Rose Blumkin

Rose Blumkin (* December 3 ^July / December 15, 1893 ^greg. As Rose Gorelick in Shchadryn, Minsk Governorate , Russian Empire ; † August 9, 1998 in Omaha , Nebraska , also known there as Mrs. B. ) was a US -american businesswoman of Russian descent. She built the Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha, the largest single store in the United States at the time.

Career

Blumkin grew up in poverty as one of eight children of a rabbi and a retailer. She married, emigrated to the United States during the turmoil of World War I and the Russian Revolution, and settled in Omaha in 1919.

There she opened her Nebraska Furniture Mart in 1937 with start-up capital of 500 (2014: 8,244) US dollars, which grew into the largest furniture store in the USA by the early 1980s . In 1983, its only branch had annual sales of $ 100 million and pretax profit of $ 15 million. In Omaha in particular, their business was responsible for two-thirds of all furniture sales. In 1983 she sold her company to the US investor Warren Buffett and his investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway , but remained managing director. It was not until 1994, at the age of 101, that Blumkin finally left the company. She died in Omaha at the age of 104.

Rose Blumkin's business philosophy was to always buy in large quantities with appropriate discounts, to keep costs as low as possible and to generously pass on the resulting price advantage to their customers. It always sold only slightly above cost price, even though its operating costs were only about half as high as those of the competition. In addition, she lived very frugally and worked extremely hard, even in old age 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. On the other hand, Blumkin was increasingly brutal with her employees and with unreliable business partners; she was prone to rampant ranting, which ultimately led to a rift with her family that lasted for years.

In addition, Blumkin's pricing policy repeatedly led to violent disputes with local furniture wholesalers and retailers. Right from the start, local wholesalers refused to supply them with goods, whereupon Blumkin quickly bought up excess goods from other cities. In 1949, a carpet factory failed in court to sue Blumkin for compliance with the list price .

Rose Blumkin had never attended school in her life. She also had no other commercial training and remained illiterate all her life . She only learned the English language from her school-age children. She compensated for her lack of formal education primarily with commercial skills and a good memory.

Blumkin had been widowed since 1950 and had four children. She holds an honorary degree in business studies from New York University .

literature

• Krismann, Carol H .: Encyclopedia of American women in business; from colonial times to the present . 1: A - L. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut 2005, ISBN 0-313-33383-1 , Blumkin, Rose (1893-1998), Furniture Retailer, pp. 80-82 .
• Lowenstein, Roger: Buffett: The Story of an American Capitalist . Börsenmedien AG, Kulmbach 2009, ISBN 978-3-938350-87-4 , DIE TEPPICHFRAU, p. 415 ff .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Feder, Barnaby J .: Rose Blumkin, Retail Queen, Dies at 104. The New York Times Company, August 13, 1998, accessed August 5, 2015 (the date of death is incorrect; August 9, 1998 was a Sunday. ). 
2. ↑ Wadler, Joyce: Blumkin: Sofa, So Good. The Washington Post, May 24, 1984, accessed August 5, 2015 .