New Look at Ward's

For the first time in four years, Montgomery Ward & Co. marched back into the nation's most select business club last week, proudly took its place among the 30-odd U.S. companies with sales of $1 billion annually. In 1956, announced Chairman John A. Barr, Ward's sales totaled $1,045,767,458, up 7.8% for the year, and earnings edged forward to $35,844,479. Later in the week Barr and his management team showed one of the reasons why. In Portsmouth, Ohio, they snipped the ribbons on Ward's first new retail store in the U.S. since 1941. It is a modern, $1,500,000, four-story affair, alive with the new-fangled customer conveniences alien to Ward's old-fashioned approach of yesteryear--Muzak, air conditioning, gleaming counter displays.

Both sales and store highlighted Ward's fast comeback under John Barr, 48, who took over the company after crusty old Chairman Sewell Avery surrendered his one-man rule two years ago (TIME, May 23, 1955). As boss. Barr's first move was to recruit a new force of officers; he gave them a stock option plan as incentive, equipped them with real, independent authority and then set to work on a new-look for the company. In quick succession, Barr formed a new department to pump life into merchandising and displays at Ward's 562 retail stores, expanded Ward's advertising-and-promotion staff, started pushing sales on credit and Ward's own private brands of paint, bicycles, fishing gear, etc. Working with the fat cash reserves piled up by penny-pinching, expansion-shy Chairman Avery ($21.8 million in cash, $176 million in securities), Barr's management team more than doubled its metropolitan phone-order stations, last year alone added another 132 catalogue order stores. Still another new management division, working on a five-year plan, spent $8,000,000 last year renovating existing stores, has plans for new ones in promising locations. Two new stores are already under way in Detroit, one in Gary, Ind.

Along with the physical overhaul, Chairman Barr is also gradually changing the company's basic character. Eventually, he hopes to shut down many of Ward's unprofitable rural locations, build heavily in the booming suburbs. Says Barr: "The farm population is in a major decline. Our new, bigger stores will go primarily into shopping centers in the suburbs--where the great migration has gone." And he adds: "We aim to get back in the picture with our competitors."

Fast-moving Montgomery Ward still has some laps to travel before catching its main rival, Sears, Roebuck & Co. Reported Sears last week: 1956 sales totaled $3,555,684,148, for a jump of 7.5% in the year, and earnings were $164,816,293. Significantly, noted Sears, "increased competition in our field" lowered after-tax net to 4.6% of sales, v. 4.8% in 1955.

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