Ready-to-wear
Off-the-peg is sometimes used for items other than clothing such as handbags. Ready-to-wear has rather different connotations in the spheres of fashion and classic clothing, in the fashion industry, designers produce ready-to-wear clothing, intended to be worn without significant alteration because clothing made to standard sizes fits most people. They use standard patterns, factory equipment, and faster construction techniques to keep costs low, some fashion houses and fashion designers produce mass-produced and industrially manufactured ready-to-wear lines but others offer garments that are not unique but are produced in limited numbers. The Bread & Butter in Berlin is considered to be the worlds most important trade fair for ready-to-wear fashion, due to technological advances, military uniforms were the first ready-to-wear garments to be mass-produced during the War of 1812. Before, women would alter their previously styled clothing in order to stay up to date with fashion trends, the widespread adoption of ready-to wear clothing reflected a variety of factors including economic disparities, a desire for an independent fashion industry, and an increase in media attention.
Another significant factor created by the industry was the US development of a style independent from Europe. Ready-to-wear sparked new interests in health and diet as manufactured clothing set specific, women of larger sizes had difficulties finding apparel in department stores, as most manufacturers maintained and sold the limited sizes across the nation. Overall ready-to-wear fashion exposed women to the newest styles and fashion trends, the ready-to-wear fashion revolution led to an expansion of the US fashion industry that made fashionable apparel accessible, cost effective, and commensurable. The construction of clothing is held to a different standard than that of haute couture due to its industrial nature. High-end ready-to-wear lines are based upon a famous gown or other pattern that is duplicated and advertised to raise the visibility of the designer. In high-end fashion, ready-to-wear collections are presented by fashion houses each season during a period known as Fashion Week. Smaller lines including the Cruise and Pre-Fall collections, which add to the value of a brand, are presented separately at the fashion designers discretion.
Ready-to-wear fashion weeks occur separately and earlier than those of haute couture
United Cigar Stores
United Cigar Stores was the largest chain of cigar stores in the United States. Though initially specializing in cigars, it sold many other items, such as Mickey Mouse watches. The chain was founded in 1901, the chain represented the interests of the Consolidated Tobacco Company, the tobacco trust that controlled the American Tobacco Company and others. In September 1903 a settlement was reached with the chains competitors, by 1926 the chain had close to 3000 retail stores. The company was controlled by Whelan-Schulte interests, but control passed to brothers George Kenan, the company was in real estate. As the Depression deepened the real estate subsidiary accumulated huge losses, before its bankruptcy it had 975 cigar stores and 219 drug stores, but most of its assets were in real estate. The chain recovered and had 1300 outlets in 1951, United Cigar Stores became part of United Cigar-Whelan Stores Corp. United Whelan Corp. In 1962, this was merged into Perfect Film & Chemical Corp. a film-processing and mail-order seller of drugs, walter S.
Hayward, Percival White, John S. Fleek, H. Mac Intyre. Chain Stores, Their Management and Operation
Namur
Namur is a city and municipality in Wallonia, Belgium. It is both the capital of the province of Namur and of Wallonia, hosting the Walloon Parliament, Namur stands at the confluence of the Sambre and Meuse rivers and straddles three different regions – Hesbaye to the north, Condroz to the south-east, and Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse to the south-west. The city of Charleroi is located to the west, the town began as an important trading settlement in Celtic times, straddling east-west and north-south trade routes across the Ardennes. The Romans established a presence after Julius Caesar defeated the local Aduatuci tribe, Namur came to prominence during the early Middle Ages when the Merovingians built a castle or citadel on the rocky spur overlooking the town at the confluence of the two rivers. In the 10th century, it became a county in its own right, in 1262, Namur fell into the hands of the Count of Flanders, and was purchased by Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy in 1421. After Namur became part of the Spanish Netherlands in the 1640s, louis XIV of France invaded in 1692, capturing the town and annexing it to France.
His renowned military engineer Vauban rebuilt the citadel, french control was short-lived, as William III of Orange-Nassau captured Namur only three years in 1695 during the War of the Grand Alliance. Thus, although the Austrians ruled the town, the citadel was controlled by the Dutch and it was rebuilt again under their tenure. France invaded the region again in 1794, annexing Namur and imposing a repressive regime, after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna incorporated what is now Belgium into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Belgium broke away from the Netherlands in 1830 following the Belgian Revolution, the citadel was rebuilt yet again in 1887. Namur was a target of the German invasion of Belgium in 1914. On August 21,1914, the Germans bombarded the town of Namur without warning, despite being billed as virtually impregnable, the citadel fell after only three days fighting and the town was occupied by the Germans for the rest of the war. Namur fared little better in World War II, it was in the front lines of both the Battle of the Ardennes in 1940 and the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, the town suffered heavy damage in both wars.
