Re: New Monopoly in Dept Stores -- Federated and May Co to Merge

As of now, the Lord & Taylor is still there, just using a small part of the building as you say, and they still play the organ and have a Christmas light show. How long this will continue remains to be seen.

When the store was really Wanamaker's, it was a classic elegant full service department store. Not that now.

Strawbridge's still has a store downtown in the classic sense. What will happen after the merger remains to be seen.

Phila (actually based in Reading PA) has a regional chain, Boscov's, that seems to be doing ok despite being relatively small compared to the nationals. It is a "merchant prince" type dept store owned by the descendants of the founder. The owner personally takes his executive staff and goes around visiting every store to check on things -- not only data on the printouts, but the appearance of displays and sales staff. I like shopping in that store and hope they can survive against the majors.

I don't like the big impersonal chains. They're too homogenized and remote from their customers. I feel like I'm buying from a govt agency*. When the dept stores were locally owned, they had a much more of a personal feel to them (regardless if they were elegant or low-end). Federated is converting all their stores into Macy's while May Co. left more of some local flavor in them.

Indeed, where I am Macy's had a unit called Bamberger's that they owned since the 1930s, but it operated independently. In more recent years, they dropped the name and indepedence and merged into Macy's. I felt quality of goods and service went down at that point.

Nobody seems to have any anti-trust concerns about this merger, which puzzles me. To me it represents all the reasons we developed anti-trust laws in the first place, and the same rationale we were told to justify breaking up the Bell System.

*In my state, wine and liquor are sold only by the state govt (or in bars by the drink). They used to be "State Stores" and as Soviet as you could imagine (partly by design to discourage drinking). Now they're still govt owned, but modernized as "Wine & Spirit Shoppe" and much better. The debate over them rages on; some like the system the way it is, others want to do like other states. See: |&plcbNav=|32369| [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When Wanamaker had the store, the organ was one of the largest in the world (several hundred ranks of pipes) similar in stature to the Atlantic City Auditorium instrument or the one in Methuen, Massachusetts or the Mormon Tabernacle. When the store was sold to Lord and Taylor, the organ technically was _not_ included in the sale. Its "price" was given as in excess a half million dollars, which is typical for those older, very large instruments. Wanamaker donated it to a Trust, I think the 'Wanamaker Organ Trust' for perpetual care, and Lord & Taylor, under the terms of the Trust is or was obligated to give recitals daily. I think the Wanamaker Endowement Trust still 'owns' the instrument, and pays for and supplies the repair work, but L&T pays for the organists. Left to their own devices, Lord and Taylor would either dismantle it or let it fall into total disrepair, as happened in Atlantic City. I've got a couple of CDs here which are re-issues from the 1950's when Virgil Fox played the Wanamaker Organ. Can you even begin to imagine a modern day 'low price' chain (Walmart comes to mind) providing that sort of entertainment for their customers?

Here in Kansas, the state also operates the liquor stores, but the 'convenience mart' places -- like gas station grocery stores, etc -- are allowed to sell beer, just not the 'hard stuff', and taverns can sell 'by the drink' of course.