More & More Pants

In the summer of 1912, George Rixon Benson, president of Chicago's Benson & Rixon Co. clothing store, and Millionaire George Rasmussen, head of National Tea Co. until his death in 1936, made a trip to Wisconsin in a high-sided Stearns touring car. Every night when he shed his goggles Tourist Benson was irked to find that, though his linen duster had protected his jacket, his trousers had got thoroughly dirty. Tourist Rasmussen, however, had solved that problem in advance, had a change at the end of a day: his tailor had made him an extra pair of pants.

When the trip ended, Benson & Rixon introduced the world's first ready-made two-pants suits--1,000 of them at $17 to $22 each. Customer response was feeble. Undaunted, Mr. Benson tried again with 4,000 two-pants suits, all at $17. These, aggressively advertised, sold. Manufacturers, sensing fewer unit sales, fought the innovation, but it caught on, became a trend. By 1929 Benson & Rixon's one-store $200,000-a-year business had developed into a seven-store chain with annual trade of $2,000,000.

Depression hit Benson & Rixon for only a moment; in 1933 the annual gross was again $2,000,000 and President Benson's enthusiasm was still aggressive and undampened. Now he is booming a new experiment, the three-pants suit. This consists of the standard two-pants article plus an odd pair of different pattern. Benson & Rixon buys the odd pants separately, sells them at cost (a $26 two-pants suit sells for only $29.50 as a three-pants suit). By last week the chain had sold 2,900 three-pants suits in three weeks. Said beaming 55-year-old Mr. Benson: "Soon, every retailer will be selling three-pants suits, with a pair of trousers for the office, one for dinner and one for the game of golf next morning."

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