Word: ferkauf
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...Minding the Store? For executive talent to mind his multiplying stores, Ferkauf turned to the recruiting ground he knew best: Brooklyn. Determined to keep himself free for decision making-he did not even hold a title at Korvette's until 1955 when, at his bankers' insistence, he invented for himself the job of chairman of the executive committee-Ferkauf delegated to one old friend after another all the time-nibbling detail work. A grammar school chum named Marty Agins has charge of the Westbury, Long Island, store. Joe Zwillenberg became company treasurer. Another executive job went...
...Even now Ferkauf himself draws a salary of only $30,000 a year (plus a $10,000 expense account), and all other Korvette salaries scale down from that. But at least ten of The Boys have become paper millionaires, and all work a frenetic 70 hours or more a week for their equity...
...Boys call one another by such Brooklyn schoolboy nicknames as "Doodie" or "Schmultzie." "This is a relaxed company," says Ferkauf, "so there is no need for formalities." At Korvette's, in fact, it is imprudent of any executive to throw his rank around. One store manager who got too highhanded with his subordinates was conspicuously omitted from a stock bonus list. Says he: "I'm nothing but a nice guy now. I learned the hard...
...cost me $100,000." Do-It-Yourself Merchandising. For all their open-shirted informality, this band of amateurs demonstrated a remarkable knack for gauging correctly the profitable trends in retailing. Under Ferkauf's endless prodding, they began to move into the rich markets of suburbia, added to their basic stock in trade-appliances-most of the lines of merchandise that department stores carry. Korvette's also began to put out its own private labels, from Kor-Val vitamins to the booming XAM stereo hi-fi line (named in a backward way after Max, an alley cat of Ferkauf...
Part of Korvette's mounting success consisted in riding a trend. In the early '503, Gene Ferkauf was only one of many brash young discounters onto a good new thing. A retailing upheaval was under way. The nationwide move to the suburbs was undercutting the downtown department stores. Not having their money tied up in huge and costly property, the discounters moved out to where the housewives and buyers were, catered to the car-borne family trade by providing huge parking lots, kept night hours, and sold on Sundays. The typical discount center became part supermarket, part department...