Customer Reviews

Texas Merchant: Marvin Leonard and Fort Worth (Kenneth E. Montague Series in Oil and Business History)

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Marvin Leonard was a merchant with a flair that will probably never be seen in today's world of "cookie cutter" department stores. His store was a unique place, where tradition and modern convenience blended beautifully. It's too bad that his pioneer Fort Worth store no longer exists. The book chronicles the glory days of a store, the likes of which, recall a time when shopping downtown was fun!

I vividly remember Leonard Brothers store. Spent many happy hours within the walls of Leonard Bros. store, my wife worked there as a young lady, and we met thru mutual friends at Leonards. This book is seriously well written, ...I had visions of a boring account of numbers and charts, but this book is really well done and gets to the souls of the Leonard brothers and family, what drove them, how they looked at merchandising and customer service. Marvin Leonard would be throwing fits if he saw some of the poor service in stores today. This book takes you from the earliest days of the start of L.B. pre 1918, up through the 1940s and 1950s when Leonards was to merchandising what Wal-Mart is today. Leonards was truly a fun store to go to. Everything you can imagine was for sale, from pet lizards to bright red pants, to groceries, tires and white patent leather shoes. Leonards brought integration of the races (black and white) before it became mandated, out of pure good business sense, the Leonard brothers made it all happen with great service, inovative promotions, and genuine good service. I found only two minor errors in the book, one was the authors kept calling the north end of Houston street in Ft. Worth "north Houston", when in fact it is only the north end of Houston street in downtown. "north Houston street" is north of the Trinity River, out of downtown, I know as my family lived on North Houston. The second minor error on page 129, speaking of C.F. Kelley the author mentioned he flew B-52 airplanes during the war. Assuming this was WWII, that is impossible. Maybe the B-17? The B-52 made it's maiden flight in 1952, well after the 1945 end of World War Two. Those are minor, trivial errors, the book as a whole is a wonderful trip thru time, and I completely enjoyed every page. Highly recommended!