Word: katze
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Since then, Ike and Mike Katz have become the cut-rate kings of Kansas City, Mo., with 16 drugstores there and another 13 scattered through Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Iowa. The Katz superstores carry more than 25,000 items, ranging from television sets to clothing, from mousetraps to lovebirds. Five of them carry monkeys, and managed to sell 15 last year at $82 apiece. (Last week the price was cut to $79.) One popular come-on: cut-rate streetcar and bus tickets. But the Katz specialty is selling nationally advertised merchandise "at the right price"-which in Missouri is usually...
Klondike Kid. The Katz family came to the U.S. from Austria when Ike was nine and Mike was one. After four years of school, Ike went to work at 13 on the Great Northern Railway, peddling Navajo blankets, straw mattresses (at $1.50 apiece), food & drink to prospectors going to the Klondike. Then Ike and Mike started their fruit stands. In four years of 19-hour workdays they made enough money (about $500) for Ike to buy a little down-at-heels hotel and make...
...When a wartime edict ordered all stores but drugstores to close after 6 p.m. each day, Ike and Mike quickly added drugs to their line-and found to their surprise that they would sell. When the cigarette tax was boosted a penny a pack, they put out a sign: "Katz pays...
...brothers plugged their cut-rate bargains in huge newspaper ads, set up their own jobber to buy as cheaply as possible from manufacturers. Said Ike to one competitor: "If you want to put us out of business, go ahead and try. Goodbye." By 1929 the two Katz stores were grossing $5,000,000 a year. By 1930 the Katzes were famous enough for Mike to be kidnaped by mobsters and held for $100,000 ransom (Ike paid...
...Katz brothers now leave much of the retailing details to Ike's son Earl, 43. Nevertheless, says Mike, now 64: "When I'm going out of a store, I can generally count on seeing Ike on his way in." Currently expanding into suburban areas, the Katz brothers have a slogan ready for their new stores: "Buyways off Highways." But Ike, now 72, will never drop his favorite motto for retailing success: "Give 'em a free ride...