Word: discounter
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...hard put to find investment funds. Complains Ernst Schneider, president of the West German Chamber of Commerce: "The public sector is making demands on capital to such an extent that interest rates have reached a level worthy of an underdeveloped country." The Bundesbank has hiked Germany's discount rate twice this year, to 4% at present, and business loans commonly cost 7% to 8%. Still, German industrialists seem willing to pay the price to expand, have increased their investments 14% so far this year...
...years ago, requiems were being performed over the retail book trade in the U.S. Time-consuming TV and the faster pace of modern life, feared the booksellers, would pre-empt serious reading. The book clubs with their vast mail-order lists and, most of all, the price-cutting discount houses were challenging the conventional bookstore. Leonard Schwartz, president of Manhattan-based Brentano's, predicted that many booksellers would not survive discounting...
...Kroch's & Brentano's, which lists 150,000 titles, to the corner drugstores with their paperback racks. Of these outlets, 2,062 are traditional bookshops that sell both hardbacks and paperbacks, 352 are quality paperback stores (which do an $18 million-a-year business) and 882 are discount houses, department stores and supermarkets ($52 million annually). In addition, some 130 book clubs run up sales of $145 million a year, a trifling $3,000,000 below the general booksellers. Total of the annual U.S. book business, including college stores and specialized shops...
...York bookstores, which face the heaviest discount competition, have shown the industry how to fight back. Doubleday, whose two biggest-volume stores are within five blocks of each other on Fifth Avenue, offers a fast checking service, easy exchange of books bought at other stores, handsome wrapping and a record department. Brentano's has added ancient and modern art in original and reproduction, adult games and library furniture. Rizzoli has the elegance of an 18th century library, plans to offer browsers authentic espresso made with water imported from Italy. "Our customers are doing more than exchanging money...
...selected items. Many housewives who formerly shopped only at one supermarket now divide their weekly grocery budgets among several. Like the earlier competitive advantages of newer stores, broader product variety or better parking, trading stamps have ceased to be a decisive lure. This fact, along with the advent of discount supermarkets in many parts of the U.S., has begun to cause grocers to fight their competitive battles again on the old ground of lower prices...