Sometime later, James Cash Penney, another enterprising storekeeper in
Wyoming
, had made the policy his own, and in the ensuing decades, it was J. C. Penney who got the credit for it. Nevertheless, Meredith knew, because she'd found it in an old diary, that James Bancroft's decision to charge one price to all had predated J. C. Penney's.
Portraits of her other ancestors hung in identical frames along the walls, but Meredith paid them scarcely a glance. Her thoughts were already switching to the weekly executive staff meeting that lay ahead.
The conference room was unusually silent when Meredith entered it, and the tension in the air was almost tangible. Like Meredith, everyone was hoping Philip Bancroft might give some clue today as to who his temporary successor was likely to be. Sliding into a chair near the end of the long table, she nodded to the nine men and one woman who, like her, were all vice presidents, and who comprised Bancroft's executive staff. Bancroft's hierarchy was simply arranged and efficient. In addition to the controller who headed the financial division, and the store's chief counsel who headed the legal division, there were five more vice presidents who were also general merchandise managers. Combined, those five men were responsible for buying all the merchandise within the giant department store and all its branch stores. Separately, they were each responsible for a large,
preestablished
group of merchandise. Although each of them had managers who reported to them, and buyers and clerks who, in turn, reported to the managers, the ultimate responsibility for the success or the failure of their individual merchandise groups fell on their shoulders.
Two more of the vice presidents at the conference table were in charge of activities that helped to move the merchandise
out
of the stores—the vice president of advertising and sales promotion whose group planned the store's sales campaigns and bought the radio, television, and newspaper space to advertise them; and the vice president of visual presentation, for whom Lisa worked, whose staff was responsible for displaying all the merchandise within the stores.
Meredith's position as senior vice president of operations put her in charge of everything else that involved the running of the stores, from security and personnel to expansion and forward planning. It was in this latter area that Meredith had found her niche and made her mark in the retailing community. In addition to the five new stores that had been opened under her direction, the sites for five more stores had been selected, and construction was already under way at two of them.
The only other woman at the conference table was in charge of creative merchandising. It was her responsibility to predict fashion trends in advance, and to make recommendations to the general merchandising managers. Theresa Bishop, who held that position, was seated across the table from Meredith, talking quietly with the controller.
"Good morning." Her father's voice sounded strong and brisk as he strode into the conference room and took his place at the head of the table. His next words jarred everyone into a state of electrified expectation. "If you're wondering if any decision has been reached as to an interim president, the answer is no. When it is, you will all be duly advised. Can we now dispense with that topic and get down to the business of department stores. Ted"—his narrowed gaze swerved to Ted Rothman, the vice president who was in charge of purchasing cosmetics, intimate apparel, shoes, and coats—"according to last night's reports from all our stores, sales of coats are down by eleven percent compared to this same week last year. What's your answer for that?"
"My answer," Rothman replied with a smile, "is that it's unseasonably warm, Philip, and customers aren't concentrating on outer clothing as much as they normally would at this time of the year. It's to be expected." As he spoke, he stood up and walked over to one of the computer screens built into a wall cabinet, and quickly pressed a series of keys on the keyboard. The store's computer systems had long ago been updated at Meredith's urging—and at considerable expense—so that at any given instant, sales figures were available from every department in every one of their stores, along with comparisons based on this time last week, or last month, or last year, "Sales of coats in Boston, where the temperature this weekend dropped to a more normal seasonal level are"—he paused, watching the screen—
"up
by ten percent over last week."
"I'm not interested in last week! I want to know why our coat sales are down from last year."
Meredith, who'd been on the phone with
a friend at
Women's Wear Daily
last night, looked at her glowering father. "According to
WWD,"
she said, "coat
sales
are down in all the chains. They're printing a story on it in the next issue."
"I don't want excuses, I want explanations," her father bit out. Inwardly, Meredith winced a little—but not much. From the day she'd forced him
t
o acknowledge her value as a Bancroft executive, her father had gone out of his way to prove to her, and to everyone else, that his daughter got no favoritism from him. Quite the opposite, in fact. "The
explanation,"
she said calmly, "is jackets. Winter jacket sales are up by twelve percent, nationwide. They're taking up the slack in coat sales."
Philip heard her, but he did not give her the small courtesy of acknowledging the worth of her input by so much as a nod. Instead, he turned on Rothman, his voice clipped. "What are we supposed to do with all the coats we'll have left?"
"We cut back on our orders for coats, Philip," Rothman said patiently. "We don't expect to have any surplus." When he didn't add that Theresa Bishop had been the one to advise him to buy jackets heavily and cut back on coats, Gordon Mitchell, the vice president who was responsible for dresses, accessories, and children's wear, was quick to point out Rothman's omission. "As I recall," he sad, "the jackets were purchased instead of coats because Theresa told us the trend toward shorter skirts would cause women to look toward jackets this year rather than coats." Mitchell had spoken up, Meredith knew, not because he gave a damn whether Theresa got credit, but because he didn't want Rothman to get the credit. Mitchell never missed an opportunity to try to make the other merchandising vice presidents look less competent than himself. He was a petty, malicious man who had always repelled Meredith despite his good looks.
"I'm sure we're all well aware and appreciative of Theresa's fashion clairvoyance," Philip said with stinging derision. He did not like women among his vice presidents, and everyone knew it. Theresa rolled her eyes, but she did not look to Meredith for empathy; to do so would have showed a kind of mutual dependency, ergo, weakness, and they both knew better than to show any sign of that to their formidable president. "What about the new perfume that rock star is going to introduce—" Philip demanded, glancing at his notes and then at Ted Rothman.
