Douglas Maytag Co.

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" rowspan="2" width=200 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="03fc8c00dkelyh.png"> <div> <B> </B></div> <div> <A HREF="id238.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cayot Dry Goods Store"><B><IMG SRC="0410b120.png" border=0 width="11" height="18" ALT="previous" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id277.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Union Oil"><B><IMG SRC="0420b120.png" border=0 width="11" height="18" ALT="next" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></A><B>     </B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="18" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="18"><B>  </B><A HREF="id176.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ottawa Business"><B><IMG SRC="04312120.png" border=0 width="18" height="18" ALT="up" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></A></div> <div> <B> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="77" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 30 WIDTH="71"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="30" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="71" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> </tR> </TABLE></B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Ottawa Herald article contributed by Jim Corcoran</B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=94 BGCOLOR="#FF3300" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0403c5e1dvmwlb.png"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" ><B>Ottawa High School Class of '57</B></FONT><B>     |    </B><B> </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ottawa High School Class of 57"><B>home</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="christmas_on_main_street.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Main Street">Main Street</A>   |   <A HREF="franklin_co_courthouse.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Franklin Co Courthouse">Franklin Co Courthouse</A>   |   <A HREF="kfo_radio.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Radio ">Radio </A>   |   <A HREF="ogg_s.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Oggs West End Grocery">Ogg's West End Grocery</A>   |   <A HREF="id117.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mom Blackies">Mom & Blackie's</A>   |   <A HREF="id201.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Hoods DariTreat">Hood's Dari-Treat</A>   |   <A HREF="id197.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dunkins Dutchmaid">Dunkin's Dutchmaid</A>   |   <A HREF="id171.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="East Side Grocery">East Side Grocery</A>   |   <A HREF="id238.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cayot Dry Goods Store">Cayot Dry Goods Store</A>   |   <B>Douglas Maytag Co.</B>   |   <A HREF="id277.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Union Oil">Union Oil</A>   |   <A HREF="id280.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sinclair Oil">Sinclair Oil</A>   |   <A HREF="id233.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ransom Bennett">Ransom Bennett</A>   |   <A HREF="id264.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Old Ottawa Hamlin House">Old Ottawa Hamlin House</A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=386 width="100%" colspan=2 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>Douglas Maytag Co.</I></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Douglas Maytag Company</B></div> <div> <B>109 E. Second Street, Ottawa, Kansas</B> </div> <div> <IMG SRC="63858250.jpg" border=0 width="600" height="549" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> <B>================================================================</B></div> <div> <B>Long-time Ottawa retailer to turn 100</B></div> <bR> <div> <I>From The Ottawa Herald--June 28, 2003 </I></div> <div> By CLEON RICKEL<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> Herald News Editor</div> <bR> <div> Ottawa retailer Noel Douglas, will celebrate his 100th birthday with an open house and public reception beginning at 5 p.m. Saturday, July 5, at the Ottawa Country Club.</div> <bR> <div> Live music will be provided by the Lester Vander Band, a blue-grass,-country-folk band with members from Ottawa and Emporia. The band will play a selection of music and hits from the past century.</div> <bR> <div> Orphaned as a child, Douglas, who lives at Ottawa Retirement Village Manor, was coy about his birthday and always told people he celebrated it on July 4, nephew Edward Schneeberger said. "He said he held it on a day when he knew everyone would be happy," Schneeberger said.</div> <bR> <div> Born in an Oklahoma family of 10 children, the family was divided among relatives when Douglas' parents died. When he was little older than a boy, as he tells it, he and his younger brother Sandy struck out on their own and moved to Oklahoma City.</div> <bR> <div> He told a reporter that they lived in a cheap apartment building next to the Oklahoma City trolley terminal. “It was right across the street and was always noisy and there were always people going in and out of the terminal,” Noel Douglas recalled. “No one wanted to live there but it was what we could afford and it was home.” An Oklahoma City policeman would open the door of their room at night to see if they were asleep, he said.</div> <bR> <div> They took a variety of odd jobs, but Douglas started his long sales career when the boys persuaded the circulation manager at the Daily Oklahoman to let them hawk newspapers at the terminal.</div> <bR> <div> Douglas had little formal schooling but said he received his master's degree in hard knocks and people, an education he said stood him in good stead for the rest of his life.</div> <bR> <div> Douglas got some of his hardest knocks as an oil roughneck in the Oklahoma oil fields in the boomtowns around Lawton.