Philadelphia's bald, moonfaced Albert M. Greenfield, a real-estate man who became a banker, slid into the department-store business in the depression '30s. With the once prosperous City Stores Co. verging on bankruptcy, Banker Greenfield moved in to protect an $8 million loan, reorganized the company with himself as boss. Under him, City Stores mushroomed from five stores to 22, its gross from $33 million to last year's record $168 million. Profits also hit a record of $5,000,000.
Last week Al Greenfield, still full of beans and plans at 62, decided that the time had come for City Stores* to grow some more. For $1,300,000 he bought from Floyd B. Odium's Atlas Corp. its 70% ownership of Manhattan's fast-growing, nine-store Franklin Simon & Co., Inc. chain of specialty shops. Like Greenfield, Odium had also gone into the department-store business during the depression. He had spent $750,000 expanding Franklin Simon, opening branches in Atlanta, Washington, Cleveland, Bridgeport, Garden City, East Orange. He lifted its gross from $10 million to $20 million, turned a $148,000 loss into a 1948 profit of $306,000. He had sold out because "we don't like to stick with any proposition more than three to ten years. We had done all we could with Franklin Simon."
Pie Man. Al Greenfield thought he could do more—as he had with a dozen other projects. As a real-estate salesman, Russian-born Al Greenfield was selling $60 million worth of property a year by the time he was 26. Later he built Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Hotel, soon had a finger in most local financial pies. He was worth $15 million and dominated Philadelphia's huge Bankers Trust Co. when the 1930 crash wiped him out.
Greenfield went broke, but he seemed to get along just as well without money. He stayed on as chairman of his most potent company, Bankers Securities Corp., and came back fast. Through Securities Corp. he moved into control of City Stores, Loft Candy Corp., New York's Hearn Department Stores, Inc. retail chain, and a big minority interest in Walter Hoving's Hoving Corp. (Bonwit Teller, John David, Anson-Jones). Still one of the biggest U.S. real-estate operators and hotel owners, he was the prime mover in luring the 1948 Republican and Democratic conventions to Philadelphia, was grandiloquently dubbed "Mr. Philadelphia." He was a heavy contributor to the Truman campaign.
Sixth Ahead? As a merchandiser, he keeps a tight rein on management at the top level, yet gives his local managers plenty of leeway to run their stores. Like other loosely connected chains, City Stores cuts costs by centralized buying and cost control, hopes to do better the bigger it gets.
With Franklin Simon's gross of $20 million, Greenfield expected to boost City Stores' 1949 sales to $210 million, push hard on the heels of Chicago's Marshall Field & Co. as the sixth biggest U.S. department-store chain.*