"Charisma." Rothman provided the name of the perfume and the celebrity. "Her name is Cheryl
Aderly
— she's a rock star/sex symbol who—"
"I know who she is!" Philip said shortly. "Will Bancroft's get to debut her perfume or not?"
"We don't know yet," Rothman replied uneasily. Perfumes were one of the highest profit items in a department store, and being given the exclusive right in a city to introduce an important new scent was a coup. It meant free advertising from the perfume company, free publicity when the star came to the store to promote it, and a huge influx of women shoppers who flocked to the counters to try it and buy it.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" Philip snapped. "You said it was virtually in the bag."
"
Aderly
is hedging," he admitted. "As I understand it, she's eager to shed her rock-star image and do some serious acting, but—"
Philip threw down his pen in disgust. "For Christ's sake! I don't give a damn about her career goals! What I want to know is whether Bancroft's is going to snag the debut of her perfume, and if not,
why
not!"
"I'm trying to answer you, Philip," he said in a cautious, placating voice. "
Aderly
wanted to debut her perfume at a classy store to lend her a classy new image."
"What could be classier than Bancroft's?" Philip demanded, scowling, and without waiting for a reply to that rhetorical question, he said, "Did you find out who else she's considering?"
"Marshall Field's."
"That's a crock! Field's doesn't begin to outclass us and they can't do the job for her that we can!"
"At the moment, our 'class' seems to be the problem." Ted Rothman held up his hand when Philip's face turned an angry red. "You see, when we began negotiating the deal,
Aderly
wanted that class image, but now her agent and her advisers have half convinced her that it's a mistake for her to try to ditch the sexpot/rock star image that's won her so many teenage fans. For that reason, they're talking to Field's—looking at them as a sort of compromise image."
"I want that debut, Ted," Philip stated in a flat tone. "I mean that. Offer them a bigger cut of the profits if necessary, or tell them we'll share some of their local advertising costs. Don't offer more than what it will take, but get that debut."
"I'll do my best."
"Haven't you been doing that all along?" Philip challenged. Without waiting for a reply, he turned to the vice president sitting beside Rothman, then one at a time he worked his way around the table, subjecting each VP to the same curt cross-examination that Rothman had received. Sales were excellent and each vice president was more than capable; Philip knew it, but as his health had worsened, so had his disposition. Gordon Mitchell was the
last
to come under Philip's fire: "The Dominic
Avanti
gowns look like hell—they look like last year's leftovers, and they aren't selling."
"One of the reasons they aren't selling," Mitchell announced with a bitter, accusing glance at Lisa's boss, "is because your people went out of their way to make the
Avanti
items look ridiculous! What was the idea of putting sequined hats and gloves on those mannequins?"
Lisa's boss, Neil Nordstrom, regarded the angry VP down the length of his nose, his expression placid. "At least," he commented, "Lisa
Pontini
and her crew managed to make that stuff look interesting, which it wasn't."
"Enough, gentlemen," Philip snapped a little wearily. "Sam," he said, turning to speak to Sam Green, the store's chief legal counsel, who was seated on his immediate left, "what about that lawsuit that woman filed against us—the one who claimed she tripped in the furniture department and hurt her back?"
"She's a fraud," Sam Green replied. "Our insurance carrier just discovered she's filed four other lawsuits against other retailers for the same thing. They aren't going to settle with her. She'll have to take us to court first, and she'll lose if she does."
Philip nodded and directed a cool glance at Meredith. "What about the real estate contracts on the land in
Houston you're so determined to buy?"
"Sam and I are working out the final details. The seller has agreed to divide the property, and we're ready to draw up a contract."
He acknowledged her response with another curt nod and turned in his chair to address the controller, who was seated on his right. "Allen, what do you have to report?"
The controller glanced at the lined yellow pad in front of him. As chief financial officer of the Bancroft Corporation, Allen Stanley was responsible for all things financial, including the store's credit department. His twenty years of stressful, intellectual combat with Philip Bancroft had, in Meredith's opinion, probably caused Allen to lose much of his hair as well as making him look sixty-five rather than the fifty-five he was. Controllers and their staffs did not generate income for the store. Neither did the legal or the personnel divisions. As far as Philip
was concerned, those three divisions had to be tolerated like a necessary evil, but he regarded them as little more than leeches. Moreover, he despised the fact that the heads of those three divisions were forever giving him reasons why he couldn't do something instead of telling him how he could do it. Allen Stanley still had five years to go until he could take early retirement, and there were times when Meredith wondered how he was going to make it. When Allen spoke, his voice was carefully precise and noticeably hesitant. "We had a record number of new applications for credit cards last month— almost eight thousand of them."
"How many did you approve?"
"Roughly sixty-five percent."
"How in the hell," Philip spat out furiously, tapping the end of his Waterman pen on the table to emphasize each word, "can you justify rejecting three thousand out of eight thousand applications? We're trying to attract new card holders, and you're rejecting them as fast as the applications come in! I shouldn't have to tell you how profitable interest on those cards is to our operation. And I'm not even
counting the
loss of revenue from purchases those three thousand people will
not
make at Bancroft's because they can't shop here on credit!" As if he suddenly recalled his bad heart, Meredith watched him make a visible effort to calm himself.
"The applications we rejected were from people who aren't credit worthy, Philip," Allen stated in a firm, reasonable tone. "Deadbeats, as you well know, do not
pay
for what they purchase
or
the interest on their accounts. You may think rejecting those applications cost us money, but the way I see it, my staff has
saved
Bancroft's a fortune in uncollectible debts. I've established basic requirements that must be met before we issue anyone a Bancroft's card, and the fact is that three thousand people could not meet those requirements."