Do you know what the boss just asked me?
Ahm, he asked you if you liked working for one of the world`s largest accounting firms.
Nope.
Ahh, he asked you if you thought you could take on more responsibility.
No. He wanted to know–now get this–he wanted to know where I bought my clothes.
Well, was that good or bad?
Well it was good. He said I was one of the best-dressed young men in the outfit. He said even my clients noticed it.
Well, did you tell him?
Well sure I told him. ”Irv`s,” I said. And then he said, ”Irv`s, the place that advertises on the radio as `inconveniently located`?” Well, then I had to draw him a map on how to get to Irv`s.
(Announcer): We hear stories like this all the time. It`s an old cliche, but our best advertising really is the customers who wear our clothes. If you`d like to see an almost endless selection of handsomely tailored, fine-quality suits and sports jackets for men–and at prices that simply can`t be duplicated elsewhere–come visit Irv`s men`s clothing stores, inconveniently located at 2841 N. Laramie, near Diversey, or 610 Milwaukee Ave. in Prospect Heights, near Willow. Bring your Visa or Mastercard.
Irv`s radio commercials, which first appeared a year ago last May, have become as familiar to Midwest listeners today as Dick Orkin and Bert Berdis`
famous Time magazine commercials of five years ago.
For 20 years Irv`s did no advertising at all, not so much as a $5 ad in the smallest of community newspapers. Most of us knew nothing of the place. But lots of us did. Entirely on word-of-mouth, Irv`s had expanded from a small rented storefront at 2841 N. Laramie Ave. to a half-block-long two-story building that Irv`s has owned and operated, upstairs and down, since 1970.
Before the commercials aired, Irv`s had opened its second store in Prospect Heights, and that was one of the reasons for them. The new Irv`s, somewhat less inconveniently located for Irv`s north suburban clientele, had begun drawing customers away from the Laramie Avenue store. The commercials have played a part in bringing sales at the original location back to normal, says co-owner Howard Weinstein, and the new store, he says, is doing almost as well.
And no wonder. Inevitably, the word gets around that Irv`s really does sell brand-name menswear at discounts of 35 to 50 percent. Pierre Cardin, Cricketeer, Geoffrey Beene, Nino Cerruti, Oscar de la Renta, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Halston, Chaps by Ralph Lauren, Alexander Julian, Lanvin, London Fog, Christian Dior and dozens of other respected brands. Suits, sport jackets, overcoats, raincoats, sweaters, dress shirts, sport shirts, T-shirts, shorts, jeans, shoes–”everything but brassieres,” says Ben Scaduto, a partner in Irv`s Shoes and owner of the adjoining tailor shop, across the street from Irv`s main store. In other words, Irv`s sells nothing but menswear.
In the main store are displayed two Ralph Lauren suits, identical except for size, store label and price tag. One, bought by Weinstein`s partner and brother-in-law, Herman Silverman, in a Michigan Avenue store (his American Express receipt and bill of sale are also displayed), carries a price tag of $355; the other, sold at Irv`s, sells for $218–a 38 percent discount. The suits are there to support the claim of an advertisement Irv`s placed in The Tribune last May. On the day of my visit, I wasn`t in the market for a suit, but I did buy a $17 leather belt for $8.50. Then, in the sportwear department, I glowered at the Jockey shorts disply: $8.50 for a set of three. I had just paid $12 a set on Michigan Avenue.
None of these bargains are what the garment industry terms ”distressed merchandise,” clothing that for one reason or another will never be found at Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman-Marcus or Marshall Field`s.
” `Discount` and `off-price` have a funny connotation today,” says Weinstein, ”because a lot of it is merchandise that can`t be sold to other stores, off-season goods or goods the regular stores have returned to the manufacturer because it wasn`t salable, something wrong with it. The color or pattern didn`t match, woolens left over from the previous season that they can`t present in their line because they don`t have enough of it.
”The discounters buy these things up and sell them off-price, but they`re also buying at off-price, so they`re making full margins. We`re not making full margins because we`re buying first-quality up front. We buy the lines the manufacturers are opening up, seven months in advance.”
Irv`s success formula, however difficult to duplicate, is relatively simple to describe: Buy in volume to get the best price; offer customers low prices on first-quality clothing; keep lots of inventory so they can find what they want; charge extra ($2 to $17) for alterations; permit no cash refunds, which encourage customers to sample, to waffle after a purchase; hold down overhead.
”We have no buyers,” says Greenberg. ”We do all the buying ourselves. We have one secretary, a girl who comes in four days a week. That`s our entire administrative overhead. Most stores have buyers, merchandise managers, credit girls, secretaries.
”We can do all the work ourselves because we have a big business that we run like a small business, and we`ve always operated that way. Everybody works on the floor, selling, as well as administers. I sell on the floor. My partner sells on the floor.” So do their wives, and so do Weinstein`s son, Todd, and son-in-law, Scott Schlief, who run the Prospect Heights store.
At the Laramie Avenue store, Irv`s eight suit salesmen, who are paid salaries, not commissions, nonetheless work hard, dashing from customer to customer, sometimes helping three and four at a time, giving a customer time to browse and select. ”I like that part,” said one customer as he picked out four suits and a sport jacket on a recent Saturday afternoon. ”I don`t need someone hovering over me, trying to sell me something I don`t want. Just point me to the racks with my sizes and leave me alone.”
