RETAILING: Family Affair

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"We like merchandising; it is in our blood," said the top man in the nation's top department-store chain last week. For cherubic Fred Lazarus Jr., 73, chairman of Federated Department Stores, Inc., this enjoyment of selling has paid big dividends. Last year for the first time Federated edged Allied Stores as the nation's top retailer. Last week Federated reported its best earnings ever: six-month profits of $7.9 million from sales of $280 million.

Fred Lazarus regards Federated pretty much as a family affair. Fortnight ago Fred's son Maurice, 43, was named president of Federated's Boston store, Filene's. Seven members of the Lazarus clan are sprinkled through Federated's top levels.* But "Mr. Fred," as Lazarus is known to the trade, bristles at any mention of nepotism. "Nepotism smacks of favoritism. Everyone in our family has had to earn his position." The young Lazaruses usually start in the basement, work up from stock boys or salesmen, must prove they can sell before moving higher.

Folies to Filene's. Federated has done so well because it tries to make each store a community institution, fits its prices and products to almost every purse. Boston's Filene's is as much a landmark as the Common or Fenway Park, prides itself on being the world's biggest specialty store with the world's most famed bargain basement. Filene's professional buyers picked up Paris dresses at a song in 1940 just before the Germans marched in, emptied out the seagoing haberdashery aboard the Queen Mary when it was converted to a wartime troopship. Filene's customers got these bargains—plus hip-length hose from the Folies-Bergère and smoke-damaged goods from Dallas' Neiman-Marcus—at cut-rate prices that are automatically trimmed 25% after twelve selling days, 50% after 18, 75% after 24. If unsold after a month, the goods are given to charity.

In traditionally unsophisticated Brooklyn, Federated's Abraham & Straus often plugs its goods in sophisticated ads with its slogan ("Do not say you cannot find it until you have shopped at A & S!") spelled out in Latin, Greek, French or Icelandic. It lives up to its slogan by providing such items as lefthanded scissors, cutters for soft-boiled eggs, holders for used tea bags, concave head brushes for bald men (with nylon bristles). While every other major Brooklyn department store has closed or sold out in the past ten years, A & S has grown more prosperous than ever, now boasts the second biggest sales among New York City stores (after Macy's).