Peak Condition

For a 75-year-old company, the S.S. Kresge Co. of Troy, Mich., got off to a very late start. It was not until the mid-1960s that the firm hit its stride in the discount merchandise field. Today it is the third largest and fastest-growing ma jor retail operation in the nation. Sales in 1973 amounted to $4.63 billion and in creased 24% hi the first quarter of 1974. Kresge Chairman and Chief Executive Robert E. Dewar wants to lift sales to $12 billion by 1980 and leave current front runners J.C. Penney (No. 2) and Sears, Roebuck (No. 1) far behind.

Dewar, 51, has been in training for the challenge since 1960, when then President Harry Cunningham plucked him out of the company's legal department and made him his personal assistant. The son of a factory foreman, Dewar grew up in small-town Michigan and joined Kresge in 1949. He became president in 1970 and chairman in 1972.

He is well schooled in the company's basic strategy and has continued to establish K Marts, which account for about 90% of the firm's annual volume, at the accelerated pace of 100 or more a year. Earlier this month the company opened its 700th discount store. Dewar has recently be gun to extend the chain into smaller cities with populations between 10,000 and 30,000. He has chosen not to vary the formula that Cunningham laid down in the early '60s -- namely growth and then more growth.

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