Discount Dynamo
When STANLEY H. FELDBERG '46 entered his family's multimillion dollar retail business he took the silver spoon out of his mouth and started digging.
He is now president of the 115-store Zayre Corporation, self-service, discount department stores located in the eastern half of the United States. Zayre is a 1956 offshoot of his father's and uncle's New England Trading Company, owners of Bell Shops and Nugents - chains of apparel specialty stores.
Feldberg joined them in 1949, direct from Dartmouth. The Air Force had interrupted his college studies from 1942 to 1946, but his goals were virtually unaltered since high school. He had worked summers in the family retail business and knew that was what he wanted.
A business writer called Zayre "an organization where wisdom - buttressed by long years of experience - is complemented by skill, imagination, and daring in persons of Phi Beta Kappa Ivy-Leaguers." He was also describing Stan Feldberg.
Zayre's sales last year were over $400 million. The stores' name is extracted from the Yiddish Sehr Gut, roughly "very good." But their slogan "Fabulous Zayre" better defines the corporation's growth.
Feldberg began in 1956 with two self-service department stores, the first in the country especially built for that purpose. Zayre store space now occupies over seven million square feet. The corporation went public in 1962, was listed on the American Stock Exchange in 1964, and on the New York Stock Exchange in 1965. Total shareholder's equity has increased 101 per cent in two years.
Feldberg sums up this success as based on "customer convenience and outstanding merchandise value." He says, "Price will always motivate a customer."
But his retail philosophy is really more sophisticated and he has been asked to share it with students via lectures and panels at Tuck, Harvard Business School, and Tufts. He is a charter member of the Merchandisers Hall of Fame at the University of Massachusetts.
The firm is headquartered in Natick, Mass., but he spends much of his time on the road selecting locations for new Zayre stores - a key factor in their success. He likes the "cluster" approach of putting additional outlets where they already have a stake. This, he explains, offers many operating, advertising, and merchandising economies. The Boston area has twelve stores.
What does he look for? "The road pattern must be good. Women must find it comfortable and easy to drive on." He avoids expressways because women are reluctant to use them.
He also makes his pitch to women with Zayre's extensive line of ladies' apparel, which he calls "fashion right," a term he uses knowledgeably. But the stores carry clothing and shoes for the entire family, and everything needed to satisfy home and recreational wants.
The boyish looking Feldberg enjoys talking business and does so with a friendliness that is a contradiction of his steel blue eyes. He gives quick answers, has an even quicker mind.
He is a doer outside of business, too, and at one time or another has been: general chairman of the Greater Boston Association for Retarded Children, president and director of Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, chairman of the Golden Anniversary Fund of Beth Israel Hospital in Brookline, assistant treasurer and director of a Natick radio station, and house designer - his own.
Bob Walsh
