Retail executive, born in Stockholm, Sweden. He emigrated to the USA as a child. During his long career in merchandising he became known for his impeccable taste and high standards. He was president of Lord & Taylor, New York (193646), then founded Hoving Corp (1946), which owned Bonwit Teller and Tiffany and Co. As chairman of Tiffany's (195580) he restored the store's faded cachet and profitability.
Walter Hoving (December 2, 1897 – November 27, 1989) was a Swedish-born American businessman, best known as the sometimes imperious, always self-confident, head of Tiffany &
Mr. Hoving resolutely maintained Tiffany's and his standards, which included no diamond rings for men, no silver plate and no charge accounts for customers found being rude to the salespeople.
His firmness in matters of taste took Tiffany's from $7 million worth of business in 1955 to $100 million for the Fifth Avenue store and its five branches in 1980, when he stepped down as chairman.
Involvement with John F. Kennedy
Hoving is known for two sales to John F. Once in 1960, Hoving met Kennedy, then President-elect, at the store and assisted him in selecting a brooch with rubies and diamonds for Jacqueline Kennedy. The Metropolitan Museum of Art chose the brooch to be the sole piece of fine jewelry chosen for display in the blockbuster exhibition Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years.
Kennedy contacted Hoving again in 1962 after the Cuban missile crisis, and requested 32 Lucite calendar mementos to be presented to close aides who had worked with him during the crisis. Hoving's response varies slightly in different accounts, but the gist of it was, We don't sell plastic. Tiffany's ended up filling the order, but with the mementos in silver.
An Exception to the Rule
The only exception to the no-silver-plate rule during Mr. Hoving's tenure at Tiffany's - small pins with the message, Try God - illuminated another facet of Mr. Hoving's character: his conviction that he was guided by God during his entire career.
He was a co founder of the Salvation Army Association of New York, and gave his time to the United Negro College Fund, and the United Service Organizations, USO.
Mr. Hoving took control of a somewhat stodgy Tiffany's in 1955 and, with his fine eye for quality, gave the store its special stamp. Good design meant good business and Tiffany's sales grew to $100 million from $6 million under Mr. Hoving. But Hoving introduced mass merchandising, not in the ordinary sense, but in the sense of affordable and good quality.
His conviction of the correctness of his taste allowed him to give great freedom to designers, both those who created jewelry, like Jean Schlumberger, Angela Cummings or Elsa Peretti, and those like Gene Moore, who designed Tiffany's eye-catching windows. That's our job.
No item was too small to escape his notice.
A tall and distinguished-looking man, always impeccably tailored, Mr. Hoving was not hesitant about expressing his tastes outside the store.
Selling 'Esthetic Excitement'
The concept of esthetic excitement was supremely important to him, and he was able to make it sell.
Mr. Hoving's resignation the following year was one of a series of management changes stemming from the Avon takeover. Mr. Hoving was unhappy with the direction Avon was taking Tiffany &
He walked out of the store on December 31, 1979 on his way to NBC Television studios at Rockefeller Center for an interview He stated to his grandson John, who also worked at Tiffany that he would never again go through those revolving doors and he never did.
He would often write the David Mitchell then chairmen of Avon seeking to buy back Tiffany &
He always sealed all his deals with a handshake which he saw as the ultimate signature of intent and trust.
After Hoving resigned Henry B.
In an interview for the New York Times, Angela Cummings who has since left Tiffany stated: “At Tiffany's I met Walter Hoving, she recalled, and he looked at the little portfolio I had and said, 'You want to work for us, go ahead and try.' It was like a threat, but at the time I didn't even know who he was.”
Five years after it was bought by Avon Products Inc., Tiffany & Reports had circulated for more than a year that Avon, the world's largest cosmetic company, was giving up on its efforts to run Tiffany. Hoving, said at the time, They bought it for prestige reasons and that's not a good reason, If Avon can get $150 million for it, they ought to grab it.
In 1984, Tiffany &
An Immigrant from Stockholm
Mr. Hoving was born in Stockholm on Dec. 2, 1897, the son of a surgeon and an opera singer.
In 1924, after working at various jobs, Mr. Hoving found his field: merchandising.
When he went to Montgomery Ward &
A Design Test for Hiring
Mr. Hoving continued to stress the great importance of design, reportedly asking job-seekers to choose between well and badly designed objects and hiring them or rejecting them on the basis of their taste.
In 1946 he founded the Hoving Corporation, whose properties came to include Bonwit Teller, the department store, until he sold it in 1960.
In 1955 he bought control of Tiffany's, which at the time seemed to many to be on the brink of going out of business.
Under his guidance, the faltering store reacquired its cachet and a new popularity - Tiffany's salesclerks were under orders to treat everyone, even the most obvious browser, as a potential customer - until by Christmas 1980, its aisles were jammed with shoppers.
Author of 'Table Manners'
The author of two best-selling books, Your Career in Business and Tiffany's Table Manners for Teen-agers, which was written after seeing his then young grandson John Hoving’s atrocious table manners.
His 1924 marriage to Mary Osgood Field ended in divorce in 1936, He married his second wife, Pauline Vandervoort Rogers, in 1937.
He died at the age of 91 in Newport, Rhode Island.
Mr. Hoving is survived by a son and a daughter by his first marriage, Thomas Hoving – the author of many best selling books and the former editor of Connoisseur magazine and a former New York City Parks Commissioner and a former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art - and Petrea Hoving Durand, both of Manhattan, and four grandchildren, John Hoving, Samuel Osgood Hoving, Thomas Durand and Petrea Hoving.
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