Al Lechter Packed His Mall Stores With Kitchen Gadgets at Bargain Prices
November 17 2017 - 09:29AM
Dow Jones News
By James R. Hagerty
As a retailer of pots and pans and other kitchenware, Al Lechter
was old-school. Not for him was the 1980s trend of museum-style
displays at higher-end kitchen stores. He stuffed his Lechters
stores with thousands of basic kitchen tools, from spatulas and
pickle grabbers to egg slicers and as many as eight types of garlic
presses. Gadgets dangled from rows of hooks extending from floor to
ceiling. Most sold for less than $10.
"Stack it high, and let it fly," he sometimes said. A consultant
calculated that four out of five people entering the stores ended
up buying something.
That approach worked well from the mid-1970s, when Mr. Lechter
co-founded Lechters Inc., through the 1980s. The company went
public in 1989 and brought in younger executives from bigger chains
as Lechters raced to expand. Mr. Lechter retired as president in
1993.
New executives recruited from Federated Department stores and
IKEA spread the New Jersey-based chain to malls across the country,
opened outlet stores, experimented with new formats and expanded
the product line to include closet organizers and picture frames.
Then mall traffic dwindled and competition heated up. In 2001,
Lechters closed its remaining stores and liquidated.
Mr. Lechter died Nov. 6 at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He was
89 and had Alzheimer's disease.
"He was the ultimate salesman," said Bernard Marcus, a
co-founder of Home Depot who worked with Mr. Lechter at another
company in the early 1970s. "He sold 24 hours a day."
Albert Norman Lechter was born Sept. 18, 1928, in Washington
Heights, N.Y. His father, David Lechter, was a house painter who
later went into the housewares business. His grandfather, Harry
Lechter, was a licensed push cart peddler in Newark in the 1930s
and opened a housewares store there.
The younger Mr. Lechter attended Tulane University in New
Orleans on a baseball scholarship and graduated in 1949 with a
business degree.
Mr. Lechter and his father in the 1950s and 1960s leased space
inside discount stores to sell housewares. The younger Mr. Lechter
learned to find bargains. At a panel discussion for housewares
executives in 1966, he said his firm was retailing plastic pails at
a price range of 29 cents to $1.29. "We don't have to pay $1.98 to
get quality," he said. "The money made in this business is in
buying, not selling."
In the early 1970s, he was among a band of young retailing
wizards who worked at retailer Daylin Inc. One of his Daylin
colleagues, Eugene Kalkin, went on to found the Linens 'n Things
chain store. Two others, Mr. Marcus and Arthur Blank, founded Home
Depot. Mr. Marcus recalled urging Mr. Lechter to be an early
investor in Home Depot. Mr. Lechter, intent on building up his own
business, declined -- and later considered that his worst business
decision.
By the mid-1970s, Mr. Lechter saw an opportunity to sell kitchen
items in malls as the big department stores shrank their houseware
selections. The first Lechters mall store opened in Rockaway, N.J.,
in 1977. Mr. Lechter teamed up with Donald Jonas to build the
Lechters chain. Mr. Jonas, who had better contacts in the financial
world, became chairman and chief executive. As president, Mr.
Lechter focused on store operations and merchandising. At its peak
in the mid-1990s, the chain had about 650 stores, up from 271 when
it went public in 1989.
When the company made its initial public offering of stock in
1989, Mr. Lechter splurged on a Mercedes. He later endowed a
professorship at Tulane's business school.
He is survived by two daughters and four grandchildren.
Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 17, 2017 10:14 ET (15:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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