Two Guys
 |
|
| Industry | Retail |
|---|---|
| Fate | Liquidation |
| Successor | Vornado Realty Trust |
| Founded | Harrison, New Jersey, 1946 |
| Defunct | 1982 |
| Headquarters | Harrison, New Jersey |
|
Key people
|
Herbert Hubschman, co-founder Sidney Hubschman, co-founder |
| Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, toys, sporting goods, electronics, housewares, hardware, automotive, appliances, and food. |
Two Guys From Harrison (later shortened to Two Guys) was a discount store chain founded in 1946 by brothers Sidney and Herbert Hubschman in Harrison, New Jersey, originally selling major appliances such as televisions. The chain acquired the manufacturers of the Vornado appliance brand in 1959, and spread beyond the New York City metropolitan area to more than 100 locations in upstate New York, eastern Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, and as far as Illinois and California. The company's financial success started to decline in the late 1970s, and it was defunct by 1982.
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 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.
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