Montgomery Ward

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Montgomery Ward Inc is the name of two historically different American retail companies. This may refer to dead mail orders and department store retailers, operating between 1872 and 2001, or to the current catalog and online retailers also known as Wards .

Original Montgomery Ward (1872-2001) Original Montgomery Ward (1872-2001) h2>

Origin company

Montgomery Ward was founded by Aaron Montgomery Ward in 1872. Ward has understood the idea of â€‹â€‹mail-order dry goods business in Chicago, Illinois, after several years working as a traveling salesman among rural customers. He observes that rural customers often want "city" goods, but their only access to them is through rural retailers who have little competition and do not offer any quality assurance. Ward also believes that by eliminating intermediaries, he can cut costs and make various items available to rural customers, who can buy items by mail and pick them up at nearby train stations.

Ward started his business in his first office, either in a room at 825 North Clark Street, or in a loft above the stables on Kinzie Street between Rush and State Street. He and his two partners used the $ 1,600 they had accumulated with capital and published their first catalog in August 1872. It consisted of a 12-inch price list in a 20-cm price list, a list of 163 items for sale with written ordering instructions by Ward. Two of his colleagues left the following year, but he continued a struggling business and joined his brother-in-law, George Robinson Thorne.

In the first few years, the business was not well received by rural retailers. Considering Wards as a threat, they sometimes openly burn their catalogs. Despite these contradictions, however, the business grew rapidly over the next few decades, driven by demand primarily from rural customers inspired by a wide selection of items not available to them locally. The customer is also inspired by the company's innovative policy of "guaranteed satisfaction or your money back", which Ward started in 1875. Ward returned the copy to the department head, but he continued to examine every detail in the catalog for accuracy.

In 1883, the company catalog, which came to be known as "The Book of Desire", had grown to 240 pages and 10,000 items. In 1896, Wards experienced the first serious competition in mail order business, when Richard Warren Sears introduced its first public catalog. In 1900, Wards had total sales of $ 8.7 million, compared with $ 10 million for Sears, and both companies will fight for dominance for much of the 20th century. In 1904, the company has grown in such a way that it sends three million catalogs, each weighing 4 pounds (1.8 kg), to customers.

In 1908, the company opened a 1,25 million square foot (116,000 m ²) building that stretches for nearly a quarter of a mile from the Chicago River, north of downtown Chicago. The building, known as Montgomery Ward & amp; Co Catalog House, served as corporate headquarters until 1974, when offices moved onto the road to a new tower designed by Minoru Yamasaki. The catalog house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1978 and a historic landmark of Chicago in May 2000. In the decade before 1930, Montgomery Ward built a network of major distribution centers across the country in Baltimore, Fort Worth, Kansas City, St. Louis. Paul, Portland, and Oakland. In most cases, reinforced concrete structures are the largest industrial structures in their respective locations. Baltimore Montgomery Warehouse and Retail Store was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.

Expansion to retail outlets

Ward died in 1913, after 41 years of running a catalog business. The company's president, William C. Thorne (the eldest son of co-founder), died in 1917, and was replaced by Robert J. Thorne. Robert Thorne retired in 1920 for illness.

In 1926, the company broke with the mail-order-only tradition when it opened its first retail outlet store in Plymouth, Indiana. The company continued to operate its catalog business while pursuing an aggressive campaign to build retail outlets in the late 1920s. In 1928, two years after opening its first outlet, it opened 244 stores. In 1929, he had more than doubled the number of outlets to 531. His flagship retail store in Chicago is located on Michigan Avenue between the streets of Madison and Washington.

In 1930, the company rejected the merger offer from its rival Sears chain. Losing money during the Great Depression, the company is concerned about its main investors, including J. P. Morgan. In 1931, Morgan hired Sewell Avery as president who cut staff and store levels, changing lanes, renting stores instead of updated catalog and store managers. This action caused the company to become profitable before the late 1930s.

The environment is very successful in its retail business. The shop "green tents" adorn hundreds of small towns across the country. Large stores are built in big cities. By the late 1930s, Montgomery Ward had become the country's largest retailer and Sewell Avery became the company's chief executive officer.

In 1939, as part of a Christmas promotion campaign, staff copywriter Robert L. May created the characters and illustrations of the poem "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer." The store distributed six million copies of the storybook in 1946 and actor and singer Gene Autry popularized the song nationally.

In 1946, the Grolier Club, a bibliophiles community in New York City, showcased the Wards catalog with Webster's Dictionary as one of 100 American books selected for their influence on people's lives and cultures. The brand name of the store becomes embedded in America's popular consciousness and is often referred to by the nickname Monkey Ward (corruption of Mont'gy Ward), both affectionate and mocking.

Government seizure

In April 1944, four months became a national strike by the company's 12,000 employees, US Army troops captured Montgomery Ward & amp; Chicago; Company. The seizure was ordered because Avery refused to complete the strike as requested by the Roosevelt government because of its adverse effects on the delivery of goods needed during the war. Avery refused to obey the orders of the War Workers' Council to recognize unions and institutionalize terms of collective bargaining. Eight months later, with Montgomery Ward continuing to refuse to recognize the union, President Roosevelt issued an executive order that confiscated all Montgomery Ward properties nationwide, citing the War Dispute Law and his powers under the Constitution as commander-in-chief. In 1945, Truman ended the foreclosure and the Supreme Court concluded a pending appeal as disputed.

