PROFILES IN BUSINESS: Stanley 'PAL' Borofsky and the success of Sam's

Vermont Business Magazine, Sep 01, 2004 by Marcel, Joyce

Most Army & Navy stores are long gone now, but they used to be a familiar sight in the neighborhoods of cities and on the main streets of small towns. Although they were usually owned and run by immigrants, their story is as American as apple pie.

In the early 1900s, America was flooded with European immigrants seeking safety from religious and political persecution, hunger and poverty. As they struggled to survive in the new world, a great opportunity opened for them in the aftermath of World War I. The US military, needing to unload huge amount of surplus clothing and equipment, began cleaning and baling used shirts, pants and jackets to sell as rags. Some of these canny immigrants bought the bales, sorted through the merchandise, sized and priced it, put it on pushcarts and peddled it in the streets. On paydays, they would usually sit outside of the doors of factories and sell to the men and women who worked inside. For many peddlers, the "rag trade" turned out to be a good business. Eventually, tired of working in the rain and snow and cold, they opened small stores.

Soon almost every neighborhood, large town or small city had at least one Army & Navy store. The owners brought in all sorts of surplus merchandise to sell - clothing, jackets, green Army blankets, cots, knives, mess kits, canteens. When they ran out of military surplus, they started selling workingmen's clothing.

Several unexpected circumstances helped raise the profit margins. World War 11, for example, provided even more merchandise to sell. So did the Korean War. And oddly enough, the hippie movement of the 1960s was a great boon to Army & Navy.

Well-to-do young people suddenly wanted to dress like the working classes. The demand for dungarees - soon called blue jeans, or jeans - so strongly outpaced the supply that the larger manufacturers - Levi Strauss and Lee and Wrangler could not meet it- all. Instead, they first serviced their longstanding customers - the Army & Navy stores - and thus brought them a new wave of customers.

As a result, many Army & Navy stores were able to grow by increasing the quality and quantity of their merchandise, the square footage of their stores, and their sales.

By the time Wal-Mart and the other big box stores and discounters began to threaten small retailers, most of the original Army & Navy stores had run their course. The immigrant founders had mostly retired or died, and most of their children, well-educatcd and inhabiting the professional classes, were uninterested in taking over the businesses. I

Today, very few Army & Navy stores survive. Of the ones that do, most are quite different today from their humble origins. They sell new merchandise now, including stylish clothing, outdoor gear and expensive running shoes along with their Carhartt work clothes. One of the most successful of these stores is Sam's, the anchor of downtown Brattleboro. Sam's, which went from being Sam's Army & Navy Store in the Depression years to Sam's Department Store to what it is today, Sam's Outdoor Outfitters (samsoutfitters.com), has branches in Bellows Falls and Keene, NH, and has earned a national reputation.

Sam's was started in 1932 by Samuel Borofsky, a Russian Jewish immigrant. For the past 27 years, Sam's has been run by his son, Stanley "Pal" Borofsky, 70, a sturdy, outspoken, salty-tongued and philosophical man with a genius for business analysis, a passion for run-on sentences and a profound love of Brattleboro.

Borofsky is now semi-retired, and Sam's is being passed on to the third generation.

No matter how successful Sam's has become - and it employs between 88 and 103 people at different times of the year, takes in roughly $10 million in sales, and gives away about 20,000 pounds of free popcorn a year - Borofsky has never forgotten how Army & Navy started.

"Have you ever heard the expression, 'You can make more money from sh** than you can from gold?"' he says. "The reason for that is gold has a value and sh** doesn't. You made your money on the stuff you bought for nothing and sold for value. It takes a person who has good salesmanship to sell product."

Sam's Brattleboro store is a warren of rooms, levels and buildings, all connected together to create 50,000-square- feet of retail space, "as close as I can estimate," Borofsky said. (The Bellows Falls store has 18,000-square-feet. The Keene store has about 13,000-square-fect, including warehousing areas.) Sam's also owns 12,000-square-feet of off-site warehousing in Brattleboro. In addition, the Sam's building has 51 rental apartments, making Borofsky one of Brattleboro's leading landlords.

Behind the scenes at the store is a maze of tunnels and cellars for receiving, sorting and storing merchandise. One basement room, piled with plastic hangers, is where Borofsky untangled wire hangers for his father when he was nine.

Upstairs, two large floors hold the offices for buyers, bookkeepers and managers. In Borofsky's office, the wall is crammed with photographs: of his wife, Donna, whom he has known since high school; their two sons; their three grandchildren; and their friends. Donna was a piano teacher in Brattleboro for more than 20 years and has been deeply involved in the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. Son Brad Borofsky, who has worked at Sam's since 1980, is taking over the store. The other son, Scot, an artist, lives in Brattleboro.