Retailing: Low-Pressure Profits

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Though he is at heart as hard-driving a retailer as any discounter going, Gump strains for casualness in his store, adamantly refuses to set sales quotas for his 170 employees. One year, he relates, "I told a sales meeting, 'I expect 10% less sales next year.' That year our sales went up 15%." In 1961 it seems certain that Gump's business will hit another high, but even though the year is well along, Dick Gump still refuses to predict what sales will be. "If you had a projected sales figure," says he, "you'd have to exert pressure to make it."