- Gallery: Black Friday
RELATED IMAGES
- Follow the bankruptcy case: Features video of Al Boscov on a buying trip
- How he rescued Boscov's
- Consumer Watch: Some gift-card issuers are still Scrooges
- To some, Black Friday means 'Buy Nothing Day'
- Annette John-Hall: True measure of gratitude
- Let the sales begin! Extended hours on Black Friday, this weekend
- Susan Boyle on track for biggest debut of 2009
RELATED STORIES
How he rescued Boscov's
Al Boscov's work and goodwill saved the stores that bear the family name.
If the cynics had been right a year ago, no one would be heading to Boscov's today for a box of Godiva chocolates, a Snuggie, a Holiday Barbie, or anything at all.
That's because all 39 Boscov's stores would be out of business, just another carcass at the side of Recession Road. Not the survivor that made it to Black Friday 2009.
The odds were against the Reading company when it went bankrupt just weeks before last fall's stock market crash.
There was, conventional wisdom said, no realistic way to rescue its thousands of regional employees, dozens of stores, or century-old legacy. No money. No banks willing to step into the economic meltdown with emergency loans. No hope.
But in crunching the numbers that spelled doom for the nation's largest family-owned department-store chain, the doubters underestimated the power of a pint-sized 79-year-old man.
Had their spreadsheets been able to tabulate big-time heart and brains, they would have predicted a different outcome. Because Al Boscov is no ordinary businessman.
"I can dance, I can sing," Boscov joked later in a Manhattan elevator, tap-dancing in a charcoal suit to an absurd ditty about saving the company. The vaudevillian flash ended as the doors opened. "That's what did it," he said, and hopped out.
It would, indeed, require an extraordinary businessman to pull off a Rocky-worthy win against an economy devouring itself: a savior who was beloved, not feared, but no-nonsense when needed; one with more friends than enemies; who preferred details and long hours over swagger and power lunches.
One year ago this week, a federal bankruptcy judge gave Boscov and a group of investors, including his family and several counties and towns in Pennsylvania and South Jersey, the go-ahead to buy the chain out of Chapter 11 in a deal valued at more than $300 million.
The company had fallen out of family hands and into bankruptcy in August 2008 with $90 million in unpaid bills, but was returned to family stewardship by December. The recovery was so swift it astounded the judge who closed the case a few months ago, and elicited praise even from the attorney for vendors who lost millions.
The rescue meant Boscov's would be saved from the prospect of ownership by outsiders who, if their patience wore thin, might sell off the chain like so much worn furniture at a yard sale before turning out the lights forever.
"It bothered me that it was going to be liquidated," Boscov said, emotional at the thought of it. "I also knew that there are no jobs for these people." Employees, he meant, who in his book are as worthy as top executives.
Boscov's stores had helped revitalize Reading, Vineland, and Wilkes-Barre, haggard after being abandoned by industry through the years. They employed 5,000 Pennsylvanians and several thousand more in neighboring states.
So Boscov called his friends for help. And they said yes.
"He leveraged off of 50 years of doing business and being a good businessmen and being a good friend to a lot of people," said Philadelphia lawyer Scott Esterbrook, of Reed Smith L.L.P., who helped coordinate the rescue effort last winter. "Nobody that I know could have done what Al Boscov did."
Esterbrook worked side by side with Boscov 16 hours a day between Halloween and Christmas 2008. The pair huddled and haggled in bare-bones offices tucked behind the ground-floor customer-service desk of the Reading East Boscov's store, along a highway named for Al Boscov.
Esterbrook discovered Boscov's fierce intellect and famously disarming one-liners. He watched him leave the office each night, tossing legal documents into a beat-up plastic shopping basket and heading home in his Volvo for a round of phone calls that would end at midnight. And he listened as Boscov wooed gun-shy investors in the worst economy in generations.
"I can't tell you how many times I was on the phone with people acknowledging that, if it wasn't Al Boscov on the other line, they wouldn't even be having the conversation," said Esterbrook, who as recently as last week was at Boscov's headquarters. "People who helped him get out of it did it because they had the utmost respect for Al Boscov."
Although the privately held company does not report its performance to financial regulators, Boscov and others say it is doing well as it enters its first holiday shopping season since emerging from bankruptcy. Stores opened yesterday with door prizes for Thanksgiving customers and enthusiastic workers.
That's because Boscov, now 80, is back in charge. He had retired from the helm in 2006. Employees, investors, and lenders are delighted that he resumed running the $1 billion company a year ago.
