Word: rosenwalds
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...Under Rosenwald's guidance, Sears, Roebuck became a less flamboyant but far more prosperous company. Rosenwald made it a rule that the advertising copy should accurately describe the merchandise, laid down rigid standards for suppliers, set up his own testing bureau and started factories to make goods he couldn't buy. By 1919 sales were up to $258 million...
...during the disastrous postwar farm price break, Rosenwald saved Sears by lending it $21 million in cash & pledges to tide it over. He made another big contribution to the company's future three years later. That was when he hired General Robert Wood, who had started on a merchandising career at Montgomery Ward...
...small office in Sears' block-long home in Chicago, which, in 1905, when it was opened, was the "world's largest office building." Wood still uses the same walnut desk that Rosenwald used, sits in the same leather chair, keeps extra papers in another traditional rolltop desk in the corner. But there is nothing old-fashioned about Wood's business philosophy; he runs Sears "in terms of the democratic spirit." Says Wood: "We put our faith in men, not systems. I like to let a man learn by making a few mistakes, as long as they...
From $30,000 to $300,000. Julius Rosenwald, whom Wood had met in wartime Washington, promptly grabbed him. At Ward, Wood had been making $30,000 a year; at Sears, his salary and bonuses as vice president soon totaled $300,000. But Wood was not satisfied; he wanted to revolutionize Sears so that it could mesh gears with the revolution the auto had brought to the U.S. "Imagine it!" he says. "The country was filled with talk about the automobile, Henry Ford was making shopping mobile, yet not a single retailer saw what the impact of the automobile would...
...more capitalists. That's what we're doing at Sears." In the low-paying retailing industry, Sears pays clerks an average of $60 a week, considerably above the retail average. But the real device for making capitalists is Sears' profit-sharing plan, which was started by Rosenwald in 1916 and has become the wonder of the pension world. Thousands of Sears employees have retired with small fortunes. Sample: a woman clerk who never made more than $3,900 a year and contributed only $3,400 to the retirement fund in 35 years retired last year with...