In His Shoes

Homespun, poker-playing Frank Chambless Rand, who expanded a horse & buggy shoe-selling route into the biggest U.S. shoe company, had a horror of nepotism. "I've learned in my lifetime," he liked to say, "that friendship is no basis for business, but business is an excellent basis for lasting friendship." Thus when Frank Rand died at 73 last December, his job as board chairman of St. Louis' International Shoe Co. was filled by no relative but by President Byron A. Gray, a former clerk.

Last week, nobody cried "nepotism" when Edgar Eugene Rand, 44, the founder's eldest son, moved up to the company's presidency. Like his father, husky Ed Rand was a poker-playing, hardheaded businessman who had never been coddled. He was sent to public school, later prepped at the Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tenn., where the boys took their baths in wash-tubs, got their water from a well.

In 1927, with an A.B. from Vanderbilt, Ed Rand went to work in his father's factory sorting leather; two years later he became a leather buyer. After a wartime hitch with OPA, WPB and SPAB, where he had charge of selling millions of surplus Army shoes, Rand went back to International as boss of production, merchandising and distribution, was made a vice president in 1947. The company he went back to had mushroomed from one plant in 1898 to 55 factories, eight tanneries, a rubber plant and a cotton mill, with 35,000 employees and 12,000 stockholders. International Shoe, which makes 10% of all U.S. shoes (48 million pairs last year), has never been in the red. Last year it rang up sales of $190 million, profits of $7.6 million.

Like his father, Ed Rand believes that the company's success is due to its flexibility of operation and concentration on sales to independent jobbers and retailers. Though fully half the U.S. shoe industry has set up its own retail outlets, Ed Rand still intends to rely on the independents as well as such chains as Sears, Roebuck and J. C. Penney. But he hopes to make some changes. Where his father carefully avoided any razzle-dazzle, Ed Rand hopes to step up sales with a louder blast on his advertising horn.