Today we’re delivered a few capitalist lessons that we instinctively already knew:
Paths to economic success disappear over time.
One scientific advance can lead to the launch of vastly different and successful product lines.
Google moves on.
Land is king.
**************************************************************************************
Murray Pergament, Chain Grew From Paint Stores, 76, Dies
December 12, 2002
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Murray Pergament, who with his stepfather opened two paint-and-wallpaper stores in 1946 that grew into a chain of 40 home-supply stores in the New York City metropolitan area, died on Tuesday at a Brooklyn hospital. He was 76.
The cause was complications of cancer, his son, Bruce, said. He lived in Old Westbury, N.Y., and Palm Beach, Fla.
“Be Confident, Shop Pergament” was the company’s slogan, a vibrant declaration of its mission to attract do-it-yourselfers, people so proud of their new houses in the new post-war suburbs that they were eager — or at least willing — to try their hand at improving them. Pergament’s prices were low enough to make the idea seem sensible.
Quickly, the company expanded beyond paint and wallpaper — all it offered in its first stores in Franklin Square and Freeport on Long Island — to sell lighting, flooring, lawn products and more. But paint remained the core of its business: it made its own line of paint at the Hoboken Paint Company, which it partly owned.
Not only did it strive to offer low prices previously available only to contractors, but Pergament was one of the first retailers to offer paint made with latex. It supplied its private Pergament brand of paint to other chains as well.
“Naturally, our stores got larger and larger,” said Robert Pergament, who joined his father and brother shortly after the first store opened. “We grew as Long Island grew.”
Murray Irving Rothbard was born on April 6, 1926, in New York City. His father died when he was around 1, and his mother, the former Marie Hollander, married Louis Pergament. When he was 40, he was formally adopted by the man he had always considered his father.
The family lived for a time behind a hardware store that Louis owned in St. Albans, Queens. Louis sold the store in 1945.
After serving in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II, Murray Pergament opened the first two stores with his stepfather in 1946. As the chain grew, Murray was chairman and president, and Robert oversaw merchandising and advertising. Louis retired in 1965.
Pergament’s focus remained Long Island, even as it expanded into Connecticut and New Jersey.
The family sold the company to two investor groups in 1989, and it has changed hands several times since. It has struggled financially in competing with Home Depot and other new companies in the same business.
The Pergament brothers continued to manage the real estate they had accumulated over the years, including some Pergament stores. Last year, they sued the current Pergament leaseholder for delinquent rent.
Mr. Pergament contributed to many Jewish, medical and educational charities, and was a staunch supporter of Alfonse M. D’Amato, the former senator. He donated 52 copies of the senator’s 1995 book, “Power, Pasta and Politics,” to local libraries.
In addition to his son, Bruce, who lives in Old Westbury, and his brother, Robert, who lives in Garden City, N.Y., he is survived by his wife, the former Irene Bernstein; his daughter, Linda Horowitz of Great Neck, N.Y.; and seven grandchildren. His daughter Sherri Koeppel died in 1992.
Copyright 2002 New York Times (Registration required)