Wigwam Store Inc. is a chain of American discount stores based in Seattle and operated in five states: Washington, Hawaii, Oregon, California, and Arizona. The discount department store was a fairly new concept when Wigwam's first store opened in 1946. Wigwam Stores's goal was to sell a variety of lower-cost products.
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Founder
Homer Powell, founder of Wigwam Shop, finished college as a history major at Northwest Nazarene College in Nampa, Idaho. While working for his master's degree at the University of Washington, under GI law, he worked at the local YMCA. The pastor at Nazareth Powell's church suggested that he could earn an extra $ 50 by purchasing surplus armor, especially the cooling machine, and then selling it for profit. Powell never found a cooling machine, but he was acquainted with the benefits of the Surplus Property Act that allowed veterans preferential access to surplus soldiers, and decided to start buying and selling.
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History
After World War II, there was an abundance of soldiers sold soldiers to offset the enormous cost of war. As a Powell student lacking the means to buy a surplus, so he went to his basketball coach at Northwest Nazarene College to get a loan for his business venture. His coach, Lloyd Adler, gave him $ 500 and became his first partner in the business. Powell took out $ 500 and $ 500 from his own money, bought a $ 1000 sleeping bag, and sold it for $ 11,000.
Powell later found the sale of a surplus warplane in Texas. He and his brother-in-law and future business partner, Dallas E. Ortman, went to Texas and purchased a Texan T-6 Texan coach. Powell flies all over the country to buy more army surplus goods, then opens a temporary shop from a 150-foot (46 m) tents across the street from the Boeing Company aircraft factory in Seattle. The temporary store was a hit, and Homer sold about $ 5,000 worth of goods per day. At the end of the year, the company's net profit was 39 percent.
When Powell's store operates in Seattle, Washington, Ortman runs a similar military surplus store in Portland, Oregon. Powell told him that it would be better to move to Seattle and open a second tented shop. Ortman loads worth $ 6500 and travels to join Powell. Adler became a partner, and Powell and Adler invested another $ 6500 to be combined with Ortman's goods to create a second store. Wigwam became the name, from the tent of Native Americans.
Powell and his partners know that there is a limited amount of army surplus. so they use the profit from their tent store to build discount department stores. Lillian Titel, a merchant for Bloomingdale, was hired to make a purchase of the company, and Wigwam began selling items other than surplus soldiers. Finally, Titel became one of the top five female buyers in the country.
Expansion
Powell and his colleagues followed Marvin Shelby's employee advice and expanded to Hawaii where the Wigwam had few competitors. They opened their first store in Hawaii in 1958. Shelby was hired to oversee the corporate sector in Hawaii. The store was a success; at the top of Wigwam in Hawaii there are 17 stores: 15 stores on Oahu and two in Hilo. Some of them are called Dodies, a local supermarket chain that Wigwam buys.
Wigwam companies use innovative methods to bring in business. In Hawaiian shops, the company has carnivals in the parking lot and, on several occasions, the company brings elephants and other exotic animals to entertain customers. Wigwam is advertised on every possible medium; they run television and radio ads, and put ads and coupons in newspapers and magazines. On one occasion, they rented a local radio disk jockey to break the world record for a two-week continuous broadcast from one of Honolulu's stores.
Trading Poast
In 1960, Titel and others suggested that Wigwam open his own distribution company to cut costs for Wigwam. They opened Poast Trading; Poast is an acronym for each partner at the time: Powell, Ortman, Adler, Shelby, and Titel.
Further expansion
By the end of 1960, Wigwam was extended to Arizona but the country already had a business called Wigwam, which wanted $ 15,000 for the rights to the name. The Wigwam partners decided that the name was not so valuable so they decided to contact Arizona Totem store.
Expansion soon to Southern California. At the top of the southwest division, Southwest has 25 stores between the two countries. In California, Wigwam's stores are Malcum and Webb. The group decided to save the names of the two stores. There are also several department stores with the name Wigwam opened in California. After Wigwam moved to the Southwest, the company needed capital to continue its expansion, thus making its initial public offering in the stock market in 1970. Wigwam sold 250,000 shares at ten dollars per share as "over the counter stock" not traded on the New Stock Exchange York.
In 1975, there was a proxy fight within the company. Many of the big investors and one of the original partners, Adler, want the Wigwam and its twin department store to open all seven days of the week, including Sunday. Powell was a devout Nazarene and did not want his company open on Sunday, so the other four partners decided to buy Adler from the company. Powell sells Hawaiian and Seattle sectors from the company to finance purchases. At that time, Powell is ready to step down as business president of Wigwam and soon retire.
End
In 1976, one year after proxy battles and the sale of many stores, Powell resigned as president and moved to Phoenix, but still oversees the Phoenix division. Titel became President and CEO with major company stores in California and Arizona. In 1977, one of the biggest remaining stores, Glendale, California, was burned to the ground. There were no injuries, but the store and its contents were completely destroyed and its losses cost the company millions of dollars. The location of Glendale is one of the more profitable stores. Immediately after the fire, Titel resigned from the presidency. Monty Ortman, Arizona division manager and son of Dallas Ortman, took the position, and soon he sold the rest of the company and shared substantial profits with partners and other shareholders.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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