Franklin Simon; Former Chief of Bullock’s

Franklin Simon, president and chief executive officer of Los Angeles’ Bullock’s Department Stores from 1979 to 1984, has died. He was 64.

Simon died April 2 at his Los Angeles home of heart failure, his daughter, Leslie Simon McClure, said.

Simon said the key to successful retailing was understanding the area’s many lifestyles.

“We can’t change the customer’s self-perception, but we can satisfy his or her needs,” he told The Times in 1980.

Simon retired at 57, after coronary bypass surgery, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family and play more golf “before I lose my ability to concentrate and play well.”

Educated at Yale University, Simon spent his entire business career with Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores Inc., which owned Bullock’s.

Allen I. Questrom, who succeeded Simon as head of Bullock’s and is now chairman and chief executive of Federated Department Stores and Allied Stores Corp., called Simon “the real dean of the men’s industry. . . . A real man’s man and a student of menswear retailing.”

Questrom said Simon’s love of golf was so strong that the businessman almost became a pro golfer. Only a particularly bad day at a tournament in Boston persuaded him to switch to retailing.

Simon joined Federated in 1952 as an executive trainee at Bloomingdale’s in New York and was credited with creating a designer menswear market for the chain.

“Franklin Simon put Bloomingdale’s on the map in menswear,” Polo designer Ralph Lauren told Fairchild Publications’ Daily News Record. “He was one of the first major retailers to believe in what I did.”

By 1969, Simon had become senior vice president and general merchandise manager of Bloomingdale’s. In 1975, he became president of Filene’s in Boston, another Federated chain, and remained there until he moved to Los Angeles and Bullock’s in 1979.

In addition to his daughter Leslie, Simon is survived by his wife, Sylvia, daughter Cici Simon Holbrook, and two grandchildren.