Federated Federates

In early-to-bed Milwaukee, customers can shop at the wide-awake Boston Store at any hour of the day or night, including Sunday, merely by calling Marquette 8-5020. Telephone clerks take the order and send it out next morning. By such round-the-clock selling, the Boston Store has become Wisconsin's biggest retail establishment under one roof, with a current annual sales volume of $40 million.

This week, the Boston Store got a new owner: Federated Department Stores, Inc., headed by wide-awake Fred Lazarus Jr. (TIME, Feb. 1, 1937, et seq.). In the deal, Lazarus exchanged 292,600 shares of Federated common stock (market value: about $8,000,000) for the Boston Store stock. But the Boston Store will be run, as before, by President Richard Herzfeld, 50.

It was Herzfeld's father, Karl, who built up the 48-year-old Boston Store, often over the strenuous protests of conservative old Julius Simon, the founder, who thought the store should sell only low-priced goods. Karl gave Milwaukee's thrifty burghers the widest possible assortment to choose from. Once, when Karl bought a stock of fine woolens to sell at the then unheard-of price of $15 a yard, Simon swept the goods off the counter, crying: "Do you want to ruin this store?" Later Herzfeld and his two partners, Richard Phillipson and Nat Stone, took over the whole store. They, and later Richard Herzfeld, kept it growing.

The addition of the Boston Store's earnings helped assure Federated of fourth place among U.S. department store chains. Still ahead of Federated (20 stores with the Boston) are J.C. Penney Co. (1,603 stores), the May Department Stores Co. (24 stores) and Allied Stores Corp. (78 stores). Profitwise Lazarus, with a $13 million net in sight this year, is already pushing Allied for third place.

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