World Business: Growing with Gussie

Whether or not Britain gets into the Common Market, Continental retailers are glumly resigned to sharp competition from the biggest of British shopkeepers: restless Sir Isaac Wolfson, 65. To his collection of 2,600 retail stores in Britain, Canada and South Africa, Sir Isaac has lately added the biggest mail-order house in The Netherlands. Wehkamp Fabriekskantoor. And though he paid $760,000 for it, Sir Isaac clearly regards Wehkamp as only a stepping stone; already he is laying plans to expand the company’s business into Belgium and West Germany.

Wolfson’s invasion of the Continent is only the latest product of a relentless drive for growth that has built his Great Universal Stores Ltd. into the largest mail-order enterprise outside the U.S.

Fondly known in British banking circles as “Gussie,” G.U.S. was a consistent money loser when Wolfson took it over in 1934. Today, says Glasgow-born Sir Isaac in his Scottish burr, “we are on the way to becoming the Sears of Britain.” Openly copying Sears’s methods, Great Universal manufactures much of its own furniture, clothing and appliances, sells its merchandise both through the mails and at retail outlets, and counts one British family in every four among its customers. Gussie’s shares, now worth 450 times what they were when Sir Isaac joined the company, are among the bluest chips on the London Stock Exchange. Last year, the company had pretax earnings of $77 million on sales of $700 million, and so far this year profits are up 4%.

Ireland to Israel. As a retailer. Sir Isaac owes much of his success to a single piece of foresight : shrewdly betting that increasingly well-paid British workers could be trusted to pay their bills, he expanded Gussie’s sales by pioneering installment-plan selling in Britain. Outside retailing, he has been one of Britain’s most avid takeover bidders, buying up company after company in the conviction that inflation would eventually make every one of them worth more than he paid for it. Into a series of holding companies, he has bundled some $70 million worth of investments that give him control of firms ranging from Shell Co. of Palestine, which supplies 40% of Israel’s oil, to Old Bushmills, which distills Irish whisky.

Sir Isaac himself is a teetotaler and nonsmoker, who proudly insists that his personal expenses are covered by a shilling (14¢) a day. He is more generous with others. His Isaac Wolfson Foundation, set up in 1955 with $17 million in G.U.S. stock, has donated more than $12 million to worthy causes; for his charities he was made a baronet early this year. Though most of his gifts go to British hospitals and universities, Sir Isaac also belongs to a remarkable club of 26 Britons, each of whom has contributed at least $1,000,000 to Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science.

Work Begins at Calais. Sir Isaac’s son, Leonard, a 35-year-old G.U.S. executive, is being groomed to succeed him, but father shows little sign of slowing down. “The Gov’nor,” as employees call him, still arrives at his red-carpeted office every morning at 7:45, works through till 5 or 6 p.m. His principal worry now is that few other British executives are equally energetic and that British entry into the Common Market could be disastrous unless his countrymen learn to work harder. Said Sir Isaac with mocking irony to a recent conclave of London businessmen: “British companies may yet have to employ Frenchmen and Germans to enable them to compete successfully in the Common Market.”