Namur continued to host the Belgian Armys paratroopers until their departure in 1977, after the creation of the Walloon Region, Namur was chosen as the seat of its executive and parliament. In 1986, Namur was officially declared capital of Wallonia and its position as regional capital was confirmed by the Parliament of Wallonia in 2010. Namur is an important commercial and industrial centre, located on the Walloon industrial backbone and it produces machinery, leather goods and porcelain. Its railway station is an important junction situated on the line between Brussels and Luxembourg City, and the east-west line between Lille and Liège. River barge traffic passes through the middle of the city along the Meuse, Namur has taken on a new role as the capital of the federal region of Wallonia
New York City
The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626.
The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation.
Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
Louis Dewis
Louis Dewis was a Belgian Post-Impressionist painter, who lived most of his adult life in France. Dewis was born Isidore Louis Dewachter in Mons, the son of Isidore Louis Dewachter and he spent his formative years in Liege where his closest boyhood friend was Richard Heintz, who became an internationally known landscape artist. Although the name Dewachter may have Flemish roots, Dewachter always considered himself a Walloon, Louis successful merchant father was embarrassed that his son would waste his time with something as useless as painting. In a vain attempt to break his young son of this bad habit, young Louis love of art could not be deterred. This was a duty that his father would not allow him to shirk, Dewis would come to manage the store in Bordeaux but there were Maison Dewachters in cities across France and Belgium, usually run locally by one cousin or another. Louis would bear this responsibility until after his fathers death and the conclusion of World War I, when his younger brother lost a small fortune gambling, it fell to Louis to make good on the enormous debt.
This would take him several years, through these travails, Louis Dewachter maintained an atelier in his home and was essentially a Sunday painter. He signed his works “Louis Dewis”, because his father refused to him to sully the family name by associating it with such a frivolous undertaking. Because he didnt need the money — and because of his fathers opposition — Dewis did not promote his art in his young adulthood, Elisabeth was a Bordeaux socialite and the daughter of Joseph Jules Florigni and Rose Lesfargues Palmyre Florigni. Jules Florigni was the publisher of the Bordeaux regional newspaper, La Petite Gironde, there was a feeling among some members of the Florigni family, which traced its roots back to the court of Catherine de Medici, that Babeth had married down. Robinson was already famous in the United States for having thrown, in 1906, in 1926 the couple moved to the United States. The Robinsons had seven children together, and she gained a stepson from her husbands first marriage.
In her memoirs, Yvonne remembers that in the years of Dewis career, her mother regarded her fathers painting with benign indifference. She writes that Elisabeth Dewachter was pleased with her husbands choice of hobbies in one sense, telling her friends, as the years passed, Elisabeth took more interest. It was she who maintained Dewis scrapbook of critical reviews for three decades and his younger daughter and only other child, Andrée Marguerite Elisabeth, married businessman Charles Jérôme Ottoz, who proved to be less than supportive of his talented father-in-law. A serious student of art, Andrée was passionate in her admiration of her fathers work and she was so emotionally involved in his painting that one day Dewis wondered aloud whether his daughter would have loved him as much, if Id been a grocer. Years later, Andrée tearfully recalled assuring her father that she would, Dewis began to exhibit about 1916, shortly after his fathers death. In 1917, he helped organize Le Salon franco-belge in the Bordeaux Public Garden and it was a charity event for the benefit of Belgian war refugees sponsored by the Belgian Benevolent Society of the South West and the Girondin Artists
Payless ShoeSource
Established in 1956 by cousins Louis and Shaol Pozez, Payless ShoeSource Inc. is an American discount footwear retailer headquartered in Topeka, Kansas. Payless is a privately held company owned by Blum Capital, in 1961, it became a public company as the Volume Shoe Corporation which merged with the May Department Stores Company in 1979. In the 1980s, Payless was widely known in the U. S. for its Pro Wings line of discount sneakers, in 1996, Payless ShoeSource became an independent publicly held company. In 2004, Payless ShoeSource announced it would exit the Parade chain, on August 17,2007, the company acquired the Stride Rite Corporation and changed its name to Collective Brands, Inc. The company had a revenue for 2011 of US$3.4 billion. It was announced on May 1,2012 that the company would be purchased by Wolverine World Wide, Blum Capital, on December 13,2016 it was reported that all Payless shoe stores were to be closed in Australia with the loss of 730 jobs. As of Wednesday April 5,2017 Payless has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and is closing 400 stores nationwide.
