Two Guys - History

History

In 1946, the Hubschmans operated a snack bar concession in the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) plant in Harrison, New Jersey, which was one of the earliest US manufacturers of electronic television sets. They became friendly with one of their customers, an RCA executive who invited Herbert to tour the plant. During the tour, Hubschman saw a batch of scratched-cabinet television sets returned from the retailers as unsalable. The Hubschmans worked out a plan to buy these sets for a low price, and sell them in a vacant lot for a $5 markup on each set, providing their own publicity using car windshield flyers. The sale was so successful, that the batch they figured would take a month to sell were gone in a few hours. They continued the arrangement with RCA, and soon were ready to open their own store and use newspaper advertising. By this time, they had heard of their competitors whining, "We can't compete with those two bastards from Harrison!" The Hubschmans wanted to use that as the store name to taunt the competition, but no newspaper would print it, so they settled on "Two Guys from Harrison".

In 1959, the company acquired O. A. Sutton Corporation, manufacturers of the Vornado line of electric fans, air conditioners, and dehumidifiers. The merged company was renamed Vornado, Inc. At its peak, there were more than 100 Two Guys locations nationwide, including Upstate New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Maryland, and Virginia.

As Vornado's commercial fortunes declined throughout the mid-to-late 1970s, they began selling off Two Guys stores to various companies. In late 1980, Vornado (later renamed to Vornado Realty Trust) was acquired by Interstate Department Stores, Inc. after Interstate won a proxy fight. Interstate began the process of liquidating its Two Guys outlets by closing the stores and leasing the physical locations to other retailers, which had posted a loss of $20 million for the first half of 1981.