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Korea in the 1950s. Eight earnest young dogfaces forge a bond of comradeship in the crucible of war. They have come to rely upon one another for their very lives; each knows his survival rests in the others' hands. Vigilance, courage, and their commitment to each other are ultimately rewarded; each manages to survive his tour of duty and make it safely home. Back stateside, they pool their meager G.I. earnings to start a business, trusting once again to their comradeship to see them safely through. They name their fledgling retail operation in honor of themselves, coding the message of who they are into the appellation they create. Hard work and business acumen parlay this humble beginning into an empire. The eight Jewish Korean veterans go on to live deserved lives of luxury as their chain, E.J. Korvette, succeeds beyond their wildest dreams. As put in this story we collected from the internet in 2005: Or at least, that's the way lore would have this story play out. But the whole thing was just a tale, one that grew up around the idea that the odd name fronting a successful retail operation had to have a secret meaning behind it. Those enthralled by the rumor found its premise quite plausible in view of Korvette's emergence in the post-Korean War, the prevalence of Jewish entrepreneurs in the retailing industry, and the fact that the chain did initially employ a number of the founder's army buddies. Besides, no one had ever heard of a Mr. Korvette associated with this discount chain of appliances and general merchandise, which lent credence to the idea that the name must have been coined. Which, indeed, it had been. The wonder-lovers were right about that; what they erred on was the meaning behind the name. E.J. Korvette (initially a retailer of leather goods) was founded in 1948, two years before the Korean War began, by a Jewish World War II veteran named Eugene Ferkauf. Ferkauf explained the nomenclature thusly: (We haven't yet been able to track down why it would have been illegal to use a naval class identity in the name of a retail store in 1948. Perhaps there were still regulations left over from World War II which prohibited such usage to avoid confusion and prevent businesses from capitalizing on false military associations, or perhaps Ferkauf simply thought that spelling Korvette with a K looked better and was being tongue-in-cheek about the reason behind it.) What Eugene Ferkauf brought to the American landscape was a very different type of mass merchandising retail outlet: Ferkauf, incidentally, was one of the pioneers of the membership store (albeit mostly in name only), a scheme he created as a means of avoiding regulations pertaining to price minimums: Eugene Ferkauf sold his share in the E. J. Korvette chain (which then encompassed 45 department stores and 60 supermarkets) for more than $20 million in 1966. The company went out of business in the early 1980s, and Ferkauf passed away in 2012 at the age of 91.
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