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The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America
Marc Levinson
Hill and Wang
September 2011
On Sale: August 30, 2011
384 pages ISBN: 0809095432 EAN: 9780809095438 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
From modest beginnings as a tea shop in New York, the Great
Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company became the largest retailer
in the world. It was a juggernaut, the first retailer to
sell $1 billion in goods, the owner of nearly sixteen
thousand stores and dozens of factories and warehouses. But
its explosive growth made it a mortal threat to hundreds of
thousands of mom-and-pop grocery stores. Main Street fought
back tooth and nail, enlisting the state and federal
governments to stop price discounting, tax chain stores, and
require manufacturers to sell to mom and pop at the same
prices granted to giant retailers. In a remarkable court
case, the federal government pressed criminalcharges against
the Great A&P for selling food too cheaply—and won.
The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America
is the story of a stunningly successful company that forever
changed how Americans shop and what Americans eat. It is a
brilliant business history, the story of how George and John
Hartford took over their father’s business and reshaped it
again and again, turning it into a vertically integrated
behemoth that paved the way for every big-box retailer to
come. George demanded a rock-solid balance sheet; John was
the marketer-entrepreneur who led A&P through seven decades
of rapid changes. Together, they built the modern consumer
economy by turning the archaic retail industry into a highly
efficient system for distributing food at low cost.
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