Is the Spiegel company still in business, what happened to the catalog, or is it gone?
The company is called Spiegel.It was founded in 1865.The main product of the company is the Spiegel catalog, which advertises various brands of apparel, accessories, and footwear.Newport News is one of the brands distributed by the company.
The first mail order catalog was delivered in 1905.The fashion and furniture retailer had 10 million customers by 1925.European fashion trends were brought to American homes by buyers who went to Paris fashion shows.
Lynn Tilton is the owner of the company that sells women's style and fashion products.
For the first 100 years of the company's existence, it was a family business.The company was founded in 1865 by the younger brother of a Union Army Colonel.After spending the last few months of the Civil War in a Confederate prison camp, Joseph Spiegel settled in Chicago, where his brother-in-law ran a furniture business.In Chicago's loop, Joseph Spiegel opened J. Spiegel and Company, a small home furnishings retail operation.
The Great Chicago Fire destroyed most of the area's business district in 1871.By 1874 the company was prospering again under the leadership of the two men who rebuilt it after the fire.Cahn retired from the business in 1879.The company moved to a larger building on State Street after running regular advertisements in several Chicago newspapers.Modie and Sidney were brought into the business during this time.
The first catalogs were issued by Spiegel.Potential customers who lived outside the city were made aware of the catalogs.The catalogs were used to lure people into the store because there wasn't a mail order system.The business took a turn for the worse by 1892, as many customers were slow to pay for their purchases.The company went bankrupt.The company was reinvented as the Spiegel House Furnishings Company of Chicago in 1893.The new company sold on credit, like many others in the furniture business.The decision to offer installments made it possible for Spiegel's expansion over the next several decades.
The branch store on Chicago's South Side was opened in 1898.Three years later another branch opened on the South Side."We Trust the People!" is the company's slogan.The emphasis was on credit merchandising.Arthur entered the business with a plan to develop mail order operations for his father.After a couple years of lobbying, Arthur convinced the company hierarchy to open a mail order department.The company motto was changed to "We Trust the People--Everywhere!" as a result of the new service.The response was great, and soon a lot of customers were ordering from the mail order catalog.There was only one company that did not charge for credit at that time.They kept the "no charge for credit" policy for another 50 years.
In 1906, the mail order sales were close to $1 million.To handle the overwhelming success of the mail order operation, a new company was formed, allowing the Spiegel House Furnishings Company to devote its limited resources to conventional retailing.Arthur was named the President of the company.The teddy bear was offered in its mail order catalog for the first time nationwide in 1909.Spiegel continues to give its staff teddy bears to mark the company's anniversary every year, after partnering with the Ideal Toy Company to launch this successful toy venture.
In 1912, Spiegel began to offer apparel for the first time.After a couple of unsuccessful partnerships with independent clothing manufacturers, the company began offering its own line of women's apparel.The "Martha Lane Adams" line was so successful that it became a subsidiary of the company and earned its own catalog.By 1916, Martha Lane Adams' sales had grown to $2 million.Arthur Spiegel died of pneumonia at the age of 32.
Ed Swikard, a company executive, introduced a promotional idea involving Congoleum floor covering.A pre-cut Congoleum package was offered to more than nine million residences.For the year, company sales reached a record $16 million, with a net profit of $4 million.Although the Spiegel family retained a controlling interest, the stock price of the company hit $118 per share in 1928.
The Great Depression had a negative impact on Spiegel's business.The stock price of Spiegel's dropped to 7 cents in 1930.The Spiegels began liquidating their retail furniture business in the following year.The last Spiegel furniture store in Chicago closed in 1932.
Spiegel entered a period of growth and profits in 1933 after experiencing losses in the early years of the Depression.M.J. Spiegel took over the leadership of the company.The company's sales rose from $7.1 million in 1932 to more than $56 million by 1937, thanks to a no charge for credit policy.A $300,000 net loss was turned into $2.5 million in profits.The aggressive marketing of easy credit as the company's most important commodity drove the strategy behind this growth.Spiegel shifted its attention to consumers in higher income brackets when sales began to level off.Dozens of brand names with national reputations were added to the catalog.The quality concept was referred to as the new approach brought success.
