John Augustine Hartford was an American businessman. He served for 35 years as a president of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P).
Background
John Hartford was born on February 10, 1872 in Orange, New Jersey, United States. He was the fourth child of George Huntington Hartford and Marie Josephine Ludium. Hartford's father was already an executive at the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company which his father would then own. He was also elected Mayor of Orange when Hartford was six, and served as both Mayor and partner of George Gilman, the founder of A&P. At an early age, Hartford demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit when on St. Patrick's day he parked his father's buggy along the parade route and charged people to climb up to get a better view.
Education
After completing high school, Hartford joined A&P, working at a company warehouse.
Career
By the time Hartford joined the firm, A&P was making the transition from being chain of tea and coffee shops to the first chain of grocery stores. John's older brother, known as Mr. George to distinguish him from his father known as Mr. Hartford, had joined the firm eight years earlier and had won respect for his suggestions to expand the then limited product line. Both John's father and brother were private people as compared to John's extroverted personality and John quickly assumed the role representing headquarters by extensively traveling around the company. Gilman died in 1901, and George Sr. acquired control of the company from the estate, eventually purchasing the interest of the Gilman heirs. At that time, A&P ranked only 5th among national grocery chains with 200 stores and the company started an aggressive expansion plan. About 1907, Hartford and his brother George assumed greater management responsibilities when their father reached 75 with George Jr. controlling finance and John directing sales and operations.
One of Hartford's early changes was to change the branding on the company's lines of private label products. John decided to replace the company's long name on labels and store signs with the now distinctive A&P. He also expanded the product lines available in the stores. To make room, he substituted the large inventory of premiums displayed in the stores with S&H Green stamps. By 1912, the company reached 400 stores. Next, he proposed opening no frills economy stores that offered low prices by operating at a 12% mark up rather than the normal 22% mark up. His father and brother rejected the idea, but later agreed to an experiment. The first store was opened with an investment of only $3, 000 and produced a higher rate of return than the regular stores. Because the economy stores were small, they could be quickly set up in existing real estate. In three years, the chain expanded to 1600 units, opening 864 stores in 1915 alone. As a result of John's marketing concepts, A&P was now the largest grocer in the country. The next year, Hartford; s father retired and he was named President while his brother George became Chairman and Treasurer. In 1917, their father died and left his estate to a one generation trust that gave total control of the company's voting stock to George and John as long as either lived.
In addition to its retail stores, A&P operated manufacturing plants on a small scale. After the Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers could establish minimum prices for their products, John decided to by pass the decision by expanding A&P's own manufacturing facilities. Hartford personally consulted with Henry Ford about vertical integration and turned A&P into one of the country's largest food producers including coffee, tea, bakery, canned goods and even a salmon packing operation in Alaska. A&P continued to rapidly expand and by 1925 operated 13, 961 stores with sales of $400 million and profit of $10 million. John convinced George to decentralize management into regions but George insisted that headquarters retain control of finances, real estate and purchasing policy, the areas he personally managed. The company introduced larger "combination stores" including space for meats, produce and dairy as well as traditional grocery items and launched a new drive to reduce costs. By 1930 the company's 16, 000 stores reached sales of $1 billion.
A&P's sales and profits increased during the early years of the Depression because of the company's ability to deliver low prices. Meanwhile a few entrepreneurs experimented with large self-service "supermarkets" that offered even lower prices. Hartford held back opening his first supermarket until 1936. Over the next two years, the company opened 1, 100 of the larger stores. The chain continued to rebuild itself so that by 1950 A&P operated 4, 000 supermarkets and 500 smaller combination stores. Sales reached $3. 2 billion with an after tax profit of $32 million.
Hartford died of a heart attack in an elevator at the Chrysler Building after attending a Chrysler board meeting.
Achievements
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
The San Francisco Call-Bulletin wrote: "John A. Hartford belonged to a little group of Americans whose energy and vision made us the most prosperous nation in the world. He pioneered in foodstuffs just as Henry Ford did in Transportation. Their philosophy was blunt and simple, just as most works of genius are simple, sell more for less. "
The Columbus Georgia Ledger wrote: "What Ford meant to transportation, what Edison meant to electricity, what Burbank meant to Horticulture, John Hartford meant to Food Retailing in America. "
The Davenport Daily Times wrote: "In the death of Mr. John there passes a Retail Napoleon. He had a Grocery Empire as Ford had a Automobile Empire, Rockefeller an Oil Empire, Carnegie a Steel Empire. We shall not see their like again. "
Connections
In 1893, Hartford married Pauline Augusta Corwin of Goshen, New York. The couple did not have children. They lived at the Hotel Marie Antoinette in Manhattan. Because of the pressures of his work, the couple drifted apart and separated in 1915.
Hartford became attached to Frances Bolger, a young model that he ultimately married in June 1923. The marriage lasted only six months and in 1924 he remarried his first wife in Paris. In 1928, they completed a Tudor manor house known as Buena Vista Farm in Valhalla, New York that they used as a weekend and summer residence. In 1953, the house was converted to Westchester Community College. The couple also maintained a suite at the Plaza Hotel and in 1929 created the John A. Hartford Foundation with focus on improving health care for older Americans.