Beginning with the first Berkey Grand Rapids furniture show in 1878, buyers from widely different localities had been allowed endless caprice. People in the U. S. had formed no assured taste in furniture, and Grand Rapids manufacturers made no attempt to form a taste for them. Berkey & Gay sold...
...Simmons Co. bought Berkey & Gay, put in a new management. At that time Berkey & Gay was doing a business of nearly $10,000,000 per year, making most of Grand Rapids' share (33%) of the fine period reproductions in the U. S. It was Bedman Simmons' belief that if the exclusive dealerships were abolished, the semi-annual furniture shows allowed to lapse and standard Berkey & Gay furniture distributed through Simmons warehouses to a mass market awakened by national advertising, the old name and the new methods would be good for an annual business of at least...
...plummeted from $188 per share in September 1929 to $11 in 1930. The insolvency record of the furniture industry went from 79 manufacturers with total liabilities of $3,710,000 in 1929 to 143 manufacturers with liabilities of $11,223,000 in 1932. Included in the latter figure was Berkey & Gay, which closed down its plants in 1931, went into receivership in February...
...calamity but never really believed it. It was certainly not the fault of Grand Rapids, said its citizens, but of the evil loose in the world and the merchandising policies of Simmons. In 1934 the City of Grand Rapids hired an industrial engineer to survey the possibilities of reopening Berkey & Gay. Grand Rapids businessmen went into a huddle with promoters. Promoter Frank Donald McKay, who had worked in Grand Rapids furniture factories as a boy. had a long string of organizations and reorganizations to his credit. Poker-faced, astute, potent in Michigan politics, he served as State Treasurer...
Promoter McKay and his partner, Abe Dembinsky, onetime Detroit auctioneer, bought the $2,000,000 Berkey & Gay property last spring for $75,000 in cash and assumption of tax liabilities amounting to $180,000. They sounded out the old dealers who had held Berkey & Gay franchises, found 124 of them ready to give estimates of a year's requirements. Collecting old-time Berkey & Gay officers for the new company, they hired 300 men to open up one plant last autumn, floated $1,600,000 in new stock, started commercial production last April...