He said Ports' business justified only a $4.5 million advertising budget, which he said was paltry when compared with that of other department stores in the Philadephia area. But he said that if the Ports stores continued to thrive, he might eventually rename them Boscov's and enter the Philadelphia market with a major push.
The Ports chain opened its first store in 1980 in a former bakery in Northeast Philadelphia. Since then, Ports stores have opened in Norristown in 1984, in Levittown and Wilingboro in 1987 and at Franklin Mills last year.
Boscov said he expected the Moorestown Mall store to have sales of $25 million in its first year.
The new store will occupy 160,000 square feet of space and be the best- located of all the Ports outlets, he said. Most of the other stores are at off-beat, even industrial, sites, he said.
Boscov is targeting the middle-market consumer, who, he said, was left behind in the 1980s as other stores, such as Macy's and Bloomingdale's, went after the upscale market.
"We're not out to be another Macy's," he said. "We feel the market is in the broad middle."
The former Stern's store that Ports will lease at the Moorestown Mall originally was built for Gimbels, which Boscov said drew the kind of shopper he is after now.
Stern's, based in Paramus, N.J., took over seven Gimbels stores in the Philadephia area after Gimbels went out of business in 1986. The company struggled during its time in Philadelphia and its parent company, Allied Stores Corp., decided to pull out of the area in 1988. Allied is operating under bankruptcy court protection.
