Battalion/Page 7
October 7, 1982
state
Rich man’s sports store
pens world headquarters
Employees
laid off
United Press International
AUSTIN — Westinghouse
Electric Corp. officials say that
30 salaried employees at the
company’s Round Rock plant
will be laid off at the end of the
month because of weak demand
for industrial motors.
Tuesday’s announcement
marked the third time this year
that employees at the plant have
been let go.
R.C. Tranchon, plant mana
ger, said a weak demand for in
dustrial electrical motors and
the overall sluggish economy
prompted the layoffs. The plant
currently employs about 600
workers.
United Press International
OUSTON — You don’t
have to be rich to shop in Aber-
crpnibie & Fitch, but it helps.
H The legendary sporting
emporium, resurrected by Osh-
man's Inc. in 1978, recently
iopened its new world headquar
ters (one of seven stores nation-
ide) in Houston.
| Buyers can find Smith and
sson pistols with scrimshaw
dies for $110,000, a hand-
Ide picnic basket from Eng
land for $1,200, croquet sets for
■gliOOO or a pool table circa 1900
for $35,000.
■ Abercrombie & Fitch carries
less expensive items — pitch hel
pers, fishing rods, pop-up duck
hlinds, and sports apparrel —
bv Rob itiii ^ ut k is the uni q ue . hi g h quality,
costly items on which the store
has built its name. And now,
j) en(()r |management is trying to retain
A&F’s prestigious image in the
arketplace while expanding its
(peal.
■pounded in New York in
1892, for more than eight de
cades Abercrombie & Fitch has
outfitted Amelia Farhart,
t Ernest Hemmingway, Presi-
1 1 A dents Theodore Roosevelt and
I Dwight Eisenhower and
thousands 0 f other notable
adventurers and sportsmen
ack ofarit fe four p
limbed a i/ b r CrOI " ble & F ^ ch v PreS1 '
hrnkeint, ? ent J err y Nanna sald the new
V■ . , n A&F is targeted to similar cus-
tbmers and others.
■You don’t have to be over 25
didn’t brapt
is enough to*
:t againsttl
ch,
35 tickets®!
imal at I
m of quara
ilu escap ’
edasecondii
irboringaii
r decided toi
id the casecj
years old and make $40,000 to
be a customer. We do have the
$36,000 item, but we also have
10-cent items,” Nanna said.
“We try not to make this place
too ratified, too museum quality
that you wouldn’t want to touch
“I jokingly refer to it as
the adult toy store. The
customers have fun. We
offer them something
they can’t find any
where else. ” — Virginia
Casey, manager of the
Houston Abercrombie
Sc Fitch store
it. The recollection of Aber
crombie & Fitch was a little
stilted, but we’ve tried to relax
the environment and not be too
elitist in the approach.”
The 25,000-square-foot
Houston store is decorated in
A&F’s traditional, plush forest
green and red carpet and green
suede wall coverings topped
with a variety of mountings of
moose, elk, sable and other
game on loan from the Houston
Museum of Natural Science.
Exotic gifts from around the
globe are displayed in highly
polished brass and glass show
cases.
“The environment of the
store seems to transport (cus
tomers) to adventure,” said Vir
ginia Casey, manager of the
Houston store, who was dressed
in safari pants and jacket and a
hat trimmed with a zebra ban.
“The excitement of the store im
mediately rubs off on them and
they immediately envision
themselves in the jungles of
Africa, in the bush or doing the
whitewater.”
Casey said customers spend
hours ogling the merchandise
before they consider buying
anything.
“I jokingly refer to it as the
adult toy store. The customers
have fun. We offer them some
thing they can’t find anywhere
else,” Casey said. “The depart
ment stores all look alike, act
alike and all have the same mer
chandise basically. But we give
them adventure.”
Response to the re-opening of
Abercrombie & Fitch stores
around the country has been
phenomenal, Nanna said.
“The people involved (in the
store) feel they are part of build
ing Abercrombie & Fitch back to
the level that it was,” Nanna said.
“And there’s a certain empathy
in the market place for us.
There are just too many institu
tions that weren’t able to pull
their socks up and maintain
them. There’s a silent cheering
for us to make this thing go.”
Sales at Abercrombie & Fitch
stores nationwide in 1982 are
expected to exceed $20 million
— a higher volume of sales than
in any year in the store’s entire
history, said A1 Lubetkin, Chief
Executive Officer of Oshman’s
Inc.
Abercrombie & Fitch stores
are located in Beverly Hills and
Costa Mesa, Calif.; Dallas;
Washington, D.C.; Las Vegas;
Stamford, Conn.; Philadelphia;
and Houston.
Oshman’s plans to open
Abercrombie & Fitch stores in
Short Hills, N.J., Atlanta and
Seattle later this year.
Now you know
United Press International
An ant can lift 50 times its own
body weight. If a man could do
the same, he would be able to lift
8,100 pounds, 29 percent more
than the existing record.
t-shirt design contest
turn in designs
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MSC 26 — SPO Office
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