Whole Foods Founder Begins a New Adventure
Whole Foods Founder Begins a New Adventure At the American Business History Center, we rarely comment on current events or living entrepreneurs. At the same time, our study of the lessons of the past is motivated by our desire to understand the present and the...
Magnanimous Merchant: Julius Rosenwald
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series.\ In this American Originals series, we’ve recounted the life stories of men and women who created great inventions and enterprises. None of them had more energy and drive than the shy...
The Wonders of Chain Stores and Franchises
This article was originally published by the Archbridge Institute. I often hear people say that they dislike chain stores or chain restaurants, “big box” stores, or franchises. America has long had a love-hate relationship with the big chains. Understanding the...
How to be Visionary: First Principles & Learning from History
Today I write a more personal note, which we don’t often do in these newsletters. My lifelong study of businesses, working in them and starting them, has led me to think about how one sees the future clearly. The many great business leaders we profile on...
Can Companies Re-invent Themselves? The Target Story
Much has been written about the idea of “reinventing” your company. However, in my 50+ years of studying big business, I have rarely seen it happen — successfully. Here, from the treasure trove that is business history, one of the few cases of a...
Gimbel Brothers Department Stores: Dust to Dust
The retailing industry is a continuous story of the rise and fall of companies. No enterprise stays on top forever in this highly competitive field that touches our lives every day. Today we look at a company, now long forgotten, named Gimbel...
Father of Modern Sales: The Remarkable Mr. Patterson
In our article on the three greatest companies in American history, we listed both General Motors and IBM. Neither of those companies would have been the great successes they were without the contributions of proteges of John Henry Patterson, though he did not...
Success Lost & Found: Sherwin-Williams
While most big companies disappear over time (as shown in our recent newsletter), some figure out how to survive and prosper decade after decade, even century after century. But is the journey from founding to long-term durability a straight path? Today...
Retailing Trends 1992 through 2020
The $6.3 trillion US retailing industry has evolved continuously since the end of the Civil War, when the first chain grocery stores and first department stores began to develop. This chart, based on data from the US Census, shows how the different types of...
Our Great Department Stores 40 Years Ago
Here is the article closest to my heart, which I had never intended to publish this soon, but once I got rolling on it, I could not stop.Gary Hoover Today, America’s great old department stores are under siege. The reasons for their decline are manifold,...1979 Department Store Database
Click here to download the excel file.
Our Friend the Grocery Store: 40 Years of Change
In these difficult times, few companies are doing more for us than our food retailers. From aggressive steps by the largest food retailer in the world, Walmart, to advance planning by regional firms such as HEB in Texas, the nation’s grocers are continuing to...
Living Architecture from a Dying Company
We have previously written about the rise of Sears, Roebuck to become the world’s greatest retailer. The company’s subsequent decline now fills the headlines and is apparent across America. Yet important vestiges, physical memorials, of the...
The Data-Driven Visionary
In 1941, Fred Lazarus, Jr., had some time to kill in Houston. He had come to visit his son Ralph who was serving in the Army at nearby Ellington Field. Twelve years earlier, Lazarus and his family had united their family-owned Lazarus department...
Supermarket: One of the Most Important (and least known) American Inventions of All Time
This Sunday, August 4, is the 89th anniversary of a huge innovation with a global, lasting impact – the supermarket. On August 4, 1930, Michael Cullen opened his “huge” King Kullen store in the Jamaica section of Queens, New York City.While this date is...
The Bookstop Story by co-founder Gary Hoover
I started collecting books by the time I was 8 years old, starting with a Rand McNally world atlas. I think it cost $1, and I still have it. My addiction has led me to live with my 57,000 books in an odd old commercial building in a small historic Texas...Covering Retailing on Wall Street at Citibank 1973-1975
I fell in love with retailing by the time I was 13. After studying economics in college at the University of Chicago, I wanted to become a securities analyst covering the retail industry on Wall Street (which of course means the industry, not necessarily on that...
Payless Shoe Source: History with the May Department Stores Company
With the final collapse of Payless Shoes in February 2019, I figured I better record a bit of their history as I know it. In my 5 years at May Department Stores’ corporate headquarters in St. Louis from 1977 to 1981, I evolved to become the “strategic...
The Corporate Giant Whose History Almost Nobody Knows
Originally Published on Hooversworld.com on May 22, 2018 Who would have guessed that a medium-sized retailer which never put its name on a store would evolve to become the 7th largest company in America, a place where millions of Americans shop every day? My first job...
Robert Brooker: Unsung Warrior in One of the Greatest Battles in Business
This article first appeared on October 11, 2017 on Hooversworld.com. “Far greater it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered with failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live...US Retailing Industry History
Largest American discount store chains 1968
Here is a list of the largest US discount store chains in 1968. Note that K Mart, Target, and Walmart were all founded in 1962, six years earlier. However, Walmart was not nearly big enough to make this list! Source: Discount Merchandiser Magazine, June 1969...Retail Industry History Data
Here are the data slides from our video on the history of this industry. Retail History Data (PDF)Largest American Retailers 1929-2015
This spreadsheet contains extensive data on the largest US publicly-held retailers in 1929, 1955, 1985, and 2015. Source: Compiled by Gary Hoover from Fortune magazine lists of the biggest retailers in 1955, 1985, and 2015, and from the 1930 Moody’s Industrial Manual....
General Robert Wood: The Forgotten Man Who Changed Sears and the World
This article first appeared on August 22, 2018 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. Before there was Amazon, there was Sears, Roebuck, using the mail-order catalog where the Internet is used today. Before Walmart...
J. C. Penney, the Man: A Life of Perpetual Sharing
This article first appeared on December 7, 2017 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. From inauspicious beginnings rose one of the great entrepreneurs in American history, a man with unusual dedication and exceptionally...
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