Merchandising: A Giant Step

For more than three months, spry, quixotic P. G. Winnett, 83, chairman and co-founder of the West Coast's Bullock's department stores, fought alone to rally stockholders against a merger with Federated Department Stores, the nation's biggest chain. Appealing to local pride, he warned that the "Eastern octopus" would crush Bullock's individuality. Bullock's other directors, led by Winnett's son-in-law, President Walter W. Candy Jr., 58, argued that a merger with Federated (60 stores, including Manhattan's Bloomingdale's, Miami's Burdine's and Boston's Filene's) would enable stockholders to share in its more rapid growth, chided Winnett for not adopting more advanced retailing practices.

At an acrimonious stockholders' meeting in Los Angeles last week, Winnett denounced his directors as "young upstarts," won his audience's sympathy but not enough of its votes: the merger was approved by more than a two-thirds majority. Federated's acquisition of Bullock's 23 stores (including 16 fashionable I. Magnin stores) will easily push the retailing giant's annual sales ($932 million in 1963) over the billion mark, give it needed strength on the West Coast. It is also another step toward a goal set earlier this year by Federated President Ralph Lazarus: to double sales within a decade.