Salesman's Salesman

ROBERT MAGOWAN

THE best proof, perhaps, of the old adage: "A good salesman can sell anything,'' is Robert Anderson Magowan, 55. A lean, fast-moving salesman's salesman, he ran one of the biggest sales departments for Macy's, the world's biggest store, became the star salesman of the biggest brokerage house; and now, as president and chairman of Safeway, the world's second biggest grocery chain, he has more than doubled the chain's profits in three years.

Bob Magowan lives as every salesman would like to. He has five houses across the U.S., ventures forth from his great whitestone house (eight bedrooms) overlooking San Francisco Bay for quick trips to his Spanish-style beach house in Southampton, L.I. (swimming pool and tennis court), his five-story town house in Manhattan (East 69th Street), or his pink Palm Beach house. (Magowan rents another Southampton house to Mrs. Cyrus McCormick.) With his pretty wife Doris, he moves through the top echelons of San Francisco's moneyed, operagoing society, is a trustee of Grace Episcopal Cathedral. He plays bridge ( 1/2-c- to 1-c- a point when serious), tennis (fairly good), and golf (mid-nineties), likes to dance, prefers vintage French wine, is an inveterate pipe smoker (75 pipes and Brooks Bros. mixture 346). He is wealthy enough in his own right so that two years ago he could ask Safeway to put a $135,000 limit on his salary (since "that is all anyone is worth") by cutting out his 1% take of the company's profits (otherwise, his salary last year would have been $309,069).

BORN in Chester. Pa., the son of a railroad stationmaster, Magowan began selling his talent early. He prepped at Kent School on a scholarship, went on to Harvard, where he was elected an editor of the Crimson, became baseball manager, and earned $100 a week as a stringer for the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

He took a $30-a-week job at Macy's after graduation, at 31 was made head of Macy's huge, inexpensive ready-to-wear department. He next took a turn at advertising, but soon found it was not his kind of selling: "I thought a lot of what went on was just air." When he met Lingan Warren, the autocratic genius who had built Safeway from nothing into a huge chain, he made such a good impression that Warren asked him to go to California. Magowan had worked up to be Warren's administrative assistant when he was asked to go back east and help run the brokerage firm of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane (now Smith). Although Founder Charles Merrill was his father-in-law, Magowan sold himself by his selling.

He trained more than 1,000 salesmen to preach investment, ordered booths set up at country fairs and in railroad stations to popularize stocks, insisted that ads and booklets be written by non-Wall Street people to get away from financial jargon. His nose for investment was spectacular: his five sons are millionaires today because of portfolios Magowan set up and managed for them.

MERRILL owned a big personal holding in Safeway, and when trouble developed at the chain, he asked Magowan to go back west and take over. Old Boss Warren had stubbornly become bogged down in costly personal crusades such as a war on trading stamps, was beset by trustbusters because of regional price-cutting, and by stockholders over Safeway's meager earnings of 7-c- on the dollar. Quietly he stepped out.

So thoroughly did Magowan shake up Safeway's grocery bin that the controller was made vice president and a chief accountant ended up in charge of advertising, research and personnel. Magowan replaced autocratic rule with teamwork, gave division managers responsibility for running their own show. "My philosophy is brutal," he says. "I tell my managers that if they can't produce, we'll find someone who can.''

He got Safeway out from under Warren's crusades, agreed to a consent decree that ended the price wars and Government suits, moved Safeway into the burgeoning shopping centers disdained by Warren. In his beige-decorated office, Magowan dashes off uncarboned memos to employees on his electric typewriter, answers his own telephone, keeps in touch with his far-flung chain via a private teletype system.

Magowan's energy and salesman's soul have paid off for Safeway. The chain's sales have risen 5% in 1958, and Safeway today earns 1.5-c- on the dollar after taxes--the highest of the five biggest food chains. With 2,111 stores (204 opened in 1958) humming in 25 states and five Canadian provinces, the chain is scheduling 220 more openings for 1959, including two in the new state of Alaska. Exults Salesman Bob Magowan: "We're going at a helluva rate."

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