David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…Everyone's coming home, there was the G.I. Bill, everyone's got new homes, everyone's starting families, and there's a lot of stuff to buy. There's a lot of stuff to buy. It doesn't matter if you're a department store in a big city or a variety store in a 7000-person town. Everybody in retail should be making money hand over fist right now. The question that Sam didn't ask himself and should have was why does this guy want to sell? He says in the book, "A guy from St. Louis owned it, and things weren't working out at all for him. He was losing money, and he wanted to unload the store as fast as he could. I realize now that I was the sucker Butler Brothers sent to save him. I was twenty-seven years old and full of confidence, but I didn't know the first thing about how to evaluate a proposition like this so I jumped right in with both feet. My naiveté about contracts and such would later come back to haunt me in a big way." He and Helen buy this store. This distressed asset at not a distressed price.…

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