When was rose blumkin born

I would advise you to buy this color and this quality. One day I had the most remarkable experience. I still have the fur coat. I shortened it to a jacket. The quality is still good.

I marvel at my mother. We discuss it all the time. What is it that makes her tick? She tells this story. She was born in the village of Shchedrin in Belarus. Her father was a rabbi who was a scholar, but never made a cent. Her mother really supported the family of eight children. So she sees her mother working at night.

In the daytime she has to do everything she has to do with the children. She was 6 years old and she watched her mother work so hard, which she did all her life. She had very proud parents. They actually had no food sometimes. Her mother wanted the neighbors never to know. Sometimes on the Sabbath her mom would put on a big pot of water and have the steam come out so the neighbors would think she had soup.

Always keep working and never give up. My mother held to that wish and goal so that it was not a question of dollars, it was a question of pennies. Maybe they had to watch their children. She learned from her mother this idea of giving the customer what they wanted no matter how hard it was, like my grandmother had to bake all night for whatever she made.

So, my mother goes to the grocery store with a list that my grandmother gives her, and Mr. Prost had an abacus to add up the bill the old-fashioned abacus. My mother figured up the bill in her head, at 6 years old. Prost, you made a mistake in one kopek, one cent.

I overcharged you one kopek. Her brain just operated like that. I call her a mathematical genius because she never really. She would be able to read big headlines. Oh, another thing about her, she always knew what her competitors were doing. That was her nightly routine.

You go see what your competitor is doing. Then she would look in the paper to see what were they selling and how much they were charging. She stayed there until She moved up the street to Farnam, stayed there for five years and then went to what was really the heart of the growth of Nebraska Furniture Mart, and her bargains. What happened was, in , we were hit by a tornado on May 6, That beautiful building that I just showed you, the original old insurance building and the center section, the tornado actually came in with the funnel and took everything that was in there including the roof, and the car.

The cars were plastered — four wheels vertically in walls. It took all the furniture. At any rate, they had to move the whole operation downtown, and what was wonderful was that the downtown store did more business with so many people because of the tornado. We had an eight-mile swath. My house was one of those hit. People got their furniture wrecked, their carpets wrecked. All of a sudden, we did more business, even though we got hit so badly in that downtown store than the other two stores combined.

When adversity comes, my mother knows how to handle it. In , in this downtown store, we had a fire with really insufficient insurance coverage; it was really a question of money.

We were partially insured. Many people, , were in the store. Thank God they all got out safely. It was a terrible ordeal. Because, first of all, there were so many people in the store. But they all got out safely. We stood there and prayed that none of the firemen of the 10 fire stations would get hurt and thank God, no one was hurt. That was another terrible disaster. First of all, the store was saved so that whatever insurance we had allowed us to reopen the store.

Now ordinarily you would be closed for a week, a month. The damage was severe. That is also one of her habits. Anybody who could walk on two legs husbands, all the spouses, aunts, uncles, whoever worked there when there was a disaster. Everybody helped. We opened up the next day and the business just sort of cranked along. I mean some records were ruined, and, you know, different equipment.

We are going to have a fire sale. We tell the customers the truth. All this furniture downtown was in the fire, if you want to buy it, buy it. Well, it was one of the triumphs of the decade. What was wonderful, at that time, is that it illustrated one of the wonderful things. People who owed money — there was Mr. He was associated with Boys Town. He was the original man, the promoter that thought of sending out letters to get donations, and he furnished a beautiful penthouse and he bought thousands of dollars worth of furniture.

This man calls up. Blumkin, you need the money. I survived that. The roof is opened. As long as a customer wanted help, she would help them. She never had to go to a public relations company. She never had to read books on how to succeed, how to get ahead. She had it all. She has always remembered what it is like to be poor. She has never forgotten that. And, when she sees a customer. You would never cheat me, I know you. Then, of course, everything became of such magnitude, so much floor space and so many people, that she could not actually handle it all.

Blumkin, I want you to wait on me. Originally, when the store grew to its great size, she actually had to confine herself. She got to her true love, which was carpet. That was her kingdom.

Not only that, my mother watched every penny. I got to have a discount. I mean she watched pennies. That is part of the reason for her success.