The start of World War II was bad for Spiegel.Many of the popular catalog items were no longer available in large quantities as manufacturing shifted to wartime production.When buying on credit was discouraged by the US government, the company had to discard its "No Charge for Credit" policy.The company lost $3.8 million in 1942 and 1943.In order to reverse the trend, Spiegel opened retail outlets again in 1944, hoping to duplicate the success of its larger competitors.There were 46 Sally dress shops in Illinois that year.Several other chains were purchased over the next few years, and by 1948, Spiegel was operating 168 retail stores featuring a wide range of merchandise.[3]
The costs of retail operations began to outweigh the benefits after an initial success.Mail order sales on credit were the main focus by the mid-1950s.Although most of the company's retail outlets were sold off, several catalog shopping centers were retained so that customers could ask questions and place orders with company representatives.The Budget Power Plan was a liberal policy under which customers were offered a line of credit sometimes as high as $1,000 with very low monthly payments.The goal was to add as many names as possible.A widening range of products was included in the company's catalogs.The outdoor products that were included were lawnmowers and tillers, boats by the name brooklure, and instruments.[5]
In 1960, sales were more than $200 million and nearly two million people had Spiegel credit accounts.Spiegel was also selling animals.[6]
After a century of operation as a family business, Spiegel was purchased by a finance company.Spiegel became a wholly owned subsidiary of Beneficial after stockholders received shares of the company's stock.
The Hollywood Squares and Let's Make a Deal were two game shows where prizes were given away.The Chicago zip code was included in the promotional announcements because of the large catalog offerings.The flexibility to choose your own prize is what these programs often give contestants.
Some of the company's marketing tactics were accused by the FTC during the early 1970s.In 1971, the FTC accused Spiegel of failing to adequately disclose credit terms in some of its statements.Credit life insurance policies, as well as for offering free home trials without telling customers that credit approval was required before a product would be shipped, were cited by the company.In 1974, the FTC charged that Spiegel's debt collection policies treated customers unfairly.Most of the complaints brought by the FTC were settled by changes in the company's practices.[8]
Credit accounts were costly due to rising interest rates.Competition from discount stores such as Kmart, which were rapidly establishing a national presence, began to feel the pressure on Spiegel.Henry "Hank" Johnson was hired by Beneficial in 1976 to help turn the company around.One of the first things Johnson did was to simplify company management.Over the next five years, employment was cut in half, from 7,000 in 1976 to 3,500 in 1981.The remaining catalog stores were closed by Johnson.
Spiegel's image was changed to that of a fine department store.Low-budget items were replaced by upscale apparel and accessories for career women in the Spiegel catalog.The company introduced a line of Gloria Vanderbilt products in 1980.
The catalog business was booming as a whole during the early 1980s.The company's sales grew at a rapid pace.The company's strategies were being followed closely by its larger competitors.
Otto-Versand, a large, private West German company, was sold by Beneficial in 1982.Between 1982 and 1983, the company's revenue shot up from $394 million to $513 million and the pre-tax profits doubled.The controlling family of Otto-Versand, the Ottos, took control of Spiegel the following year.Spiegel's transformation into an outlet for higher-end products continued under its new ownership.[2]
By 1986, 25 specialty catalogs featuring Italian imports, plus-sized clothing, and other specialty items were in circulation.The company's sales surpassed the $1 billion mark for the first time, and the cost of mailing 130 million catalogs was $100 million.[13]
Six million shares of nonvoting stock were sold to the public in 1987, marking the first time since 1965 that Spiegel was not completely privately held.Eddie Bauer is a retail chain that sells sportswear and outdoor equipment from General Mills.Eddie Bauer had annual sales of $260 million.The chain was expanded from 60 to 99 stores in the first year after the acquisition.It was [13].
