Magnin's Moves East

San Francisco's I. Magnin & Co. literally goes to great lengths to please women who are partial to its high fashion and unperturbed about the tall prices that go with it. For favored customers who are far from its 21 stores in the West, Magnin offers to fly a fitter, a salesperson and a collection of the latest styles anywhere in the U.S., free of charge. Such excursions often produce orders of $25,000.

Before long, many of those trips will not be necessary: the 93-year-old specialty chain plans to go East. Negotiations are under way to acquire Bonwit Teller's present site on Chicago's North Michigan Avenue, where a Magnin's is expected to open in late 1971. Others will follow on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, in New York City's shinier suburbs and in Palm Beach, Grosse Pointe, Atlanta and other places where $1,000 cloth coats and $500 dresses move fast. Magnin's planners expect to increase the current $100 million annual sales and to generate enough business to sustain Magnin's custom clothing operation--a costly field from which Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman have recently been forced to retire. Magnin's expansionary plans have the backing of its powerful parent, Federated Department Stores, Inc. whose 97 stores include Filene's in Boston, Foley's in Houston and Bloomingdale's in New York. Federated Chairman Ralph Lazarus, 55, figures that a big acquisition program would stir up the trustbusters, so he aims to double Federated's $1.8 billion in sales over the next decade mainly by internal growth.

Learning the Racks. Federated's West Coast subsidiary, Bullock's-Magnin Co., has expanded considerably under its president, William Keeshan, 48. The debonair brother of Actor Bob Keeshan, who plays TV's Captain Kangaroo, Bill Keeshan spent 17 years learning the racks at Bullock's, a Southern California department-store chain; in 1963 he became head of Magnin's, a Bullock's subsidiary. He helped swing his firm's bitterly divided board in favor of Federated's takeover bid in 1964, and last year the parent company chose Keeshan to head the entire Bullock's-Magnin chain, a 31-link organization that has $280 million in annual sales.

Keeshan maintained Magnin's charm while spreading out--he added five stores--and opening some rich new merchandising lodes. He got Magnin's into the boutique concept early on, dividing selling space into small shops devoted to Courreges and other designers. He has not tampered with amenities like the gold-and-marble ladies' room, which makes the San Francisco store something of a tourist attraction and is duplicated in all Magnin's stores. Rival retailers take more interest in Magnin's 24-carat charge accounts, some of which run to $30,000 a month.

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