Glass with class

Nation's Business, Nov, 1986 by Sharon Nelton

Glass With Class When Agnes Jansen went on her first buying trip to New York for the store she and her husband, albert, started seven years ago, she took $18,000 in cash. She carried it in her purse by day and, at night, "I went to bed with it under my pillow."

She laughs now and says it was "stupid."

But not that stupid. Bud and Aggie, as they are known, were going into the housewares outlet business, and "outlet" then was a dirty word to manufacturers. Even though Aggie was seeking closeouts, many sales representatives refused to sell to her.

But cash up front was a persuasive tool. Aggie, a former department store interior designer, finally made her first purchase--$18,000 worth of snack sets to be delivered to the barn on the Jansens' 50-acre farm near Reading, Pa.

They had been lifelong residents of St. Louis, Mo., where Bud ran his family's chain of grocery stores. He sold the business and went to work for the buyer, who sent him to Reading to set up a wholesale grocery company. But when his employers wanted Bud to return to the Midwest a few years later, the Jansens decided to stay in the East. They loved their farm and their new community.

With its VF (Vanity Fair) factory outlet complex, Reading was the outlet capital of the mid-Atlantic, drawing shoppers by the busload from Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington. The Jansens were certain they could combine their experience to run their own outlet store. With America's gourmet cooking craze off and running, they settled on housewares.

They envisioned an enterprise no bigger than a mom and pop store. Instead, it has grown to six Reading China & Glass Company outlets in Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire and Alabama. The Jansens employ 200 people (450 at Christmas) and expect to open a store a year, probably growing to 20.

One trade magazine described the 100,000 square-foot flagship Reading store as a "supermarket of glass, crystal, china, gourmet cookware, decorative accessories and gifts." Here some of the best of names--Waterford, Riedel, Mikasa, Wedgwood, Revere, Farberware--can be found for as much as 75 percent off suggested retail prices. Products range from soup tureens and cookie cutters to small electric appliances and handcrafted Amish quilts. The Reading store includes a bakery and a gourmet food department and each New England store contains a fine wine shop.

The Jansens were intent on offering customers more value than they felt department stores did. Vendors, they found, had to charge department stores inflated wholesale prices to cover expected "frills," including the privilege of returning unsold goods. Aggie says such practices meant markups of 60 to 80 percent over cost.

Bud told vendors to cut out the frills and "just give us your bare bones, rock bottom F.O.B. price." In return, the Jansens would buy in quantity and not expect to return unsold merchandise, gambling that their purchase decisions were correct.

The result was a 25-to-35 percent reduction in wholesale prices, Bud says. "And then with our lower markup, it's not difficult to sell at half price."

It is not unusual to find Aggie at the checkout counter, bagging for the cashier, listening to the customers and asking questions.

"It's the greatest opportunity in the world to know what the customer thinks," says Bud, 58.

Reading China & Glass gets most of its customers by word of mouth and does a heavy repeat business. Aggie, 51, recalls with a chuckle how women from Philadelphia's wealthy Main Line used to say their purchases were "for the pool house."

"At first, it was like a disgrace to say they were shopping at an outlet store," she says. "Now they don't care."

The Jansens have been willing to take bold steps to get the best merchandise at the best prices for their customers and to overcome manufacturers' reluctance to sell to them. Once, in New York, when the representative of a French company refused to sell to her, Aggie got so angry she said she was going to Europe then and there to talk with the top people at the home office. She had gone to the airport fully intending to keep her word when the representative reached her and asked her to come back. "We'll talk about this," he said. Now Reading China & Glass is the third largest vendor the company has on the East Coast.

The Jansens no longer have to depend on seconds and closeouts but sell first-quality goods. Outlets have become so respectable, says Aggie, that many of the "companies that said naughty things about outlet stores before now own their own outlets."