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LOOKING BACK
by Paul
Levengood
for Virginia Business
January 2007
100 years ago
In 1907 the Jamestown Tercentennial
Exposition opened in Norfolk with great fanfare. Although
the event was meant to commemorate the 300th anniversary
of the first permanent British colony in North America,
the civic leaders of Norfolk had an eye more to the future
than the past when they outmaneuvered their counterparts
in Richmond and Newport News for the rights to play host.
They envisioned that when visitors from around the nation
visited, they would recognize the city's "destiny
as metropolis of the South." Although attendance
fell far below projections, the exposition does seem
to have spurred Norfolk's growth, as the city's population
and manufacturing rose sharply in the years before and
after 1907.
50 years ago
In 1957 Sydney and Frances Lewis founded Best Products
Co. in Richmond. Their catalog-showroom concept took
advantage of a loophole in the "resale price maintenance" law
that allowed manufacturers and distributors to set
minimum prices for goods. By having customers make
selections from a catalog and having those orders filled
from a warehouse, Best Products carved out a retail
niche exempt from this law and grew to approximately
200 stores nationwide. When the U.S. Supreme Court
declared resale price maintenance illegal in 1980,
it opened the floodgates for discount stores and "big
box" retailers. Faced with far greater low-cost
competition, Best eventually ceased operations in 1997.
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Paul Levengood is managing editor of the Virginia Magazine
of History and Biography at the Virginia Historical Society
in Richmond. He also serves as the program coordinator
of the Reynolds Business History Center. For more information,
go to www.vahistorical.org.
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