But I will tell you that her phenomenal memory and knowledge, pure product knowledge, was amazing. You pulled, you struggled. The wonderful thing, I came to America. Remember this, Mom? They sold you carpet, and my mother always looks at the carpet after the shipment comes in. She checks the inventory. I bought so many ounces. This is not the correct weight. This weight is not what you bought. There was an inside ring at the mill. They stole the yarn and had their own little outlaw operation.

BATT: Some people, they never learn. You can put somebody into something. You got to have the talent, the brains and the desire. BATT: That is very important.

In , we had the merged operation because of the big tornado. In or , downtown began to be absolutely just not the preferred location. And that was another idea my mother came up with.

What happened to downtown? No parking. Lo and behold, you have a car parking lot. Pretty soon we bought land across the street for more parking and that store was the single biggest draw downtown while the others failed.

We mentioned Orchard and Wilhelm, the great giant, the decorators, even Brandies with its beautiful furniture department. Here is where all the people came. So finally, the move was made to close the downtown store in Then it became a single operation again.

By that time, about , the south wing was added. It was when it was sold to Berkshire Hathaway. By that time, it was a good 30 years old, so that would be That was just initiated and it went off great, there was parking at the door. One of the most important things about this location is that it was the original central shopping area, and it had lots of parking too.

Or they have to pay a lot of money to park. People are very sensitive to that. This is her lifeblood. Either you do, or you sit and cry. You just forget it. BATT: Fabulous. We have a regular retail price and you cannot discount our prices.

What have I done wrong? She is so brilliant. The interview is over now. Blumkin is such a wonderful judge of character and I think this is very important. How would she get people to work for her? Many times what happened was, if she had one good person, it generally went through the generations. He needs a job for the summer.

Tousha, I know your family. If you tell me you got a good boy, send him in. She had one man, Mr. Watson, who had eight kids. He worked here and all the eight kids worked here.

It was always a standing joke. You knew where you could get a job if you were honest and if you were on time. You never had to worry. What can you tell me about yourself? Blumkin, I want to buy some furniture. I need a bed, mattress, table and chairs for my kitchen. What should I do?

Tousha or whoever the lady was , I can help you. You know something? I like the questions you ask me. How would you like a job?

Of course, in the early years, anybody that got a job was so happy to get a job. So that was her method, truthfully. She had an old Dodge, it was like a Dodge and she could not drive, believe me. Then, after we were all done distributing the fliers house-to-house, we went into the neighborhood. She knew where to go. She knew where the people were looking, every ethnic group you can think of. He took the fliers and he threw them in the sewer. How do you tell them where you are?

She has always believed in advertising. She got into television advertising. It was a remarkable thing. Once television hit, of course, then you hit a very broad market. That market created although word of mouth had done it prior to that time , the regional market. Frances Batt whose mother is Mrs. We did an interview the other day with Mrs.

Batt was there and very kindly filled in a great deal. She has consented to sit with me because I know now, that she knows almost everything else we need to complete our interview. So, thank you for coming, Mrs. I have enjoyed it thoroughly. Keep in mind that you may request a follow up interview later if you wish.

Now I have gone over these questions and actually between you and her the other day, we covered almost all of it; but there are a few things.

First thing, spell the name of the village in Russia. I saw it in Russia as a play. She saw it in the big city for probably very cheap where she worked.

The city was Gomel, where she got her first job when she was You see, he started out reupholstering furniture. Driving a taxicab and the last trip of the night he would go by and pick up a piece of furniture, put it in the taxicab, and take it home. He and his father would reupholster it and the next morning he would deliver it. But, later he started a factory down in Mississippi. He was a wonderful person. He was the Vilna Gaon. Morrie quite frequently talked about the Vilna Gaon. He left Russia a little before Mrs.

Blumkin left, with his parents because of the pogroms. They decided that Latvia was no place that they wanted to live, and they moved to the United States. Then next question that was left out: Was your family in furniture?

Or your in-laws? Tell us about them. Obviously she had no furniture in her background, but as you were explaining to me on your display wall, there is quite a lot of furniture from her beginnings onward. I had never realized that Mrs.

Charles Schneider was your sister. They were pioneers. Charlie himself was a pioneer in foam. He traveled the world and my sister did a lot of traveling with him. She takes after my mother a lot. I am very proud of her. They traveled the world to look at foam factories. Charlie has this wonderful engineering mind, the chemicals that went into it [foam]]]] and the formulas. I know my sister helped him for a while. They would travel the world for fabrics and ideas.

