This is a repeat of a post from 2015.

Back in the early 1970s I worked for Naum Brothers. They used to say, and I believe it, that they made as much money between Thanksgiving and Christmas as they did during the other 11 months. That is the reason that all retailers want to get you out buying your gifts for the holidays as soon as possible.

Naum Brothers was a catalog store. Only us older people will know what that is. The store was set up with both catalogs to look at and also one of some items to view before you went to the counter. You would submit a form with the catalog number of the item you wanted to buy to a person behind a counter. Then the item would be picked from the warehouse and brought out to you to be paid for.

One year that I worked for Naum’s the big item was the crock pot. We quickly ran out of the big name brand manufacturer crock pot but had some other manufacturer’s similar item that we would bring out and 90% of the time people would buy that one. By the time Christmas came we didn’t even have any of the lesser brand.

Naum’s also had a jewelry counter that had a great selection. They always said that they were a discount jeweler. They only marked up jewelry 100% while the big jewelry stores mark up jewelry items at least twice that.

Naum’s had a majority of the toys out in the store during the Christmas season. That department had to keep restocking all days during the Christmas season to keep up with demand. Larger items like bicycles were in the warehouse and be brought out to the customer in the store or they could come around back of the store where we would load it in their car.

Naum Brothers had four stores in the Rochester area. The one on Ridge Road West in front of Greece Town Mall was the largest and also housed the headquarters for the company. There was one on Monroe Ave. across from Pittsford Plaza. Another store was on Empire Blvd. next to the Webster Drive-in. The smallest was on Chili Ave in Chili. They also had at least one store in Syracuse, one or two in Buffalo and four in Michigan. About 1975 the chain was sold to another catalog store from Iowa and the name was changed. That company really only wanted the stores in Michigan so within a year they sold the other stores to a company in Buffalo and the name changed again. I can’t remember when all the stores closed for good.