Jim Boscov talks about growing up in, and out, of the family business
Chairman and CEO of the Chairman and CEO of Exeter-based store shares valuable lessons
Growing up in the family business, Boscov’s Department Store, Jim Boscov certainly had plenty of role models to look up to.
There was his grandfather and company founder, Solomon Boscov, who started the business as a small, neighborhood storefront at Ninth and Pike streets in Reading and helped his customers — and neighbors — by offering “credit” on purchases during the Great Depression.
There was his father, Joseph, who helped found an outside business — BerkTek, a cable and wire manufacturer — which brought a variety of income sources to the family.
And there was his uncle, Albert, who grew that small store into a multistate chain with a combination of marketing savvy and a personal touch that resonated with customers and vendors.
Jim Boscov, the third generation to run the Exeter Township-based department store, told the
Berks Family Business Alliance on recently that he applies lessons learned over the years from people inside and outside the company while running the $1.2 billion business that recently opened its 49th store.
Jim Boscov on Tuesday November 16, 2021, during the Greater Reading Chamber Alliance — Berks Family Business Alliance event at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Reading. (BEN HASTY — READING EAGLE)The full house in a banquet room at the DoubleTree by Hilton, Reading, heard a history of the iconic department store and how its growth through the years and its decisions shaped Jim’s life.
“My grandparents had four kids and to them getting a college education was very important,” Boscov said. “Every one of them had a college education and two of them had advanced degrees.”
The youngest, Albert, joined the company in 1950 after earning a business degree from Drexel University.
“In those days department
stores had sales four times a year,” Jim Boscov said. “Albert said ‘why do that? You should advertise every single week.’ And he did. If you remember, the
back page of the Reading Eagle was Boscov’s ads all the time. As a result, Boscov’s had traffic other department stores didn’t have. Even today, we do
roughly double the volume per store Macy’s will do. We have a lot more traffic.”
With his father’s blessing, Jim decided to join the retail said of the family
business. After graduating from Tufts University, and frustrated he couldn’t get a job after earning a science degree, he spent three