Word: profitability
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...automakers, hardest hit by the recession, last week gave out the bad news for the third quarter. Ford reported a loss of $21.6 million, bringing the deficit for nine months to $16.2 million, v. $229.5 million profit in the same period last year. Chrysler's ink was even redder: its third-quarter loss of $20-million pushed the loss for nine months to a total of $45.2 million, v. a $103.6 million profit in 1957. Studebaker-Packard, which lost $12.4 million in the first nine months of 1957, lost $22.5 million through this September...
...surprises of the recession was the steel industry's ability to operate at less than half capacity and still turn a profit. The chief reason for steel's sturdiness was a widespread modernization program, which cut industry costs and made production more efficient. Few firms benefited more handsomely from that policy than the nation's 17th-largest steel producer, a perky little maverick named Granite City Steel Co., located in Illinois just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. While the industry is back to about 75% of capacity, Granite City Steel this week is humming along...
...mayors of 39 nearby communities gathered this week to break ground for an addition to Behlen Manufacturing Co. and pay their respects to its president, Walter Behlen, 53, a corn-belt Edison. Inventor Behlen, a man given to loud sport shirts and a pink Cadillac, made a gross profit of exactly $194 his first year in business in 1940; last year he earned $3,309,000 by ceaselessly following a simple inventor's rule: "Ideas are a dime a dozen-it's doing something with them that counts...
...complain most loudly about the wide variety of products are the retailers. Most dealers agree that business would be better if there were fewer models to handle, find that most customers tend to concentrate on a few popular models anyway. "I feel that multiplicity affects profit," says Edward R. Taylor, Motorola executive vice president of consumer products. "It shortens the margins for the wholesaler and retailer." Says Buick General Manager Edward T. Ragsdale: "We reduced our models to make it simpler for our dealers to keep an adequate inventory on hand...
...Cork) of smooth-surface floor coverings, succeeding F. J. Andre, 59, who moved up to chairman. A salesman in the floor-covering industry since his graduation from Indiana University ('36), Cook joined Congoleum-Nairn in 1955 as a vice president in charge of sales just when sales and profits were turning down (deficit for the first nine months of this year: $1,964,720 v. $107,222 for the same period in 1957). Said Cook: "My job is to build up sales and correct the profit picture...