There was once a young businessman in Germany named Neckerman who had a burning ambition to build his small retail store into a large chain of department stores. His problem was that no one knew his name. He couldn't attract customers. He had only limited capital.

This was shortly after World War II. As you might imagine there were shortages in Germany of almost everything. Thus, the existing big department stores saw no reason to cut prices. They sold whatever they could get at healthy margins. Neckerman saw this as an opportunity. If only he could position his store as the low-cost, high-value leader, he could build the enterprise of his dreams.

As it happened, Neckerman managed to acquire a large shipment of sp…