Retailing: Low-Pressure Profits

While more and more retailers stampede customers with discount prices and waylay them near home with suburban branches, the pride of San Francisco's Post Street, Gump's Inc., prospers by remaining as aloof as Kipling's cat. With arrogant contempt for trends, Gump's eight years ago sold its only two branch stores (in Honolulu and Carmel, Calif.), and the nearest thing to a loss leader a Gump's customer can expect to find is a pair of pewter and brass candlesticks reduced from $250 to $125. Yet in a little more than a decade, Gump's sales have almost doubled, last year...