| The words “Goudchaux’s/Maison Blanche” conjure
up a wealth of fond memories for local shoppers. At this landmark
Louisiana department store, clerks greeted you by name; children
received a nickel to buy a Coke and for every report-card A;
families anticipated the holiday arrival of the beloved puppet
Mr. Bingle almost as much as Santa; teenagers applied for their
first job; and customers enjoyed interest-free charge accounts
and personal assistance selecting attire and gifts for the most
significant occasions in life—baptisms, funerals, and
everything in between.
While most former patrons have a favorite story to tell about
Goudchaux’s/Maison Blanche, not many know the personal
tale behind this beloved institution. In We Were Merchants,
Hans Sternberg provides a captivating account of how his parents,
Erich and Lea, fled from Nazi Germany to the United States,
embraced their new home, and together with their children
built Goudchaux’s into a Baton Rouge legend that eventually
became Goudchaux’s/Maison Blanche—an independent
retail force during the golden era of the department store
and, by 1989, the largest family-owned department store in
America.
With a mercantile line extending back five generations to
a small shop in eighteenth-century Germany, the Sternbergs
were born to be shopkeepers. In 1936, as Nazi harassment of
Jews intensified, Erich smuggled $24,000 out of Germany and
settled in Baton Rouge. His wife and three children joined
him a year later, and in 1939, Erich bought Goudchaux’s
and set about transforming it from a nondescript apparel shop
into a true department store. He made buying trips to New
York for quality fashions and furs, introduced imaginative
sales promotions, and coached his staff in impeccable customer
service, while also training his children to follow in his
footsteps.
Hans details the manifold challenges of operating the store—from
planning financial strategies and creating marketing campaigns
to implementing desegregation and accommodating the repeal
of blue laws. Through many transforming events—Erich’s
death in 1965, expansion into suburban shopping malls, the
purchase in the 1980s of New Orleans retail icon Maison Blanche—the
Sternbergs successfully maintained the company’s core
values: quality merchandise, employee loyalty, and superior
customer service. At its height, Goudchaux’s/Maison
Blanche operated twenty-four stores in Louisiana and Florida
and employed more than 8,000 people. With the economic downturn
of the early 1990s, Hans made the difficult decision to sell
the business, thus bringing to an end the Sternbergs’
centuries-long mercantile tradition.
Supplementing the fascinating narrative are the recollections
of former customers and employees, a wealth of pertinent photos,
and even Hans’s tried-and-true guidelines for negotiating
a business transaction. At once a family, business, and community
story, We Were Merchants richly recalls a bygone
era when department stores were near-magical wonderlands and
family businesses commanded the retail landscape.
Hans J. Sternberg was born in Aurich, Germany,
and moved with his family to the United States at the age
of one. He was chairman and co-CEO (with his brother, Josef)
of Goudchaux’s/Maison Blanche Department Stores from
1965 to 1992 and is now chairman and CEO of Starmount Life
Insurance Company. He and his wife, Donna, live in Baton Rouge.
They have four children and nine grandchildren. None are in
retail.
James E. Shelledy spent more than thirty
years as a newspaper reporter and editor in Utah, Idaho, Washington,
and Arizona, as well as a correspondent for the Associated
Press. He is the Fred Jones Greer Endowed Chair at the Manship
School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University
and lives in Baton Rouge. |