</div> <bR> <div> He learned mathematics and bookkeeping from a man on the lam. The man had been the chief bookkeeper for a large company and had doctored the books in an unsuccessful attempt to save the company. “He told me to always be honest,” Douglas recalled.</div> <bR> <div> The man also introduced Douglas to someone who gave him his first major sales job, for what later became Standard Brands, selling Fleischmann¹s Yeast and baking powders to bakeries and housewives in Oklahoma, Douglas recalled. By the time he had turned 24, he became one of the company¹s top salesmen, he said.</div> <bR> <div> Schneeberger said that while Douglas worked for Standard, he also was a dance promoter in Oklahoma, booking such bands as the "Boomer Sooners" and the "Blue Devils." </div> <bR> <div> "This was during Prohibition, which raises more than a few interesting and exciting stories," Schneeberger said.</div> <bR> <div> "Noel was a terrific dancer and was a designated stag at the Lawton dances," Schneeberger said. "His job was to mingle among the ladies without partners and dance with them. He loved the excitement and the friends he made."</div> <bR> <div> While Noel Douglas sold yeast and Oklahoma dance bands, his brother Sandy worked as a barker for the Barnum and Bailey circus.</div> <div> Tiring of the circus, Sandy persuaded Noel to join him and work for a third brother, Ed Douglas, who had the Missouri and Oklahoma franchise for Skelgas propane and Maytag dryers. (It isn¹t as a bizarre a combination as it might seem on the surface -- in those days, dryers burned propane; sell one, sell the other, Douglas once noted.)</div> <bR> <div> The young salesmen made their headquarters in a El Dorado Springs, Mo., hotel.</div> <bR> <div> “The lady that ran the hotel also cooked the food,” Douglas recalled. “And she was the best cook. So we stayed there and helped her out.”</div> <bR> <div> At El Dorado Springs, the brothers got to know a retired postmaster from Ottawa who urged them to set up a Maytag retail and furniture store in his hometown. He agreed to help stake them in setting up a store. </div> <bR> <div> They got more money from a loan from the Kansas Loan Company, what is now Kansas State Bank in Ottawa.</div> <bR> <div> Then they had a new challenge -- finding a building.</div> <bR> <div> One Ottawa furniture business made a point of buying up downtown buildings to keep competitors out of town, Douglas said.</div> <bR> <div> The Douglases heard that one railroader owned a building downtown and might be willing to sell. However, the other businessman also heard that and made arrangements to meet the railroader in Ottawa to buy the building.</div> <bR> <div> Noel and Sandy drove west to meet the railroader's train. They hopped the caboose where the railroader rode. By the time they got to Osage City, they had a deal and a building.</div> <bR> <div> After establishing their new store, Sandy Douglas bumped into one Ottawa businessman, Julius Raffelock, whom he recognized as a former Barnum and Bailey circus clown. They became inseparable friends, Noel Douglas recalled.</div> <bR> <div> Starting a business in a small rural Kansas town during the Great Depression wasn¹t one of the safest business strategies.</div> <bR> <div> "They made gutsy decisions, and the boys worked hard to get sales," Schneeberger said. "Noel has described his love of sales as 'a way of getting to know people'."</div> <bR> <div> But the Douglas brothers experimented with a strategy that other retail giants successfully tried later: buy in railroad-car volumes and sell cheap.</div> <bR> <div> “We sold more Maytags per capita than any other store in the United States for more than 35 years,” Douglas said. “Maytag let us be the first to show new models in the Midwest.  “That happened right here in Ottawa.”</div> <bR> <div> The Douglases blanketed the region's farmsteads and towns with Maytag washers, Schneeberger said.</div> <bR> <div> "One can only imagine the delight of a farm wife as she stopped using the scrub board and began to use a washing machine," he said.</div> <div> The Douglases found another winning strategy -- offer an excellent service department -- almost by accident. A proud father persuaded them to hire his son, a little, shy high school graduate named Bob Hooten, Noel Douglas said.</div> <bR> <div> “He didn¹t say anything; his father did all the talking,” Douglas said. “He told us, Œhe¹ll be the best service man you¹ll ever have.'   </div> <div> “So we hired him.”</div> <bR> <div> Hooten stayed with the Douglases for as long as they owned the store, and then worked for the company that followed it.</div> <bR> <div> “And his father was right, Bob was a natural born mechanic," Douglas said.  “We had the best service department in Ottawa or anywhere.”</div> <bR> <div> Hooten often saved the Douglases -- and Maytag, Douglas said.</div> <bR> <div> When Maytag introduced the automatic washer, touting it as a major timesaver over the old-style wringer washer, it nearly failed because of a flaw that annoyed housewives. The spinning tub made the machine rock.</div> <bR> <div> “They walked around,” Douglas said. “Bob figured out what to do in order to correct that. We sent the information to the factory.</div> <div> “They allowed the other dealers to make the changes.”</div> <bR> <div> The Douglases sold the Ottawa Maytag franchise after more than 35 years. </div> <bR> <div> But Douglas remained the salesman even after he retired.</div> <bR> <div> Schneeberger said he was present when Douglas underwent cancer surgery in 1990. Just as the operation was about to begin he learned that one of his nurses enjoyed golfing. </div> <bR> <div> "As he was about to be administered the anesthetic for the operation, he insisted that she take his business card as he had several choice golf course lots for her in Ottawa," Schneeberger said.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>