Hurry-Up Moving

In the fast-stepping retail world, few men had moved faster than handsome, Swedish-born Walter Hoving. At 30 he was vice president of Manhattan's R. H. Macy & Co.. at 34 vice president and sales manager of Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc.. and at 38 chairman of Manhattan's Lord & Taylor department store.

Two years ago, at 48, Walter Hoving got tired of working for other people. He quit his $135,000-a-year job at Lord & Taylor, formed his own Hoving Corp. to "acquire and operate" stores "with an annual volume of between $150 and $200 million." Many a merchandiser, who regarded Hoving's cold self-confidence as plain conceit, shrugged off this big talk. But last week Hoving, who bought Manhattan's Bonwit Teller two years ago (TIME, June 10, 1946), took another step toward his goal.

For $2 million and 75,000 shares of Hoving Corp. common stock (worth about $800,000 at its present price), he bought control of New York's six John David, Inc. men's wear stores (last year's gross: $8.8 million). That deal gave Hoving a total of 13 stores, boosted his current gross to an annual rate of $28 million.

Hoving was expanding by shrewd use of his capital--$2.6 million from such bigwig friends as Vincent Astor and CBS's William S. Paley, and a $12 million stock issue. He had paid $10.5 million for Bonwit Teller, Inc., then sold the store's buildings to the Equitable Life Assurance Society for $6.3 million and rented them back for $320,000 a year. He put some of that money into a new $2.2 million Chicago branch which he sold to Prudential Insurance Co. of America, and leased back. Another $800,000 was spent transforming Boston's historic old Natural History Museum into another Bonwit Teller branch. In Cleveland, he has leased a downtown building (Lindner Coy's) for a new store next year, bought a site in mushrooming Houston to build another $1.3 million store. In between times, he leased three small Manhattan stores and opened his new subsidiary: Anson-Jones Co. It sells only women's dresses, at one price: $29.95. (On net sales of $19,518,654, Bonwit and Anson-Jones netted $754,866 last year.)

Last week, Hoving explained what he was up to. Said he: "When business dips downward, the very big stores are going to find it hard to maintain their volume. But a chain operation, spread over many cities, with no investment except fixtures and stock, can maintain the same volume by expanding the number of outlets."

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