New Shoes

"Every well-dressed man should have at least 30 pairs of shoes in his closet," says Nashville's debonair W. Maxey Jarman, 47. He talks that way because he makes the famed Jarman shoe and 23 other brands. Jarman breaks in a new pair himself once a week. He says it is the simplest way of keeping a check on the products of his company, the General Shoe Corp.

Last week Shoemaker Jarman broke in his fanciest pair yet. He bought out New Jersey's Johnston & Murphy Shoe Co., 101-year-old maker of top quality men's shoes, whose customers have included such men as Theodore Roosevelt, "Diamond Jim" Brady and Henry Ford. For J. & M., the deal meant a transfusion of some" much-needed capital. For General Shoe, whose top Jarman brand sells in the $10.95 to $18.95 range, it was the first move into the high-priced ($27.50439.50) field. For well-shod Maxey Jarman, it was the latest in a series of fast strides by which he has pushed General Shoe, in 18 years, from a single plant to the U.S.'s fourth biggest shoe operation.

The company, founded in 1924 by Maxey Jarman's father, the late James Franklin Jarman, had only the small plant in Nashville when Maxey quit M.I.T. in his third year ("I didn't want to be an engineer") to work in the plant as a $10-a-week laborer. After a year of that, he went out selling shoes, sold so well that in 1933 his father made him president and stepped up to chairman (he died in 1938). Maxey took over at the bottom of the Depression, but instead of retrenching, he decided to expand. He started four systems of retail stores, launched an advertising campaign to plug the company's

"Friendly Five" men's shoes at $5 a pair. Invading the North, he bought a tanning plant in Michigan, started a box-making division and a subsidiary to furnish low-cost cement, chemicals and finishes to the manufacturing plants. By 1941, his integrated company had 43 retail stores of its own, 10,000 other outlets, and sales of $24 million. Last year, with outlets in 18 nations, sales hit a new peak of $84 million, and General netted $4,000,000. Just before buying Johnston & Murphy, Maxey Jarman expanded by buying Massachusetts' W. L. Douglas (men's) Shoe Co. and the Nisley Shoe Co., a chain of 45 retail stores in the Midwest. He now has 23 manufacturing plants, more than 200 retail stores and 10,000 employees.

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