Word: neckermann
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...scraped together $25,000, sent out a crude, twelve-page catalogue of wearing apparel to 250,000 refugees picked from card indexes. His prices were aimed at the low-budget housewife-and the housewives liked what they got. Within eight months Neckermann was doing a $2.4 million a year business...
Trouble & Opportunity. Other West German businessmen saw Neckermann almost immediately as a threat to their profits. In 1951 the Association of Textile Wholesalers and Retailers pressured small firms to prevent them from subcontracting to make goods for Neckermann. He sued for damages, and in postwar Germany's liberal economic climate won his case and forced the association to rescind its edict. Moving out of his barracks into an eleven-story Frankfurt building, Neckermann fattened his catalogue, added furniture, came out with a "Neckermann Radio-Super" that had the same features as competitors' models but sold...
When Germans grabbed up the radio sets, retailers pressured repair shops to boycott all Neckermann products, carried out a "voluntary" boycott even after a court ruled in Neckermann's favor. Result: Neckermann set up a network of his own repair shops throughout Germany, decided to go into other appliances. In 1954 he diversified into TV sets (selling for $100 below the cheapest set on the market), later added sewing machines, auto accessories, food and liquor...
...German radio industry refused to provide tubes for Neckermann's sets, and he found a French firm that would. The refrigeration industry refused to manufacture his refrigerators, and he got a Luxembourg firm to do it. While many German firms threw their energies into exports, Neckermann concentrated on the home market. Belatedly aware that they were losing a lot of business by boycotting Neckermann, many German firms came around. Most of Neckermann's appliances are now German-made, though he still must take the bulk of a firm's production to protect it from boycott by others...
...Neckermann now hopes to dominate the mail order field in the Common Market...