As cities grow and their suburbs thicken, city merchants find it increasingly wise to take their wares to the suburbs for sale. New York and Chicago particularly have become surrounded by rich buying areas far from Fifth Avenue and State Street. Last week Fifth Avenue lost more trade. Opened with much civic and social pomp was a large new store of Franklin Simon & Co. in Greenwich, Conn. Not the first nor the second New York store to open a branch outside the Metropolitan area (B. Altman & Co. has branches in White Plains, N. Y. and East Orange, N. J.; Best & Co. in East Orange, Garden City and Mamaroneck, N. Y.), Franklin Simon was most ambitious in its move.
Heavily emphasized was the assertion that the new store was not "a branch shop with samples, but a complete Fifth Avenue store." Patrons were invited to extend their charge accounts from the Manhattan store, were promised the same service, the same fashions as in town. Opening its arms to 500,000 residents of Westchester County & Connecticut—''If half a million people should jump into motors, within 40 minutes or less they'd all be at Franklin Simon's new Greenwich store"—the company made much of a free parking space for 250 automobiles in back of the building.
To cater to suburban trade, large retailers have for some time been experimenting with two kinds of small stores. Chain stores have been highly successful in selling standardized merchandise at low prices for cash. Branch stores (subsidiaries of a large central unit, as distinguished from chains of small units) hitherto have had two handicaps to overcome: 1) they have been unable to carry the huge stocks that have made successes of such stores as Manhattan's R. H. Macy & Co.; 2) in the case of stores specializing in a few types of goods, the branches have not always been able to carry so wide a variety as the main stores, have had to resort to samples. This second handicap Franklin Simon & Co., with a large modern building on Boston Post Road, a heavy stock of women's clothes and special features including a beauty shop, solarium, children's barber shop and terrace tea room, expects to overcome.
Founder Franklin Simon, no kin to Simple Simon,* has little doubt that his Greenwich venture will succeed. He well remembers his early success in penetrating a residential district. In 1903 he opened a store at Fifth Avenue & 37th Street, next to a Presbyterian church. First year it lost $40,000, second year $28,000. Third year the net profit was $84,000. Success was chiefly due to women's clothes imported from France. Franklin Simon, son of a cigarmaker, had learned the clothing business from Stern Brothers. On buying trips abroad he had been impressed by French styles. Until 1914 he was in partnership with a Frenchman named Herman A. Flurscheim, who supplied the store with styles from London, Paris, Vienna. France made Franklin Simon a chevalier of the Legion of Honor for having done more than any other person to put U. S. women into French clothes.
Short, baldish, with a grizzly mustache and a fondness for bright neckties, Storekeeper Simon calls scores of his employes by their first names, likes to go to their parties. He spends much of his time in Palm Beach, where he has established a resort shop. When away from New York he leaves his business in the hands of Sons Arthur & George, vice presidents. He was in Palm Beach last week and Son George, who looks like his father except for more hair on his head-and none on his lip, had the honor of opening the Greenwich branch store, of being welcomed by First Selectman Oscar D. Tuthill and a committee of borough officials.
¶ In Chicago last week Sears, Roebuck & Co. announced a plan to enter the New York trade area with three $1,000,000 department stores: one in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn, one in Hackensack, N. J., one in-Union City. N. J. The stores are expected to be completed next autumn, will bring Sears, Roebuck's total of retail establishments to 384.
¶ Also in Chicago, Board Chairman Sewell Lee Avery of Montgomery Ward & Co. had completed a reorganization of the company to provide autonomy for the retail and mail-order divisions. The set-up provides for six regional divisions, each with one or two mail-order houses and some 80 retail stores.
*Nor to Sir John Allsebrook Simon, His Majesty's Foreign Secretary (TIME, March 21).