Blue-Blooded Merger
California's two most famed merchants last week agreed to become one: San Francisco's 68-year-old I. Magnin & Co., the West Coast's haughtiest purveyor of women's wear de luxe,* and Los Angeles' department-store-specialty-shop combine, 37-year-old Bullock's Inc., whose California customers regard it with at least as much reverence as Chicagoans reserve for Marshall Field's. The result will be a $27,000,000 business with twelve stores blanketing the Coast, and combined sales (1943) of $63,000,000, profits of $2,600,000./-
The Name of Magnin. From a corporate standpoint, Bullock's, with almost three-quarters of the combined gross business, will be top dog. The deal, in which no money changes hands, provides for an exchange of stock (three and a half shares of Magnin's for one of Bullock's), whereby Magnin shares will shortly disappear. Not so the name of Magnin--so long as either its 73-year-old president E. John Magnin or his 57-year-old brother, First Vice President Grover A. (who are also the company's largest stockholders), have anything to say about it.
Johnny and Grover long ago learned to regard "Magnin" as a highly profitable name. Their mentor was their mother, peddler Isaac Magnin's wife Mary Ann, who founded the business with her own handiwork (children's and bridal clothes) in 1876, and took an intense matriarchal interest in it until she died at 95 last December.
Despite its luxury prices Magnin's has lost money only twice: in 1906, when the San Francisco earthquake wiped out its store, and in the black depression year, 1932. For years, Magnin's has been the nation's second largest retailer of top-priced women's wear, topped only by Manhattan's Saks Fifth Avenue. Magnin's is still the largest buyer in the high-priced wholesale dress market (Saks makes much of its fine apparel in its own workshop) and has long had exclusive West Coast rights to that market's haut monde.
The Bullock Ideal. In its own way, Bullock's has built up as impeccable a name, plus a much bigger volume. Started by two Canadians, John Gillespie Bullock and Percy Glen Winnett, Bullock's rapidly expanded into that burgeoning city's biggest retail business. It now encompasses: 1) "Bullock's Downtown," a 740,000-sq. ft., six-building, quality department store; 2) "Bullock's Wilshire," "Bullock's Westwood" and "Bullock's Palm Beach Springs," which do a damn-the-price clothing business comparable to Magnin's.
Wing-collared, boutonniered John Bullock, who died in 1933, originated "The Bullock Ideal": a service-first set of rules that starts with ". . . a business that will never know completion. . . ." But diminutive, 62-year-old "P. G." Winnett, now president and principal stockholder (to the extent of around 30%) turned the ideal into a merchandising fact. It was P. G. who started the Magnin merger talks, which he and Grover Magnin settled in less than an hour.
The Boss. No Californian in the know doubts that P. G. and Bullock's will be the ultimate boss of the new corporation. For one thing, heirless John and Grover have never trained anyone else to fill their shoes. Besides, the "never-know-completion" idea is strictly Bullock's.
*Stock girls in its "French Room" call every dress that sells for less than $125 a "pop," meaning "popular priced." /-Besides its big San Francisco store, I. Magnin has shops in Oakland, Seattle, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Pasadena and Coronado. Bullock's has three Los Angeles stores, one in Palm Springs.
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