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DIVIDENDS
By Carolanne Roberts
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sn’t life full of lovely ironies?
Jim Coggin was progressing nicely up the ladder at McRae’s Department Stores – Vice President of Human Resources, in fact, at the ripe young age of 31 – when a larger retailer came knocking at his door. Saks Fifth Avenue approached him with a position in booming New York City, far away from comfortable Jackson.
He ended up in the College of Business at Mississippi State University, earning a General Business degree in 1964.
“This choice wasn’t an accident,” says Coggin. “I felt business was the logical background, the appropriate path for me at the time. I had courses in everything – accounting, insurance, marketing. I learned the basics; then with each job, I learned the technicalities of that business.” He admits he did not know much about human resources, so he learned. As for financials, again he learned, always seeking out experts and gaining the needed knowledge. “Understanding what you don’t know leads you to fill the gap,” he says. He also holds an MBA from Mississippi College and graduated from Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. What you sense immediately, even these seven years after retirement, is Coggin’s focus, his dogged devotion to success and his energy. It is in every sentence, in every step along the way. “I prayed daily that it would be God, family and job, but I’m sure there were days when job got number one,” he admits. A short stint with Mississippi Chemical Corporation, followed by a satisfying stop at IBM, led to McRae’s and the upward path there. Coggin’s responsibilities soon expanded as he was appointed Executive Vice President of finance, operations, human resources and management information systems (translated: the back office running of the business, apart from buying and sales). Forward to 1994, when there were 29 stores with $450 million in sales. In March of that year, McRae’s was purchased by Proffitt’s, a Knoxville-based retail operation. The change went well for McRae’s, thanks to the insight of Proffitt’s CEO Brad Martin. The exceptional McRae’s organizational structure and systems soon led to consolidating all back office functions to Mississippi. “That was a savings of $1,500,000,” says Coggin. “We didn’t know that we were going to buy anything else. If we had known what we actually were about to do, we would’ve had a nervous breakdown.” There was no time for a breakdown. From 1994 to 1996, the Proffitt’s/McRae’s company acquired five department store groups: Younkers (Des Moines, IA), Parisian (Birmingham, AL), Herberger’s (St. Cloud, MN), Carson Pirie Scott & Co. (Milwaukee, WI) and Saks Fifth Avenue (New York, NY). At this point in his career, Coggin had gone from a company with four stores to a company with
MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY
But that chapter lies down the road in the telling of Coggin’s journey, which began in Tupelo. There, his parents worked in areas of retail themselves, his father as a shoe representative for Genesco in Mississippi and Louisiana and his mother as a salesperson in a local boutique. The son had designs on something far different – perhaps a career as an aeronautical engineer or maybe a lawyer or a doctor.
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“I didn’t want to go to New York,” he says of his easy “no.” At the time Coggin had no way of knowing that, in a matter of years, Saks and all its administrative and operational support employees would actually report to him – at his base in Jackson.
COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
service
Respect, Service, Performance
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