In January 1987, I was invited to go to the Home Show market in Chicago. I went with Mr. Brusack, our merchandise manager, and Bill Belk, the executive vice president of Belk Stores in Columbia. We went up there to shop at an international market, mostly Housewares. It was a big deal. We flew to Chicago and landed at O'Hare. It was the dead of winter and had snowed the day before. The roads were slushy, and the wind cut right through us. To say Chicago is "The Windy City" is an understatement. They had strung rope in between parking meters on Michigan Avenue to keep pedestrians from blowing out into the street.
We stayed at the Ambassador Hotel. It was nice and right downtown. I wore four layers of clothes which didn't seem to matter. The cold was unbearable. We went into stores just to get warm. You couldn't walk more than a block without freezing to death. We took a cab two blocks. The driver drove like we were on a roller coaster. Mr. Brusack and I shared a hotel room. He smoked a lot, so I made him smoke in the bathroom with the window up to let the smoke out. I know he froze doing that, but it was the only concession I made. He was, after all, my boss.
The market was in the Merchandise Mart downtown. It was a huge facility. Mr. Belk joined us to look over what they had. He didn't allow us to have lunch, as we had to keep moving to see everything. Mr. Brusack and I snacked on candy at the vendors' booths. We came upon some old woman celebrating her birthday at a booth. We sang "Happy Birthday" to her, and they gave us a slice each of her birthday cake. It wasn't very filling, but it kept us from fainting from starvation. Mr. Belk wanted to suggest what I should buy for the stores back home. I couldn't say no to him, because he was the big boss. His name was on the side of the building. We came to a vendor of children's dinnerware. Mr. Belk had small children, and he really liked it. Mr. Brusack and I weren't as enthusiastic about it, but we listened. The plastic dinnerware had different pictures on them from balloons to Peanuts cartoons. He wanted us to buy a lot of them, and we would be the only store in our area to have children's dinnerware. (There was a reason for that). No one in Columbia wanted children's dinnerware. It was the worst buy I made while a buyer for Belk. We brought in a bunch of it. Thousands of dollars of it. It sat on the shelf for months. Even though Mr. Belk made me buy it, I was held accountable for it not selling. It turned out to be a giant fiasco, and other stores laughed at us. It went to clearance.
At one point during that day, I got lost in the large mart. I turned around and the other two were gone. Although I was a bit frantic to find them again, it did give me some time by myself to look around and get something to eat. I ran back into them later. Mr. Brusack was mad at me for getting lost. For me, it was kind of nice.
We got back to the hotel, and Mr. Belk wanted to show me some pictures. They were aerial views of some land in the northwest area of Columbia. He was also in Chicago to meet with some developers of a new mall they were planning, and he wanted my input. He said that we wanted my opinion, because I lived in Columbia. Mr. Belk lived in Charlotte. I saw pictures of two tracts of land, and he wanted me to pick which one would be a good place to put a mall. I picked the tract on the right side of a road. He told me that the other tract was bigger and could expand more with other buildings. I told him that if one comes off a road, they are more likely to turn right than left. It is just one of those psychological things about people. If you go into stores, the better merchandise is on the right side of the door. People just like to go right before they go left. Mr. Belk went to the developers that night and gave them my recommendation. They agreed with me. So, Columbiana Centre was built on the tract of land that I suggested. The mall has been a huge success for many years. Across the street on the left tract is Best Buy and Walmart. Neither one has been very successful. Both of them are harder to get to. Case closed. I think I should have a plaque on the wall of the mall thanking me for my suggestion.
I had wanted to visit the Second City improv club while up there, but I couldn't find it. After I got home, I found out that the club was a couple of blocks away from where we were. I was kind of mad about that. We flew back to Charlotte. At the end of the runway was a billboard with pictures of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker welcoming folks to Charlotte. That made me smile, because during the time we were in Chicago, the scandal between Jim Bakker and Jessica Hahn made the news. Kind of ironic.
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