By 1989, Spiegel had become the number three catalog retailer in the United States, with a total circulation of 200 million catalogs, 60 different specialty catalogs and an active customer base of five million.[14][15]
First Consumers National Bank began issuing credit cards and statements to Spiegel and Eddie Bauer customers in 1990.The company enhanced its image as the premier catalog for career women through an advertising campaign that featured actress Candice Bergen, who portrayed a career woman on the comedy "Murphy Brown."The campaign emphasized the convenience of department store shopping and the ease of shopping by catalog.[17]
The retail outlet operations were expanded based on lines from the catalogs.There was a line of children's apparel first launched in 1991.The company's growth stagnated due to the national economic recession and earnings declined sharply in 1991.The revenue of the company topped $2 billion the following year.Eddie Bauer grew to 265 stores.[18]
Newport News is a catalog company that sells moderately priced women's clothing.The new catalog, E Style, features a clothing line for African-American women.E Style was formed as a means of targeting an untapped market of Spiegel consumers while also offering African-American women a clothing line more suited to their tastes.Sears discontinued its Big Book catalog sales operation and other specialty catalog retailers scurried to pick up the leftovers and increase their own share of the market.[20]
In 1993 the total revenues were $2.6 billion.Eddie Bauer stores had sales of $1 billion that year.In 1993 there were 81 different catalogs with a total circulation of more than 300 million.In 1993, the company's specialty retail stores generated $840 million in sales.[22]
Time Warner Entertainment and Spiegel formed a joint venture in 1994 to create two home shopping services for cable television.One of the services was named "Catalog 1," and was planned as a one-channel showcase for a roster of upscale catalog retailers, each of which would sell its goods using innovative entertainment-style shows.The Bombay Company was one of the participants in the first catalog in 1994.The channel was tested in Rochester, New York; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; New Hampshire; Columbus, Ohio; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[26]
In 1994 Spiegel collaborated with other catalogers to create a computerized CD-ROM catalog.The company formed a partnership with MCI to increase their customer bases.Customers who change their long distance telephone service to MCI will receive a $35 gift certificate.If a customer remained an MCI user for at least six months, MCI offered an additional $20 certificate.Around this time, Spiegel seriously began considering an entrance into the electronic shopping market through an online service such as America Online.[28]
At the expense of its year-old Catalog 1 venture, Spiegel did just that in 1995.By this time, Catalog 1 had begun airing in three more test markets, raising its total presence to eight cities.Time Warner and Spiegel decided to launch a website for Catalog 1 in order to take advantage of the internet's increasing popularity.They scaled back their cable television operation and began working on a home page through Time Warner's popular website.
The Canadian market was opened in 1995 and the catalog was to be distributed in the spring of 1996.Eddie Bauer's good distribution agreements in Canada helped the company move in on a larger scale.Eddie Bauer had placed a lot of retail stores in Japan over the past few years.[31]
The most profitable year in Eddie Bauer's history was 1996.Eddie Bauer was so popular that the company had to deal with delays in shipping and out-of- stock merchandise because of increased consumer demand.Eddie Bauer introduced "Balance Day" in 1996 to give its employees an extra day off per year to do what they wanted.The addition demonstrated the company's commitment to providing innovative benefits to its workers, and employees began referring to it as "call in well day."The company tried to find ways to give its single workers the same benefits as its workers with families.
In 1997 revenue was $3.06 billion, of which approximately $1.8 billion was from its Eddie Bauer operations.Eddie Bauer's contribution to the parent company wasn't the only thing that had a rough year for the subsidiary.The company overproduced and overstocked in 1997.The company was left with too much stock and no means of selling it all because the new Eddie Bauer merchandise offerings did not hit home with consumers.The president and CEO of Eddie Bauer commented on the company's problems in the August 17, 1998 issue of the Puget Sound Business Journal.The plans to turn things around were formulated in 1998.
The Eddie Bauer enterprise and Bauer's parent company faced additional challenges in 1998.Bauer's sales figures were hurt by warmer than usual winter weather brought about by the El Nio weather phenomenon.Overall revenues for the year dropped to $2.94 billion.[35]
Spiegel set out to stop its downward spiral.The catalog had become something of an amalgam of different items and images.The company organized its main catalog so as not to place $1,000 designer outfits next to $20 casual shirts in order to target the working woman.Efforts were made to get Eddie Bauer back on track.[37]
By the end of the year, it was announced that the company had once again achieved earnings.According to a fiscal year-end document, the company achieved a profit and positive cash flow in 1998.Eddie Bauer's performance, unfortunately, disappointed again during the year, but the other lesser-known subsidiary catalog, Newport News, posted solid results.Rumors surfaced late in the year that the company's positive results had led to numerous purchase offers.
There were many obstacles to overcome as the new millennium approached.By the 1990s, Spiegel was seen as a leader in the catalog shopping industry.The company was trying to maintain its status because of its proven ability to adapt to changes in customer tastes and competition.
The company changed ownership three times within ten years after suffering large financial losses.The empire was crippled by the inability to stable management.There were many ownership and leadership changes.