Rose Blumkin Quotes
108 Rose Blumkin Quotes (Mrs B; 104 years (worked until she was 103); Nebraska Furniture Mart Quotes)
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[At the age of 100.] I work to avoid the grave.
Rose Blumkin
Lazy people don’t live long.
Rose Blumkin
Why retire and wait for death? It will come one day sooner or later anyway, and certainly sooner if you do not do anything.
Rose Blumkin
Even if you don’t have money, if you try, you could have it. I only had ambition, that’s all.
Rose Blumkin
Everything I made stayed in the business. I never had a vacation, never went any place, never made parties. Accumulated penny by penny.
Rose Blumkin
Sell cheap and tell the truth, don’t cheat nobody, and don’t take no kickbacks.
Rose Blumkin
The more [the wholesalers] boycotted me, the harder I worked.
Rose Blumkin
I love the American people – the immigrants who went through a struggle.
Rose Blumkin
[At the age of 95.] I want to be my own boss. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do.
Rose Blumkin
[Born in Minsk, Russia in 1893.] I dreamed all my life, since I was six years old. The first dream of mine was to go to America.
Rose Blumkin
In Russia, they used to have pogroms against the Jews. They’d cut up the pregnant women and take out the kids. They’d tear up their fathers and then have a dance in the main market. I was six years old when I found out about that. I said, ‘I’m going to America when I grow up.’
Rose Blumkin
[By the age of 16 being a manager supervising six married men and writing to her mother.] Don’t worry about the men, Mamma! They all mind me!
Rose Blumkin
When I came to this country, I thought I am the luckiest one in the world.
Rose Blumkin
[On not speaking a lot of English unlike her husband when she came to America.] I was too dumb. They couldn’t drill it in me with a nail. The kids teached me. When my Frances started kindergarten, she says, ‘I’ll show you what an apple is, what a tablecloth, what a knife.’
Rose Blumkin
[On her husband’s Pawnbroker shop almost going broke until Rose took over.] You buy an item for three dollars and sell it for $3.30. Ten percent over cost!
Rose Blumkin
[On competitors.] It’s better to have them hate you than to feel sorry for you.
Rose Blumkin
[On first opening her furniture store but wholesalers not wanting her as a customer because their dealers were complaining she was undercutting them. Going to another city to find a sympathetic supplier but then having to sell her own home furnishings to pay off a $2,000 invoice on 30 days credit from this supplier.] When my kids came home, they cried like somebody will die. Why I took away the beds and the refrigerator? The whole house, an empty house? I told them, they were so nice to me I can’t stand it not to keep my promised. [That night she took a couple of mattresses from the store for the family to sleep on.] The next day I brought in a refrigerator and stove, and the kids quit crying.
Rose Blumkin
[On developing a lasting hatred of big shots.] When you’re down they spit on you. When you start making some dollars they start paying attention. Phooey. Who needs them? Give me the middle class and I’ll be happy.
Rose Blumkin
[On what she told employees after making a sale.] Deliver it before they change their minds!
Rose Blumkin
[When being ruthless with her employees.] You worthless golem! You dummy! You lazy!
Rose Blumkin
[On being taken to court by a carpet manufacturer who was trying to get them to charge a minimum price when she was selling it at half the standard price and sent three lawyers to court when she showed up to court alone.] I say to the judge, ‘I don’t have any money for a lawyer because nobody would sell to me. Judge, I sell everything ten percent above cost, what’s wrong? I don’t rob my customers. [The trial last only an hour before the judge threw the case out and the next day, he went to the Furniture Mart and bought $1,400 worth of carpet.]
Rose Blumkin
[On having problems paying suppliers during the war due to the market being suppressed.] I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t eat the merchandise.
Rose Blumkin
[On hiring the Omaha City Auditorium to make a big sale when she was worried about how to repay a $50,000 90 day loan.] This is It! The Sale of Sales! Shortages? Malarky! We can’t eat ‘em! We must sell ‘em! We’ve been shipped so much merchandise this past 60 days, we have no warehouse room. Yes, we’re overloaded, and how! We can’t eat ‘em and usually couldn’t sell as much in six months. So we’ve staged the largest sale ever of its type ever held in this area… 45,000 square feet filled with the most unheard of savings of famous brand merchandise. [She sold $250,000 worth of furniture in three days.] From that day, I never owed anybody a penny.
Rose Blumkin
If you have the lowest price, they will find you at the bottom of a river.
Rose Blumkin
[On showing no sympathy for her suppliers as she got bigger.] Seven dollars? We go bankruptcy tomorrow should we pay that.
Rose Blumkin
[On working six and half days a week.] It’s mine habit.
Rose Blumkin
[On her home.] I only use the kitchen and bedroom. I can’t wait until it gets daylight, so I can get back to the business.
Rose Blumkin
[On the half day that she doesn’t work (Sunday afternoons.) travelling with her son Louie driving around town looking at competitors.] I go shop the windows. I plan an attack on the shopkeepers, thinking, ‘How much hell can I give them?’
Rose Blumkin
[On her work ethic being inspired by her mother she found when she woke up once doing laundry and baking bread at 3:00am.] She would carry hundred pounds of flour twenty blocks for three cents’ profit. It broke my heart.
Rose Blumkin
[On often putting refugees and immigrants in the bookkeeping department.] You don’t need English to count.
Rose Blumkin
[In 1982 on having rejecting several offers to buy her company including Warren Buffett.] Who could afford to buy a store this big?
Rose Blumkin
[To Warren Buffett when he first wanted to buy her store.] You’ll try to steal it.
Rose Blumkin
[To Warren Buffett when she had lined up a group of her grandsons and sons-in-law and nephews against a wall and was lecturing them.] See all these guys next to me? If I sell it to you, you can fire them. These people are a bunch of bums, and they are all related to me and I can’t fire them. But you can fire them. They’re bums, bums, bums. [‘She went on like this for an hour, literally. The word ‘bums’ recurred many, many times. Then she dismissed me. I had served my purpose.’ – ###Warren Buffett
Rose Blumkin
[To her daughter because she had a customer.] Empty the baby chest. When I made up my mind, I didn’t want to wait for nothing. That’s mine habit.
Rose Blumkin
[As a 89 year old driving her three-wheeled golf cart racing around the store yelling at her employees.] You’re all good for nothing! I wouldn’t give a nickel for all of you!
Rose Blumkin
I don’t change my mind.
Rose Blumkin
[On Warren Buffett telling her that it was his fifty-third birthday after the deal had been done.] You bought an oil well on your birthday.
Rose Blumkin
[To graduating seniors at New York University.] First, honesty. Second, hard work. Next, if you don’t get the job you want right away, tell them you’ll take anything. If you’re good, they’ll keep you.
Rose Blumkin
[On being asked what her favourite movie was.] Too busy.
Rose Blumkin
[On being asked what her favourite cocktail was.] None. Drinkers go broke.
Rose Blumkin
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