Bargains Beneath Boston
In his half century with Boston's Filene's, courtly Harold D. Hodgkinson, 73, has climbed from basement stock boy to board chairman. But Hodgkinson still likes to start his day in the basement, where he hangs his coat and hat in a cubicle before proceeding to his seventh-floor executive suite. He makes sure to get out of the basement before 9:30--for that is a dangerous hour at Filene's. As soon as the opening gong rings, a stampede of waiting shoppers surges through the doors and overruns the basement with a fervor that has often caused near-riots. They are there to get first pick of the low-cost luxuries that have made Filene's Basement the world's most unusual bargain store.
"The basement is a small, hot, smelly, crowded, racky place," admits Hodgkinson, "but it's also a happy hunting ground." A three-level, block-long area pocked with gaspipe racks and dingy wooden counters, the basement sells more goods per square foot of space than any other store in the world, accounts for a quarter of Filene's annual volume of $100 million, and is so important to the company that it is run as a completely separate store. On a normal day, up to 100,000 bargain hunters roll through its 16 entrances, and during special sales the number has risen to 175,000. Last week, waiting for a fur sale in which some $5,000 furs went for as little as $1,995, a crush of women boldly unlatched the door chain before opening time, stripped all the furs from the racks in less than ten seconds.
No Gilded Lily. The formula for this subterranean success is a combination of Filene's Basement's pricing policy and its unceasing search for bargains, both of which were originated by Lincoln and Edward Filene, the famed brothers who made Filene's one of the world's largest specialty stores. Filene's 60 buyers scour the world, picking up surplus stock, irregular merchandise and going-out-of-business wares. Filene's is a haven for other merchants who are hit by fire or failure; its buyers will fly off even in the middle of the night to close a deal. It deals regularly with such stores as Neiman-Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, will pay more for merchandise if the manufacturer or store will let it leave on the original labels. Just before Paris fell to the Germans, Filene's buyers shipped 400 Schiaparelli and Lelong dresses home through Spain; the dresses disappeared from the racks in 15 minutes. Chairman Hodgkinson managed to buy out the Queen Mary's fancy haberdashery shop when the liner became a World War II troopship, still travels around the globe in search of bargains for the basement.
The basement marks down all unsold merchandise 25% after twelve days, 25% more after 18 and 24 days, and at the end of 30 days gives to charitable organizations anything that is left. But 90% disappears within the first twelve days, and last year only one-tenth of 1% reached charities. Filene's describes any faults of its items on a dated tag, refunds the customer's money whenever damage or irregularity is too great. Says Hodgkinson: "It doesn't pay to gild the lily to the point where it dies."
Just Plain Fun. Filene's shoppers include not only ordinary Bostonians--if there is such a thing--but the likes of Massachusetts Senator Leverett Saltonstall, Harvard President Nathan Pusey and Boston's Brahmins and businessmen; in their school days, Joseph Kennedy's children shopped there. Some New York and Philadelphia matrons wait until they hear that their favorite local store has sold some stock to Filene's, travel to Boston to buy the goods at half or a third of the price. Many people drop by just for the fun of watching--and they find plenty to see. Biting and clawing over self-service merchandise is common, and unabashed dress buyers, deprived of fitting rooms, sometimes strip to bra and panties right in the aisles.
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