The Daily Mall Reader: J. L. Hudson Company Customers King! (in 1961 anyway)

A daily dose of mall-related reading...

"No Embarrassed Customers"

TIME Magazine - Friday, Jun. 02, 1961

(Excerpt) Into the downtown Detroit department store of the J. L. Hudson Co. stomped an outraged customer, demanding to return a suit that he had bought a year before. He had just got around to taking it out of the box in which it was delivered. "Now look at it," he fumed. "It's wrinkled." Where most department stores might have offered a free pressing, Hudson's complaint department without a murmur refunded the full purchase price of the suit.

This attitude, the product of a scrupulously enforced rule that "the customer must never be embarrassed," has helped make the 80-year-old J.L. Hudson Co. a Detroit legend—and one of the nation's most successful retailers.

Read the full article here.

Woodward Avenue Kresge & Shopping District

Detroit, Michigan - circa 1960s

Though not a shopping mall here, I'm posting this postcard photo I bought recently, for three reasons: 1. because I really dig the old Kresge five & dime stores, 2. because it's just so gloriously kitschy looking, and 3. because I paid good money for it so you're darn right I'm gonna use it! :)

This is a vintage view of Woodward Avenue's shopping district back in its glory days. The snazzy "DDD" flags you see here stood for Downtown Detroit Days, a regular Woodward Avenue shopping tradition where the merchants along the avenue would work together to offer special promotions and deals to shoppers--what a concept! Here's the card's short but sweet caption:

"Looking north on famous Woodward Avenue in the heart of Detroit's shopping district."

Yeah, Woodward Avenue's still there, and stores are still there, but this kind of swankiness isn't.

The Daily Mall Reader: J.L. Hudson's

A daily dose of mall-related reading...

"How J.L. Hudson changed the way we shop"

The Detroit News

(Excerpt) In keeping with the founder's 'more and better' philosophy, Hudson's opened the world's first shopping center, Northland, March 22, 1954, in the city of Southfield.

This huge suburban mall offered parking for 10,500 cars to shoppers who were lured to the mall by its 53 stores, including Hudson's. The complex eventually grew to more than 125 stores and helped transform the way the nation shopped. Other malls quickly opened in the Detroit suburbs.

But the downtown store still reigned supreme.

Read the full article here.