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...Support Us
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