Henry Stanhope Badcock founded the W.S. Badcock Corporation in 1904. An immigrant from England, Henry founded the first Badcock store in Mulberry, FL.
Henry operated this single store in Mulberry, FL for 16 years until, in 1920, his son Wogan bought the store from his father. Business continued to grow until the land boom/bust of 1929. The depression hit the country hard, and Badcock was no exception. Finding it increasingly difficult to sell the merchandise he had on hand, Wogan began to sell merchandise through consignment at various stores in the area, offering a share of the profits if they sold the merchandise. Wogan also established the idea of the route salesman, who would use small trucks, travelling designated routes, to sell the Badcock merchandise. This laid the groundwork for the dealer model, which is still the foundation of Badcock’s business model. At the same time, Wogan introduced the practice of selling furniture to customers on credit, and collecting on installment accounts from these customers.
Over the years, this consignment model and route sales evolved into the dealer operation that is still active today. These home-furnishing centers would receive and sell merchandise only from Badcock, and these dealers were able to finance their customer accounts with help from the W.S. Badcock Corporation. The principal of easy, fair credit was a novel concept at the time, and Wogan Badcock was a forerunner of the way that most merchandise transactions are handled today.
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