John Roosevelt, tallest (6 ft. 4½ in.) and youngest (32) of Franklin D. Roosevelt's four sons, busily unpacked boxes last week in a spanking new, $205,000 department store in Beverly Hills. Ready to open next week, it was the first of what he and Partner Leland Good, 42, hope will be a chain of Roosevelt-Good Corp. dry goods and ready-to-wear stores throughout California and the West. Said Roosevelt: "Once this retail business gets in your blood, you can't get it out."
It first got into his in 1938. After finishing Harvard, he went to work "35 feet below the bottom," in Filene's basement, in Boston, for $18.50 a week. He was manager of Filene's Winchester branch when war and the Navy sent him to the South Pacific.
At war's end, Good, then general manager of Grayson Shops, Inc., a ready-to-wear chain in California, Oregon and Washington, hired Roosevelt and made him a merchandising manager and buyer. Roosevelt put in a solid job of work, loyally walked through a picket line during a Grayson strike. Last February he and Good quit their Grayson jobs and raised the $205,000 to start their own chain. Roosevelt, naturally, became president.
They intend to set up "junior" department stores combining dry goods with popular-priced ready-to-wear (women's dresses will average $14 to $19), and to stress "courtesy and friendliness" to customers. "It's become a lost art," said Vice President Good. "We felt that by becoming old-fashioned we could succeed."