- 15 -
petitioner's tradename, Mr. Ruf designed, inter alia, the inter-
iors of its stores to replicate stores within a city. For exam-
ple, all of the different departments in its stores were given
personalized names such as Joe's Hardware and Sally's Seasonal,
and all the aisles in the stores were given street names, rather
than numbers. Rather than lowering prices, Mr. Ruf increased
petitioner's profit margins by, inter alia, increasing petition-
er's inventory turnover rate, sales per store, and sales per
employee.
Mr. Ruf also changed petitioner's method of advertising.
Prior to Mr. Ruf's becoming petitioner's CEO, petitioner used
electronic media advertising. That type of advertising was
expensive and was sent to areas outside of the areas in which
petitioner's customers primarily resided. Under Mr. Ruf's direc-
tion, petitioner started utilizing print advertising such as
weekly newspaper advertisements.
In addition to the extensive changes Mr. Ruf instituted with
respect to petitioner's home centers, Mr. Ruf changed the focus
of petitioner's wholesale lumber business from supplying peti-
tioner's internal needs to supplying outside customers. As a
result, petitioner became the largest supplier of lumber to the
movie studios in southern California, the largest supplier of all
vertical-grain Douglas fir to sash and door manufacturers, and
the largest industrial wholesaler of upper-grade pine in the
United States.
Page: Previous 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 NextLast modified: May 25, 2011