Eye to Weather

As Robert Kahn walked the streets near his failing Chicago advertising agency shortly after Pearl Harbor, he stopped at an antique shop window. An old battered Swiss weather house caught his eye, and Kahn had an idea.

The Government had banned all weather reports. The war had blocked imports of weather houses from Switzerland, Germany and Japan. And although Americans were familiar with weather houses, millions of them had never owned one. With a wife and two children to support, what better prospects could a man want than to get out and sell weather houses all over the U.S.?

Kahn bought the weather house for 50-c-, wrote it up in a mail-order in a local newspaper. Within a few days, 50 orders came in. Kahn hurriedly bought some rejected walnut rifle butts from the Government, made a deal with a manufacturer to fashion them into weather houses. The orders were filled in two weeks.

From then on business boomed. Kahn set up his own shop (Weatherman Co.), took on 80 employes. The U.S. Weather Bureau attested to the gadget's accuracy. Ships Service at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station ordered five gross. Other orders flocked in from as far afield as South Africa, South America, the Far East. At $1.69 apiece, the weather houses grossed $70,000 in 1942, $350,000 the next year, $800,000 last year. Production has reached a rate of 6,500 units per day.

Gap Fillers. Weather-house sales are sure to drop this year. But bright, mild-mannered Bob Kahn, 38, has some items to fill the gap. One of them is a gas-station model from which an attendant emerges in a uniform or in a raincoat, depending on the weather; another is a combination clock-thermometer-barometer.

Kahn's success is measured in more than the money the weather houses bring in. Besides the flock of new accounts it has attracted to his revived and thriving ad agency, Kahn gets quantities of hand-knitted scarves, homemade candy, pecans, etc., from satisfied farm customers who are short on cash.

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