Webb's City St. Petersburg, Florida - from a small drugstore to a 21-million-dollar business | Cosmopolitan, 1953-02

 

The two things "Doc" James Earl Webb likes best in the world are the laughter of happy people and the ring of a busy cash register. Doc, a peculiar blend of merchant prince and leprechaun, has industriously promoted both these sounds for over a quarter of a century in the resort city of St. Petersburg, Florida, where he operates a retail store, the like of which can be found nowhere else in the world.

Called "Webb's City," the store sprawls over four city blocks, and nobody-not even Doc Webb himself-ever knows just what shenanigans he may run into in any of its fifty-seven departments. At various times his enthusiastic customers have found a cooch show in the large basement cafeteria, an elaborate three-ring circus on the parking lot (with Doc Webb himself as one of the principal clowns), and a man milking a rattlesnake in the main window of the store.

The eager response of his patrons to his frenzied hurly-burly simply delights this impresario. A short, slight fifty- five-year-old with a 21-million-dollar business, he has never let his success inhibit his enthusiasm for a newer and wackier pitch.

But Doc Webb's vaudeville veneer barely hides the hard core of an astute businessman. He exploits merchandising methods that have been called everything from "unorthodox" to "dirty tricks." He sells butter for 19 cents a pound when it sells everywhere else for 79 cents; automobile tires for $9.95 when they sell everywhere else for $17. These remarkable sales are usually met by loud cries of distress and rage from his competitors.

Doc is accustomed to these outbursts. Every once in a while he plasters his store windows with a competitor's advertisement announcing a sale at prices the advertiser fondly believes are attractively slashed. But Doc stabs him to the heart by placing over the ad the simple, stark statement: "This merchandise is now on sale here for ten-percent less." Sometimes Doc advertises a sale without even mentioning the name of his store. This, he believes, is a subtle way of informing the world that only Webb can sell merchandise at such ridiculously low prices.