Albert Boscov is not the retiring type.

He was 76 when he cashed out his share in his family's department store chain and stepped down as its leader.

But that didn't mean he stopped working. He simply switched jobs, putting aside the long hours at Boscov's but continuing to work at another company he'd helped start, Directlink Technologies.

Then the recession hit and rather than see the longtime family business sold at auction, Boscov summoned up the energy not only to put together the financing to buy it back, but also to retake the driver's seat and steer it out of bankruptcy.

Now 80, the man has more staying power than the Energizer Bunny.

"If [you're] not sick, if you feel good, it doesn't matter what age you are," he said during a recent interview.

And his drum beating appears to be paying off.

A little more than a year after retaking control, Boscov reports that things have turned around and the company has regained the confidence of its lenders.

Beginning next month, he plans to hire 240 people, mostly sales staff to improve customer service at the chain's 39 stores.

Those include the store at Park City Center, which Boscov said is usually the fourth or fifth best performing in the chain.

"We've been very lucky — and successful," he said. "We were lucky to find financing."

Published reports have estimated the cost of reacquiring the privately held chain at as much as $307 million.

About $65 million came from his family and friends, Boscov said. Nearly $47 million came from federal economic development loans channeled through state and local governments in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

A group of regional banks, led by Lititz-based Susquehanna Bank and including Lancaster-based Fulton Bank, provided a bridge loan of $46.7 million while the economic development loans were put in place. That bridge loan has since been repaid.

The remainder of the money was provided by a group of larger financial institutions led by Bank of America and backed by Wells Fargo, GE Financial and CIT Bank.

Boscov and his brother-in-law Ed Lakin, who had previously cashed out of the company at the same time he had, resumed control as chairman and vice chairman Dec. 4, 2008.

"When we came out, we had to report daily to the banks, then weekly, then monthly," Boscov said.

That period of close scrutiny has now passed, he said, and the banks have agreed to allow the company to start replacing some of the employees it had been forced to lay off earlier.

"I don't know why we've been successful," Boscov said. "We think customer loyalty is a part of it."

That initial Christmas season when he resumed control, store inventories had been down. "We didn't have great stock, but people were buying whatever we had," he said.

By last September, when the court gave its final blessing to the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan, sales had begun to surpass the previous year's, and that trend continued through the rest of the year.

"We all had misery on the Saturday before Christmas when it snowed," he said. "We lost — Saturday and part of Sunday — $9 million [in sales], but we picked up most of that the next week."

The company begins its new fiscal year next month. "We think we'll have a very good year," Boscov said.

Retail roots
The department store chain traces its founding to Boscov's father, Solomon, who moved to Reading in 1911, not long after immigrating to America.

"He came over from Russia with very little money," speaking only Russian and Yiddish, Boscov said.

Since Yiddish is a dialect of southern Germany like Pennsylvania Dutch, he could converse with many of the people in this region.

Investing his scant savings in a couple of bundles of merchandise, Boscov's father started riding to the end of the trolley lines and then walking into the countryside of Berks and Lancaster counties to peddle goods to farm families.

"Little by little, he got a horse and wagon, and then a little store," which he opened on Reading's North Ninth Street in 1921, Boscov said.

The family was still living above the store when Boscov, the youngest of four children, was born.

"My dad was a wonderful guy," Boscov said. "I played in the store. I lived in the store. ... I started [working] when I was 6."

Each of the children had a job on Saturdays, he recalled, and he would get a dime to go to the movies once it was done.

His first assignment was to catch the flies that buzzed through the store's doors, Boscov said.

It was a difficult task for a 6-year-old, he recalled, so he tried to improvise by saving flies he'd already caught to add to the next weekly quota.

His father caught on to the ploy, Boscov said, and instead of a dime, he received a stern lecture in business ethics, a lesson he's never forgotten.

Boscov said he loved working in the store with his father so much, by the time he was in high school he had set his mind on a career in retailing.

Boscov and Lakin both joined the company in 1954 and soon began the expansion that grew into the current chain.

Advertising was one of the keys to that growth.

"My father never did advertising, except maybe twice a year," Boscov said. "When I came back from college, he let me do one ad a week."

Initially, the models in the ads were Boscov's own children and other family members, including Boscov himself.

"I like advertising. It's fun to be able to dream a little bit. I think it's an adventure," he said. "I like newspapers and I read newspapers. That's the best way to reach people."

Soon the family was expanding the store into an adjacent storefront, a process that continued until the store encompassed five buildings.

Revenues also grew, Boscov said, from $200,000 a year to $1.7 million. "That was a lot of money then, equal to $6 [million] to $7 million now," he said.

The addition of a series of other stores around Reading began in 1962.

Boscov succeeded his father as head of the company in 1968, and the following year Solomon Boscov died.

The first expansion outside the Reading area was in Lebanon in 1972 with other stores coming in quick succession. The one in Park City Center opened in April 1988 in a revamped Pomeroy's store.

The 39 stores that now make up the chain are scattered through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Delaware, and annual revenues have grown to more than $1 billion.

At the beginning of 2006, Boscov and Lakin cashed out of the business, turning it over to Ken Lakin, son of Ed Lakin and Boscov's sister, Alma.

Federated Department Stores, now Macy's Inc., had acquired May Department Stores about that time, Boscov said, and Federated wanted to sell some of its stores in overlapping markets, presenting Ken Lakin with an opportunity to continue the chain's growth.

The additional 10 stores raised the total to 49, but the recession hit just after the acquisition, pushing the company into bankruptcy.

The company announced it was closing 10 of its underperforming stores, including some of the newly purchased ones, when it filed for bankruptcy protection in August 2008.

When Boscov resumed control, Ken Lakin stepped aside as CEO but remains with the restructured company as director of operations.

Looking ahead
Boscov has been putting in some long hours since returning as chairman and CEO.

At Directlink Technologies, a company that specializes in off-site data storage for large corporations, he had cut back to regular business hours.

He said these days he's in his office by 8 a.m. and when he finally leaves at 7 p.m., he takes a basket of paperwork home with him.

"I would rather have more time with my wife, more time with my grandchildren," he said, adding that he hopes to be able to cut back again, perhaps in another year or so.

In the meantime, Boscov plans to repay his customers' loyalty by adding more staff to improve service and by continuing to offer merchandise at "honest everyday low prices."

To that end, he's reinstituted bus trips to take him and his buyers to New York each Wednesday.

"We're the size we can do opportune buying," Boscov explained. That's when a manufacturer has small lots of leftover stock — anywhere from five dozen to 600 dozen items that are sold over the counter.

"Wal-Mart, Macy's, Target can't use 200 dozen," he said. "Those guys have to be thinking 100,000 dozen."

Boscov is also hoping to reward his employees, the people he invariably refers to as co-workers, by bringing back raises this year and other perks, such as company picnics.

Keeping the co-workers happy goes a long way toward keeping customers happy, he said.

Like most people, Boscov is unsure how quickly retail businesses like his will recover from the lingering effects of the recession.

"Unfortunately, unemployment hasn't changed," he said. "The slowest thing coming back is jobs."

However quickly that happens, he said, "we think we're going to be a better store."