Luxuries Going West

A famous old name will appear over a San Francisco shop window next fall. On display will be such elegant curiosities as a measuring tape encased in black baby-alligator skin, a champagne-colored leather-lined ostrich handbag, and a wine-colored pheasant-feather necktie. Inside the store, the rich smell of groomed leather will signal devotees of Mark Cross that their favorite New York specialty store has broken out of Manhattan and spread its wares before customers far from Fifth Avenue.

Twenty thousand different luxury items--including 2,400 kinds of wallets --have helped push Mark Cross's sales to an annual rate of $3,000,000. Profits rose 25% in both 1965 and 1966. In the first six months of 1967, the Fifth Avenue shop remained well ahead of other retailers, increasing earnings 20% over last year. George Wasserberger, 38, one of four U.S. entrepreneurs who took over 122-year-old Mark Cross in 1962, attributes its success to uncompromising quality. "We have never sacrificed lasting fashion for fad," he says. His philosophy is expressed in a recent Mark Cross ad: "It's a throwaway society, man. Break it. Chuck it. Replace it. Do you believe that? Mark Cross is not for you."

Exclusive with Cross. Today, close to 90% of the merchandise sold in the store is made exclusively for Mark Cross, with four full-time agents in Europe searching out items that the store might contract out to small factories to produce. The items include luggage of all sizes, handbags, gloves, belts, jackets, jewel boxes, key cases, credential cases, photo albums, loose-leaf books for all purposes, and leather-trimmed gifts for all occasions.

Mark Cross looks back to modest beginnings, when an Irish saddler, Henry W. Cross, and his son Mark opened their shop on Boston's Summer Street to sell harnesses and saddles. It later became an exclusive outlet for fine English leather goods, moved to Manhattan to cater to the well-to-do. Though leather has always been the main line, over the years Mark Cross introduced to New York such novelties from the Old World as the Thermos bottle and, during World War I, the wristwatch, which it was first to sell in the U.S.

The store now carries 127 items priced at less than $10. "And if someone calls up from a hotel to say his suitcase won't lock, we treat it as an emergency." Says Wasserberger, "He gets immediate help, no matter how small a customer he is."

Nonetheless, the store's blazer-clad salesmen are glad to see customers like Richard and Liz Burton, who ordered 70 pieces of matched luggage for themselves and a maid not so long ago. Or the woman who came in to browse among 60 different kinds of alligator handbags and picked a black Javanese one for $1,200. Months ago, the management concluded that it was time to lay such baubles before the affluent outside New York. The San Francisco store, scheduled to open in November, is just the first. "We are looking West, but that's not the end," says Wasserberger. "We won't relax until we have seven branches." Boston, London and Paris are high on the priority list.

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