Word: bluhdorns
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...Charles Bluhdorn, 39, Manhattan-based chairman of Gulf & Western Industries, a widely diversified company specializing in auto parts, began as a penniless immigrant. Now he is worth more than $15 million...
...wartime refugee, Vienna-born Bluhdorn came to Manhattan at 16, immediately went to work as a $15-a-week clerk in a cotton brokerage house. Later he rose to a $60-a-week job in a commodities house, where he learned the intricacies of that gyrating business and discovered the secret that got him going: fortunes can be made on a meager stake in international trade. At 23, he invested $3,000 and started his own export-import business in a small Manhattan office. Within eight years he had bagged his first million by buying an awful lot of coffee...
...Bluhdorn then decided on a strategically wise maneuver. He used his profits to buy into a more secure and promising business: auto replacement parts. In a Balkanized industry that has thousands of small suppliers, he figured that the best goal was to knit together a nationwide network of manufacturing plants, warehouses and distributors. First he bought and merged a small-parts manufacturer and a parts distributor, then gradually parlayed profits and loans to add more companies...
Where Credit Is Due. This troika, powered by loans from the Chase Manhattan and other banks, has bought up or signed exclusive contracts with 500 jobbers. Those who hitch to Bluhdorn's wagon get several advantages: G. & W. gives them national advertising, marketing advice and long-term credits. Most important, it sells wholesale parts made by other manufacturers as well as its own, and promises overnight delivery...
...ranged afar from auto parts to take over such firms as Chicago's Miller Manufacturing (steel castings and forgings), Connecticut's Mal Tool (aerospace components) and Long Island's Unicord Inc. (musical instruments). Outside of G. & W., Bluhdorn and some other associates in the past two years have bought control of New York City's Ward Foods (TipTop bread) and the Bohack supermarket chain (196 stores). When acting for G. & W., Bluhdorn often uses stock instead of cash to buy out companies, shuns ailing firms. "We have no time to be doctors," he says. The deal...