A PORTFOLIO FOR SUCCESS THE STORY OF HOUCHENS INDUSTRIES
The new store allowed Houchens to increase not only his inventory, but to include services such as a blacksmith shop and grist mill. He sold roofing as well, often installing it himself.“ I was in just about every kind of business imaginable at Cross Roads,”recalled Houchens.“I learned how to take care of customers. And I learned a lesson that I never forgot. If you take care of your customers right, they will always take care of you.”
The Founder—Ervin Houchens “I think maybe the key to my success can be summed up in one word—Loyalty. I couldn’t have made it without the loyalty of my customers, many of whom have been buying their groceries from me all their lives. And I know that I couldn’t have done it without the loyalty of my employees, many of whom have never really worked for anyone else. I’m very fortunate in this regard.” —They Called Me TUT Ervin Houchens in front of his original store in Barren County, Kentucky, in the late 1960s.
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They called him Tut, the man who opened a general store on a farm in rural Kentucky and turned it into an empire. It was a nickname given to
In September 1920, Houchens married Eloise Bradshaw, and a year later, their daughter, Covella, was born. Ervin and Eloise ran the store until 1928, when he left the grocery business to become a full-time farmer.“Henry Ford had a lot to do with my decision to give up the Cross Roads store,”Houchens explained in his book.“He was producing a lot of cars, and the people were buying them. Farmers who used to stop and loaf with me were using those cars and trucks to go into larger towns to
Ervin Houchens by his cousin, and it suited him just fine. He proudly wore it his entire life. Born in a three-room log cabin in rural Barren County, Kentucky, on December 16, 1897, Ervin “Tut” Houchens was one of ten children of tenant farmer James Hardin Houchens and his wife Liza Ann Woodcock Houchens. Ervin learned the value of hard work from his father, and at age ten, he began working for others to help support the family. By the time he was twelve, he was making enough to fully support himself with a seventy-five-cents a day income. At nineteen, with $300 in his pocket, he became a self-made man, opening a general store in a tiny building he constructed with his brother on his father’s
farm. On the business foundation of that first modest store Houchens opened in 1917, he would build upon his dream, eventually opening supermarkets, variety stores, and shopping centers. A century later, Houchens is a household name in Kentucky and beyond, and Ervin Houchens’ legacy lives on through those who knew him and worked with him. “Mr. Houchens loved people. He genuinely loved people,” says Sandy Mays, a retired longtime employee and executive assistant to Houchens’ CEO Jimmie Gipson. “When I worked in the store, he would come in and would always speak. He didn’t come in saying, ‘Oh, this shelf doesn’t look right.’ He came in asking, ‘Now how are you