Decline

After World War II, Sewell Avery believed that the country would fall back into recession or even depression. He decides not to open a new store, and does not even allow spending on paint to refresh the existing stores. The plan is to profit banks to maintain liquidity when recession or depression hit, and then buy retail competition. However, without a new store or investment returning to business, Montgomery Ward declined in sales volume compared to Sears; many blamed Avery's conservative decision, which did not seem to understand the economic changes of the postwar years. When the new shopping centers were built after the war, it was Sears who got the best location, and the Wards closed off every chance to flourish. Nevertheless, for many years, Wards is still the country's third-largest department store chain.

In 1955, investor Louis Wolfson waged a high-profile proxy fight to gain control of Montgomery Ward's board. The new council forced Avery's resignation. This fight led to a state court ruling that Illinois firms were not entitled to vote for parliamentary elections under state law, and to demand taxes on whether the cost of proxy fights was "normal and necessary business expenditures." In time, it helps inspire the new Securities and Exchange Commission rules on proxies.

Meanwhile, throughout the 1950s, the company was slow to respond to the general movement of the American middle class to the suburbs. While its competitors, Sears, JCPenney, Macy's, Gimbels, and Dillard set up new outlets in suburban shopping centers, Avery and top executives were reluctant to expand like that. They are trapped in the city center and their main street store until the company loses too much market share to compete with its competitors. After Avery's departure in 1955, it took two years before the first new store since the 1930s opened in 1957. The ward tried to be more aggressive with the opening of the store, but it was too late: the competition had taken the best spot. Because the shops look worn and crumpled, malls often do not allow Wards to build there. The catalog business also began to decline in the 1960s.

In 1961, president John Barr hired Robert Elton Brooker to lead Montgomery Ward as president in his turn. Brooker brought along a number of new management people, including Edward Donnell, former manager of Sears' Los Angeles store. Wards of the new management team reached turnaround reducing the number of suppliers from 15,000 to 7,000 and the number of brands brought down from 168 to 16. Ward's personal brand was 95 percent volume compared to 40 percent in 1960. These changes resulted in lower handling costs and quality standards higher. Centralized purchases but store operations decentralized, under a new territory system that mimics Sears. In 1966, Ed Donnell was appointed President of Montgomery Ward. Brooker continued as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until the mid-1970s. In 1968 as Brooker helped engineer friendly mergers with Container Corporation of America; the new company was named MARCOR. In 1974, Car oil companies bought MARCOR.

During the 1970s, the company continued to struggle. In 1973, 102nd year in business, he bought a small discount store chain, Jefferson Stores, Inc. which is headquartered in Miami. The store was renamed Jefferson Ward stores. In 1976 Cars, dousing with cash from recent oil price hikes, acquired Montgomery Ward. In 1980, Car realized that Montgomery Ward shops were less good than Jefferson's stores, and decided that high-quality discount units along the Dayton Hudson Company Target line would be the future of retailers. In 18 months, management completed the size of the operation, now called Jefferson Ward, to more than 40 units and plans to change one-third of Montgomery Ward's existing stores into Jefferson Ward models. The burden of serving new stores falls to a small Jefferson staff, being overwhelmed by the increasing number of stores, having no experience in handling some of the product lines they carry, and not accustomed to buying for the northern market. Almost immediately, Jefferson has turned from a small moneymaker into a huge drain on profits. The company sold its 18th north division of the store to Bradlees, the Stop & amp; Shop, in 1985. The remaining stores were closed.

In 1985, the company closed its catalog business after 113 years and started an aggressive policy to renovate its remaining stores. It restructures many stores in larger downtown areas and rich neighborhoods into specialty boutique shops, as it attracts businesses from traditional department stores. In 1988, the company's management made a successful $ 3.8 billion purchase, making Montgomery Ward a private company.

In 1987, the company began pushing into consumer electronics, using the name "Electric Avenue". Montgomery Ward greatly expanded its electronic presence by switching from a mixture of self-dominated labels to a wide range dominated by major brands such as Sony, Toshiba, Hitachi, Panasonic, JVC, and others. Vice President Vic Sholis, who later became president of the Tandy Brand Brand Retail Group (McDuff, VideoConcepts, and Incredible Universe), led this strategy. In 1994, revenue increased 94% largely due to the highly successful direct marketing arm of Montgomery Ward. For a short time, the company reentered the mail-order business, via "Montgomery Ward Direct", a mail order company licensed to the catalog giant Fingerhut. However, in the mid-1990s, sales margins were eroded in competitive electronics and hard tools, traditionally the strongest line of Montgomery Ward.

In 1989, Jim Hamilton who headed the department of Small Electronics (later known as the Father of Retail Computers) runs aggressive PC prices in the Montgomery Ward ad. The low promotional price was $ 1,499, unheard of at the time. Computer Promotion is very successful. (Hamilton, in cooperation with Packard Bell, then, for the first time, broke the PC 999 price point for "back to school" promotions.) After a successful promotion, Hamilton developed a business plan to launch the first National Branded Computer Product Department in the world. The executive approved the plan and allocated space in three Sacramento stores to create a SOHO (Small Office Home Office) department. Because many brands, such as Hewlett Packard and Panasonic will not interfere with their dealer channels and sell directly to Montgomery Ward. Hamilton had to create relationships with many distributors to bring together branded departments. When Sacramento stores open up shelves including brands like Hewlett Packard Printers, OkiData Printers and others that have never been in the National Retailer. The test was a huge success and the SOHO department rolled out to all Montgomery Ward locations. Montgomery Ward was one of the first retailers to bring consumer products from IBM, Apple, Compaq, Hewlett Packard, Western Digital, and many others. The SOHO department was carved into a separate division of the company and quickly became the largest revenue-generating division of Montgomery Ward, with revenues of more than $ 4 billion.

In 1994, Wards acquired the recently deceased New England retail chain, Lechmere.