"My habit was to go to the Woolworth Company every Christmas and every New Year and thank them for the business they gave us. This started iD 1923 because I got the inspiration that any company with the number of stores that Woolworth had, should be the outlet for the products that we made at Camillus Cutlery, regardless of the fact they had a limit of 10<:;in the east, and 15<:;in the west.
George's predecessor, Mr. P. G. Franz, lived in Buck Hill, Pennsylvania, and he had an apartment at 86th Street and Central Park West. He traveled to Europe regularly to their main headquarters in Crayfell, Germany and was punctilious about never going to lunch with anybody or not even accepting a book when he sailed on the Europa. P.G. liked me and although I had practically nothing to sell, I still called on him and was particularly fond of his assistant, a woman 10 years my senior, named Mrs. Kissack. Mrs. Kissack always tipped me off when I phoned for an appointment as to whether P.G. was in good mood or not. All the years I called on him, he called me "Mr. Baer" and he was always "Mr. Franz."
One day Alfred Kastor showed me a sample of a two-blade metal handle Jackknife that
Mr. Gerling had sent us, and quoted us 3~ a dozen. Now the tariff on importing knives advanced considerably with knives when sold at over 39 a dozen both ad valorem and specific. If you don't know customs terms, ad valorem is a percentage of the value and specific is a set amount per knife. 3~ knives, FOB Germany, landed in this country at about
57.
I never asked Alfred anything but took the samples down to P.G., told him what we paid for them, where we bought them. He knew Gerling and P. G. wrote up a general order to be shipped to all stores for 10,000 gross. Big deal! He paid me 85 a dozen. I brought the order back to the office and I thought Alfred would flip. He practically made a special trip to Germany and placed the order, and we were in business with Woolworth selling them 10 cent pocket knives. They sold like hot cakes and in the midst of the sale, over the Wall Street ticker, came word that Woolworth was about to sell 20 cent merchandise. Here was the opportunity of a lifetime. Now we could make a Camillus product in the USA and boy, we needed the business. I was down to see France the same day word came out, and he agreed that we should submit some samples, for he said he wanted to get prices and samples from other factories, particularly a company in Providence called Imperial, for they had been trying to make 10 cent knives in the United States for him and he heard that they gave good value.
I had no sooner returned to my office that I had a phone call from him asking me to come back. When I did, he was shaking with anger. "What do you think?" he said. “The American Cutlery Industry, led by Domenick Fazzano of Imperial have lodged a complaint claiming that the 10 cent knives which you sold me were undervalued, and we have to go to Customs Court to fight the case. How dare they on one hand come to try to sell me, and on the other hand act in this underhanded way?"
I told P.G. not to worry. We had done nothing illegal. We would stand behind him and Woolworth and fight this case. I suggested that he get two samples from Imperial as though nothing had happened, so we would see what they were going to offer competitors. He smiled and said “Wonderful. We’ll, fight fire with fire! “ It was not long before we had the sample roll of the 10 knives Imperial had submitted to the Woolworth Company. I took the knives to the factory. We discussed the quantities involved, took the prices that Imperial had quoted France and duplicated the patterns as best as we could, and down I went to see P.G. I got him to pay us a little bit more than
Imperial because we made a better product. He paid us $1.505 a dozen and he sold them
for 20 cents each.
When the knives hit the stores, they were a sensation. The sales were enormous. You could go and count how many they sold per hour. In fact, I did just that, and we started to mechanize the Camillus factory as a result of the Woolworth order. P.G. never told Imperial why they lost the business, for certainly had Domenick not been part of the conspiracy to embarrass me, they would have had this business.
The hearing in the Customs Court took place, and we were able to prove that there was no chicanery. The case was dismissed and with tears in his eyes, P.G. Franz looked at me and said “As long as you live, Mr. Baer, we will let you be competitive, and if you meet competition, you will always have our business.” This message he passed on to George Graff and for all the years that I was with Camillus, George lived up to P.G.’s admonition.
And in fact, when George Graff did take over as the buyer for Woolworth, he continued buying from Baer. And then in October 1940, Baer left Camillus in a tiff with the Kastor brothers. And most of the buyers, Sears Col. Tom Dunlap and Woolworth's George Graff included, followed Albert to his new company, Ulster. Another excerpt:
George Graff, the Wool-worth buyer, wrote a letter to the Board that Camillus was a ship without a rudder. That didn't sit well with Alfred Kastor, for F. W. Woolworth was their #2 client.
When George Graff became the buyer of Woolworth, I was selling several knives to him. George seemed like a nice guy. He came out of the Chicago district office. He knew about and liked ..to sell pocket knives...
Continued....
