Leslie Fay Companies, Inc. - Specimen Stock Certificate

Specimen Stock printed by Security-Columbian United States Banknote Company.

The Leslie Fay Companies, Inc.—the second-largest maker of women’s clothing sold to department stores—designs, manufactures, and markets moderately priced and better priced women’s dresses, suits, blouses, coats, and sportswear. Its clothes are marketed under several labels, including Albert Nipon, Kasper for A.S.L, Evelyn Pearson, and Castleberry Knits. Leslie Fay was founded in 1947 by Fred Pomerantz, who had produced dresses for the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. The company was named for his daughter and offered department stores substantial profit margins for carrying the company’s line of stylishly conservative women’s wear. Pomerantz was a colorful figure in the New York garment district; he reportedly had a liking for gambling, and people on the street knew when he was at work because his distinctive Rolls-Royce was parked outside the company’s Broadway offices. Leslie Fay went public in 1952. From 1959 until April of 1982, the business was called Leslie Fay Inc. Pomerantz’s son John became president of the company in 1972. He had joined the company in 1960, right after he graduated from the Wharton School with a bachelor’s degree. John continued to run the company much as his father had run it. When other companies were turning to computers in the early 1980s to help keep track of daily sales at stores around the nation and were using market testing to determine whether its styles would sell, Leslie Fay continued to make deals with a handshake and telephone stores weekly for sales figures, unlikely business practices for a public company of its size. Practices such as these may have worked for a smaller company, and it may have worked before the 1980s, a decade of takeovers and business opportunism. In 1982 Leslie Fay was taken over through a leveraged buyout for $58 million and became a private company operating under the name The Leslie Fay Company. Read more at https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/leslie-fay-companies-inc

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