It was part of our family entering the furniture business. She was married during the war in , and Jerry came to work in the furniture store. I was married in to my husband, Norman Batt. He is actually from Chicago, although he was born in Omaha. I missed home a lot and we left Chicago, where his family was, to come here. He worked for the store.

My brother, Louie, was married in , also to an Omaha girl, and of course, he worked at the store. BATT: Yes, actually one of my sons is in it right now. He is an executive vice president. He does a lot of buying for the carpet department. He goes all over America and abroad. The next question is: Describe your growing-up years. She told us about going to work at Are there any other interesting stories about her childhood?

She learned so many of her values and her inspiration from her mother. Her mother went to work, as I think she told you, with a small grocery store, in effect, [working]]]] in the house with the eight children; only her mother and father had a separate room. It was a log cabin. The major part of the house, which was very small, was where all the children slept on the floor on straw mattresses. They had a big oven and outside plumbing — everything was outside.

She watched her mother work from the time she was a tiny child. For my mother, maybe it was inborn or maybe it was her talent at a very tender age, you see, she loved her mother so much but she also adopted her feeling for work.

That was a wonderful goal, which was very, very common in most of Europe where people suffered badly, especially Jewish people, and pogroms were one of the reasons.

My mother witnessed people in her family being killed and that was burned in her consciousness. BATT: Exactly, for no reason whatsoever. I never played. All I did was work.

Do you realize that I earned today the equivalent of maybe 25 cents? Look how many loaves of bread we can get for the 25 cents. She saw work as a means of getting to that wonderful lofty place that she wanted to be. I want you to describe that. BATT: What happened was that by the time my mother was 13, she was full of confidence and ability.

She left her little village of Shchedrin and it was 18 miles [to the train station]]]]. She was always helping her mother sell goods, dig in the field, or whatever they could do to earn a cent, or anything that was valuable. My grandmother had a pair of leather shoes made for her because most of the time she ran around barefoot with no shoes. Part of it was the money. So the train station was 18 miles away. She wanted to save the shoes for when she got to the big town, which is called Gomel.

As I said, she was very tiny. She never did reach over 4 feet 10 inches. It was the 26th place. The man had a general store — a variety store. He sold everything: he sold fabrics; he sold shoes; he sold thread, and probably anything you name that would be in a general store. But believe me, I can do the job. Well it turned out to be a wonderful relationship. They treated her, number one, as a child, which she was. They treated her as a daughter.

She lived with them. One of the reasons that it was good for my mother was because my mother ate only kosher foods. So, she really had a home. They were very good to her. What was so extraordinary was that she finally became the manager and all the other employees were men.

I forget what she said. I think she said it was maybe six men. So it had to be quite a large store. You see it was a railroad town. They would have people come from other countries. They would come from Germany and Poland, but it was a very large railroad junction so they came from everywhere. She stayed there until she was 19 years old.

At that time, she met my dad and then they were married. She worked there until she was married. Leave it to me. So then my mother did not work there anymore because she went home, and my mother and father were married.

That was one thing that my mother had — so much pride. She would never borrow any money. That was one of the tenets, incidentally, if that was possible. When we buy businesses, we are looking for people that will not lose an ounce of passion for the business even after their business is sold.

After all, he said, doing business with someone who is driven by beating the competition by creating a superior company rather than simply finding ways to build a war chest "is what it's all about. For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts.

Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. Log out. US Markets Loading H M S In the news. Richard Feloni. Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. If they absorb Mrs. It's an incredible story. According to the Times, shortly after the acquisition, Buffett said in ''Put her up against the top graduates of the top business schools or chief executives of the Fortune and, assuming an even start with the same resources, she'd run rings around them.

Nebraska Furniture Mart is a part of Berkshire Hathaway's larger retail portfolio. NFM now operates its business from three large retail complexes in Omaha, Kansas City, Kansas, and a suburb of Dallas — totaling about 1.

The company also owns Des Moines, Iowa-based Homemakers Furniture, a chain with about , square feet of retail space and 4, employees at multiple locations, according to Berkshire's annual report. Skip Navigation. Jennifer Liu.