Business & Finance: Matriarch Magnin

One of the richer residents of San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel is Mrs. Mary Ann Magnin, the spry little 87-year-old founder of I. Magnin & Co., West Coast smartshop chain. Her daily routine includes a drive down the "Peninsula" in her Packard limousine, lunch at a Burlingame restaurant, a brief visit at the main store in San Francisco, dinner in the hotel's dining room. When she was younger she played a shrewd game of poker. Every April her 50-odd children, grandchildren and in-laws assemble for her birthday party, to which the St. Francis contributes a tremendous cake.* This April Matriarch Magnin will have a particularly happy birthday: in its 1935 annual report published last week, Magnin's showed sales of $8,900,000 and profits of $372,000—best year since 1930.

Magnin's is the swankest women's specialty-shop chain in the U. S. Besides the main store in San Francisco, it has shops in Seattle and in such California cities as Los Angeles, Pasadena, Hollywood, Santa Barbara, Oakland, Del Monte, Coronado. In a few stores there are collegegirl departments, similar to the debutante departments in big Manhattan specialty shops like Bonwit Teller's and Saks Fifth Avenue. In these Magnin's sells dresses as low as $22.75. But prices in general are near the top. Highest price ever paid for Magnin's ready-to-wear apparel was $1,500 for a dyed ermine suit with cloth-of-gold blouse, bought by cinemactress Claire Windsor in 1925. Magnin's will take only lines that it can handle exclusively in its territory. One of its West Coast exclusives is Hattie Carnegie gowns. Magnin keeps a buyer in Paris to watch styles, purchase creations by Lanvin, Vionnet, Patou, Schiaparelli, Chanel, Molyneux et al.

Magnin's customers are the richest and swankest between the Gulf of California and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Four-fifths of them run charge accounts, and, on Magnin's balance sheet, customer accounts are nearly three times as large as inventory and amount to 45% of all assets. But Magnin's has been in the red only twice—in 1932 and in 1906, the year of the San Francisco earthquake-fire when merchandising activities had to be carried on in the Magnin house.

The I. of I. Magnin & Co. was Mary Ann Magnin's husband Isaac, who emigrated from The Netherlands to the U. S. just before the Civil War, fought as a Confederate cavalryman, turned pushcart peddler in New Orleans. With some savings, he went to London to look for his long-lost father, found his bride in the search. Isaac Magnin then set himself up in London as a wood carver and gilder in a picture-framing shop. Late in the 1870's, the Magnin's set out for San Francisco. There Mrs. Magnin picked a shop between the business and residential districts to catch the trade both ways. Isaac Magnin carved and Mrs. Magnin sold notions. An energetic, dominating woman, handy with her needle, Mrs. Magnin began to make and sell fancy baby clothes, gradually branching into trousseaux. The shop followed the fashionable neighborhoods, and before long I. Magnin & Co. was a San Francisco institution. Eventually the business took on a corporate existence, though the public was not let In until 1919.