ROTHMAN'S MEN'S CLOTHING

COVER STORY: Clothes Make the Men When Ken Giddon took over his grandfather's clothing store it had a proud history -- and a tired image. Together with his brother Jim, Giddon turned the discounter into an upscale, fashionable retailer without alienating existing customers. Here's how they re-tailored Rothman's to fit the times.
		Maybe retailing genius runs in families. Ken Giddon had no plans to run a menswear store when he came to New York in the summer of 1985. The Boston-based bond and currency trader was headed to MIT to study for an MBA that September, but had been asked by his mother to help liquidate the store his grandfather and great-uncle had started in 1926, Harry Rothman's. That store had become famous for its discounted prices, and was one of the first retailers to create a private-label brand, a strategy used at that time to mask the identity of the high-end clothing it was selling at low prices. Harry Rothman and his younger brother Jack, a junior partner in the business, both passed away in their eighties in 1985, having made no plans for the future of the store. (Harry Rothman famously said, "No child of mine will ever be in the rag trade," and was delighted when his two daughters married doctors.)
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