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KRESGE’S CHANGE FOR THE BETTER
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new.”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Harry Cunningham went to work for the Kresge Company in 1928 as a stockroom trainee. Gradually, Harry was promoted to better jobs, and management noticed his good ideas. In 1957 he was appointed a vice president with an assignment to study the marketplace to determine the best plan for the company’s future. Harry logged over 200,000 miles of travel and began to believe that discounting was the wave of the future. In 1959 Cunningham was made president of the Kresge Company but did not make the switch to discounting immediately. He instructed his executives to study the discount industry. Little by little, Kresge’s management saw that discounting was holding a growing share of the retail market, and in March 1961 made the decision to move into discounting.
Forty K-Mart stores were opened by 1963, and the number swelled to more than a thousand stores by 1977. Hiring and training good management for those stores was difficult, and the company actively recruited at over 100 colleges and universities. Future management was trained in small discount stores named Jupiter. In 1976 K-Mart surpassed JCPenney as the nation’s second-largest retailer. In a changing and competitive marketplace, K-Mart continues to find its share of success. It has responded to market challenges by emphasizing quality management, high-turnover merchandise, across-the-board discounting, and by clustering stores in a single market area to aid in advertising.
CONSIDER THIS: Organizations that refuse to adapt to the trends of society will vanish. Are you studying your competition to see how you will be able to adjust to the new order when it comes?
Submitted by Richard
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new.”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Harry Cunningham went to work for the Kresge Company in 1928 as a stockroom trainee. Gradually, Harry was promoted to better jobs, and management noticed his good ideas. In 1957 he was appointed a vice president with an assignment to study the marketplace to determine the best plan for the company’s future. Harry logged over 200,000 miles of travel and began to believe that discounting was the wave of the future. In 1959 Cunningham was made president of the Kresge Company but did not make the switch to discounting immediately. He instructed his executives to study the discount industry. Little by little, Kresge’s management saw that discounting was holding a growing share of the retail market, and in March 1961 made the decision to move into discounting.
Forty K-Mart stores were opened by 1963, and the number swelled to more than a thousand stores by 1977. Hiring and training good management for those stores was difficult, and the company actively recruited at over 100 colleges and universities. Future management was trained in small discount stores named Jupiter. In 1976 K-Mart surpassed JCPenney as the nation’s second-largest retailer. In a changing and competitive marketplace, K-Mart continues to find its share of success. It has responded to market challenges by emphasizing quality management, high-turnover merchandise, across-the-board discounting, and by clustering stores in a single market area to aid in advertising.
CONSIDER THIS: Organizations that refuse to adapt to the trends of society will vanish. Are you studying your competition to see how you will be able to adjust to the new order when it comes?
Submitted by Richard
