Word: discount
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Offering everything from garden tools to groceries to girdles at discount prices, the new complex will be the latest of 30 White Front stores that Interstate has strung through California. It will also be the showplace of a fast-growing nationwide retailing chain that now numbers 114 stores, including Topps stores through the East and Midwest and toy-selling Children's Supermart stores in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, as well as 31 conventional department stores in 12 states...
Interstate is one of the few retailers to have mastered the uncertain art of discount selling at a sizable profit. Its sales have soared from $66 million in 1958 to an estimated $555 million last year. With about 90% of its annual business coming from its discount operations, the company has become the nation's third biggest discounter, after S. S. Kresge and E. J. Korvette. And with estimated 1967 profits of $11 million, Interstate earned an impressive 16.9% on capital, compared with 11.3% for Kresge and 8.3% for Korvette...
Determined to get rid of marginal operations, Cantor sold or shut down 15 of Interstate's 46 department stores, put the proceeds into acquiring White Front and other discount chains, and expanded them at a rapid pace. This year alone, Interstate will open 15 to 20 new stores, including the San Francisco White Front...
Brisk Turnover. Among many cost-cutting techniques, Cantor has installed a centralized-buying operation, in which cash registers at key discount stores keep itemized sales records on tape for processing by a Manhattan computer. When stocks run low on a particular item, the computer automatically reorders it from the manufacturer. Store personnel can thus be freed from time-consuming inventory taking, and shelves are kept supplied for a brisk, six-times-yearly stock turnover, compared with three times for department stores...
...protection (fire, theft, etc.), plus a collision policy requiring them to pay the first $100 in repairs. In Los Angeles five years ago, that package cost $279 a year for a couple with an 18-year-old son, even though his high school driving course got them a 10% discount and he used their low-priced car for pleasure only. Today the cost is $342-up 23%. In Houston, the rate has risen 49%, to $284.40. Boston tops the U.S. with a yearly premium...