That inconvenient location also plays a part. ”When we first rented the store, we paid $75 a month; when we expanded, it was $100,” says Weinstein.
”Then we bought the building, and it cost next to nothing. The store up in Prospect Heights we rent, but even there the overhead is low. We had never opened a second store because we were never able to duplicate the overhead, and we didn`t feel that opening a second store and changing the price structure would enhance our business. But we did find a location that was almost as low as here.”
THE FOUNDING FATHER
”Every building must have a foundation,” says Irv Greenberg. ”Mr. Silverman and Mr. Weinstein are the building, but I was the foundation.”
Yes, friends, there really is an Irv, though he`s no longer on the premises. Now 73 and retired since 1971, he remained as a salesman, then manager of Irv`s Shoes for nine years after he sold the business he had started in 1964. Silverman and Weinstein admit that the Irv`s way of doing business was Irv`s idea.
”I started by selling acetate and rayon suits out of the trunk of my car,” says Greenberg. ”I was buying the suits for $14.50 and selling them for $23. I would go around to gas stations and taverns where I knew people who would buy. I was not getting rich, but doing okay. In six months I needed more room to keep my stock. So I rented the place on Laramie for $65 a month–the room you first enter now–because it was close to home. My wife and I cleaned it up and covered the windows with curtains. Before that it was just a place where newsboys picked up their papers.
”There were a lot of what they called DPs (displaced persons) in the neighborhod then, from Poland, and they would come down to the place on their own.” Thus did the business move from car trunk to storefront.
”Then one of the manufacturers I was buying from suggested I get an all- wool suit,” Greenberg recalls. ”So I did the same thing, bought them for $28 and sold them for $35. Later I moved into silk and gabardine. My wife and I, one salesman and a stockboy were the entire staff. The racks were nothing but old gas pipes.”
PASSING THE STORE
Less than a year later, Greenberg`s wife became ill, and he sold the store to Weinstein and Silverman, who had been operating a faltering Colby`s clothing store at Maxwell and Halsted Streets, a neighborhood past its prime. ”A manufacturer told us about Irv`s,” says Weinstein, ”and we went over there and liked what we saw, that he was giving honest value to the people coming to him in this out-of-the-way location, and we realized the potential. It wasn`t an idea of ours; it was Irv`s. We asked him how much, and we agreed to it. We never even looked at his books. We bought it on the gut feeling that he had something worthwhile here.”
As Irv recalls it, it was not quite so simple. ”Silverman was down there night after night, watching the operation, watching the customers coming and going, watching them taking two and three suits out of there at a time.”
In fact, the books are but one gauge of success. ”I`ll show you a good trick so you can tell if a guy`s bull—–ing you,” said Scaduto, leading me back to the cavernous room in which thousands of Irv`s shoes (Nunn-Bush, Hush Puppies, Frye, Rockport, Bill Blass, etc., etc.) are stacked to the ceiling in endless rows of industrial shelving.
”When you go in and the guy shows you inventory, just rub your hand over the box. If there`s dust on the box, you know he`s not turning his goods. I learned that from a guy who used to buy stores out. Now come over here.” In a remote corner, Scaduto rubs his hand over another box. ”Three pairs left. There`s dust. That`s dead stock.”
It is exceedingly difficult to find dust at Irv`s. ”I have 9,000 suits in each store,” says Weinstein, ”and we turn that about four, five times a year. What`s your size, about a 42 short? I could probably show you 250 suits in your size.”
”That`s the key,” says Jack Wardrop, president of Wardrop, Murtaugh, Temple & Frank, the ad agency that produces Irv`s commercials and print ads.
”Just what he said is the key. It`s not enough to have the price; you`ve also got to have what the guy wants.”
Or what his wife or girlfriend wants him to want. ”Lots of men aren`t confident in choosing, and they think their wives know better,” Weinstein says. ”Sometimes they do, sometimes not. However, wives will tell their husbands to buy more than they normally would buy themselves. If they come alone, they`ll buy one suit; if their wives are along they`ll buy two and a sport coat. The wives don`t necessarily know what`s right for their husbands, but they do want them to buy. Why? I guess they`re guilty about what they`re spending. Women love to shop. A lot of women spend their entire lifetime shopping.”
It was Wardrop`s partner, Marvin Frank, who did the spadework for the ad campaign. As Weinstein, sitting in his spare office, recalls it, Frank ”sat in that chair and asked questions. He wanted to find out what we thought about our business. Then he talked to his friends who had been customers here.
”He wanted to know why they shopped here and why they didn`t shop here. People who shopped here said: `Sure, we get pushed around (on a Saturday or Sunday in peak periods customers fill Irv`s almost to overflowing); we get our toes stepped on; we stand in line to get fitted; everything is not displayed beautifully, as it is at Saks Fifth Avenue or Field`s; Irv`s doesn`t have one- to-one salesmen. But the prices make it worthwhile.` ”
At least a few, apparently, mentioned that Irv`s was not right next door. When Weinstein first heard the ”inconveniently located” commercial, he says, ”I was enthralled with it–immediately. Both my partner and I thought it was as close to the honest-to-goodness Irv`s as you could possibly get. It hit the nail right on the head.”–
