Executives: Mr. Jack Steps Aside

Like many of the man’s longtime friends, Safeway Stores Chairman Robert A. Magowan marvels at the way Jack Straus “still thinks of Macy’s in the same terms that most men think of wives and honor.” Or, he might add, of family. One of the great U.S. retailing baronies, R. H. Macy & Co. has thrived ‘under three generations of Strauses, none of them more successful than “Mr. Jack,” who has held sway over Macy’s headquarters in Manhattan’s Herald Square for three decades.

Last week, at 68, Straus stepped aside, leaving Macy’s without a Straus in command for the first time in 80 years. Acting out of a conviction that “any organization has to make room for younger men,” he passed most of his duties to a pair of carefully groomed, if nonfamily, successors. Macy’s new chairman is Donald B. Smiley, 53, a lawyer and finance expert who has been vice chairman since 1966. The current president, Ernest L. Molloy, 62, succeeds Straus as chief executive.

The Archetype. As befits the familial heir,* Straus is not about to assume “a pensioner’s schedule.” He will head Macy’s six-member executive committee, act as third man with Smiley and Molloy in a policy-making triumvirate.

Under Straus, Macy’s has never been a one-man organization. Nonetheless, just as the Macy’s customer has become the prototype of the shopper, Straus has become the archetype of the shrewd retailer. Straus zeroed in on what he called his “bull’s-eye” (middle-income) clientele, liked to stalk around the floors to check on the sales people and inspect the merchandising for taste.

Macy’s was a four-store operation in 1939, when Jack succeeded his uncle, Percy Straus, in the Herald Square headquarters, still Macy’s largest store. Since then, Straus has successfully parried the discounters, staked out new ground in the suburbs and built a nine-state chain that now numbers 59 stores, many under other names. Sales reached $758.6 million last year, and profits $19.7 million. This year sales are expected to top $800 million, making 1968 the 14th record year in a row.

More Strains. Macy’s new top executives are more in the organization-man mold than Mr. Jack. Like Straus, President Molloy joined Macy’s training squad right after Harvard (’29), later became boss of Macy’s fast-growing California division. Macy’s new chairman, Donald Smiley, has the salesman’s open manner, yet is first to admit that he is “a nonmerchant.” Macy’s general attorney and then treasurer before he became vice chairman, Smiley will pursue the company’s already sizable expansion program, which has added 13 new stores at a cost of $90 million over the past five years.

Still, strains of Straus are unlikely to fade quickly, if at all. Jack Straus says that he has “no timetable for stepping down entirely.” And there are more Strauses on the way. Among the real comers at Macy’s is Vice President Kenneth Straus, Jack’s son. At 43, he has plenty of time to step up.

* The Straus family, which has run the firm founded by Rowland Hussey Macy, a onetime Yankee whaler, since 1888, bought it out in 1896 and still has effective control with only 5% of the company’s stock.