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Texas Merchant Marvin Leonard and Fort Worth by Victoria Buenger and Walter L. Buenger |
Few department stores symbolized the aspirations of a community or represented the identity of its citizens in a stronger or more enduring way than Leonards in Fort Worth, Texas. For over fifty years, Marvin Leonard, the store's founder, and his brother Obie ran a store that was always a unique place to shop. The brothers used a combination of large volume, low mark-up, and quick turnover to keep prices low and appeal to the general public. Customers also found a stunning array of goods—fur coats and canned tuna, pianos and tractors—and an environment that combined the spectacular with the familiar.
But the story of Leonards goes beyond the store and the man who made it. For Marvin Leonard, downtown Fort Worth and Leonards were always intertwined. In the earliest years, Fort Worth's working families and rural West Texans shopped Leonards for bargains, but also because it was Fort Worth's place to meet and greet. As Fort Worth's demographics changed, Leonards created a carnival-like atmosphere that drew customers to the store. Later, downtown's appeal slipped as rival suburban shopping areas grew, but Marvin Leonard refused to expand beyond one store and never left downtown.
Leonards gave Fort Worth a special identity, a distinctiveness, and an attraction to the city's center. When Tandy bought Leonards and later sold it to Dillard's, Fort Worth's image and character changed.
VICTORIA BUENGER, a visiting professor of management at Texas A&M University, studies strategy and competitive dynamics in retailing. WALTER L. BUENGER, co-author of But Also Good Business: Texas Commerce Banks and the Financing of Houston and Texas, 1886–1986 and an associate professor of history at Texas A&M, studies Texas and the South.
Number Eleven: Kenneth E. Montague Series in Oil and Business History
Texas Merchant
ISBN 0-89096-844-6 cloth $36.95s
LC 98-27607. 6 1/8x9 1/4. 264 pp. 19 b&w photos. 6 maps. 2 figs. Table.
Business History. Texas History.
Publication Date: January 1998.
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