Five years ago a breezy Michigander named Elton Forbes MacDonald sold out his one-third interest in a retail trading-stamp company called Top Value Enterprises in the belief that the trading stamp fad had about run out. Last week, with a broad grin, "Mac" MacDonald, 61, admitted that he had been dead wrong. He could afford to grin, because today his E.F. MacDonald Co. is the nation's fastest growing supplier of trading stamps and stamp premiums.
Secret of MacDonald's success is a single deal—capturing as a customer for his newly created Plaid stamps The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., biggest...