Circa 1962-63, Volume Shoe company purchased the original Hill Brothers Shoe Company based in Kansas City, the St. Louis version of Hill Brothers Self Service Shoe Store went from 3 to 103 stores in the Midwest and South between 1956 and 1971. Volume Shoe originally operated the 103 stores under the Hill Brothers Self Service name, starting in 1972, Volume Shoe began to consolidate stores in proximity and convert others to the Payless brand. The St. Louis operation of Hill Brothers Self Service stores were known for their bare bones minimalism and that is, women and childrens shoes were two pair for five dollars. Payless bought Picway Shoes from the Kobacker department store chain in 1994,1956, Pay-Less National is founded in Topeka, Kansas, by two cousins and Shaol Pozez, to open self-service stores selling budget footwear. 1962, The company goes public as Volume Distributors,1967, The company is renamed Volume Shoe Corporation, an accelerated expansion program is launched. 1978, The Payless ShoeSource name is adopted for the bulk of the retail outlets.
1979, Volume Shoe is acquired by the May Department Stores Company,1991, The company name is changed to Payless ShoeSource, Inc. 1996, May spins Payless off to shareholders, making it again a independent. 1997, The mid-priced shoe chain Parade of Shoes is acquired from J. Baker,1999, The firm launches e-commerce at payless. com. 2000, Payless enters into a joint venture to expand into the Central American region,2004, As part of a major restructuring, Payless announces that it will close down the Parade chain and close hundreds of Payless ShoeSource outlets. 2017, Payless files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and is closing 400 stores nationwide, on June 27,2006, Payless announced that it was launching a new logo created to represent a more stylish and contemporary company
Walmart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. doing business as Walmart, is an American multinational retailing corporation that operates as a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores. Headquartered in Bentonville, the company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, as of January 31,2017, Walmart has 11,695 stores and clubs in 28 countries, under a total of 63 banners. The company operates under the name Walmart in the United States and it operates as Walmart de México y Centroamérica in Mexico and Central America, as Asda in the United Kingdom, as the Seiyu Group in Japan, and as Best Price in India. It has wholly owned operations in Argentina and Canada and it owns and operates the Sams Club retail warehouses. Walmart is the worlds largest company by revenue, according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2016 and it is a family-owned business, as the company is controlled by the Walton family. Sam Waltons heirs own over 50 percent of Walmart through their company, Walton Enterprises. Walmart is one of the worlds most valuable companies by market value, in 2016,62.3 percent of Walmarts US$478.614 billion sales came from its U. S. operations.
The company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972, by 1988, Walmart was the most profitable retailer in the U. S. and by October 1989, it had become the largest in terms of revenue. A Walmart in York, Pennsylvania opened in October 1990, bringing the store to the Northeast. In 1945, a businessman and a former J. C. Penney employee, Sam Walton and his primary focus was on selling products at low prices to get higher-volume sales at a lower profit margin, portraying it as a crusade for the consumer. He experienced setbacks, because the price and branch purchase were unusually high. He passed on the savings in the product pricing, sales increased 45 percent in his first year of ownership to US$105,000 in revenue, which increased to US$140,000 the next year and US$175,000 the year after that. Within the fifth year, the store was generating US$250,000 in revenue, when the lease for the location expired, Walton was unable to reach an agreement for renewal, so he opened up a new store at 105 N.
Main Street in Bentonville, naming it Waltons Five and Dime and that store is now the Walmart Museum. On July 2,1962, Walton opened the first Walmart Discount City store at 719 W. Walnut Street in Rogers, within its first five years, the company expanded to 24 stores across Arkansas and reached US$12.6 million in sales. In 1968, it opened its first stores outside Arkansas, in Sikeston and Claremore, the company was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. on October 31,1969. In 1970, it opened its office and first distribution center in Bentonville. It had 38 stores operating with 1,500 employees and sales of US$44.2 million and it began trading stock as a publicly held company on October 1,1970, and was soon listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Mail order
Mail order is the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer, some merchants allow the goods to be shipped directly to a third party consumer, which is an effective way to send a gift to an out-of-town recipient. A mail order catalogue is a publication containing a list of general merchandise from a company, companies who publish and operate mail order catalogues are referred to as cataloguers within the industry. Cataloguers buy or manufacture goods market those goods to prospects, cataloguers may rent names from list brokers or cooperative databases. The catalogue itself is published in a fashion as any magazine publication and distributed through a variety of means, usually via a postal service. Sometimes supermarket products do mail order promotions, whereby people can send in the UPC plus shipping and handling to get a product made especially for the company, in 1498, the publisher Aldus Manutius of Venice printed a catalogue of the books he was printing.
In 1667, the English gardener, William Lucas, published a seed catalogue, Catalogues spread to colonial America, where Benjamin Franklin is believed to have been the first cataloguer in British America. In 1744 he produced a catalogue of scientific and academic books. The Welsh entrepreneur Pryce Pryce-Jones set up the first modern mail order in 1861, starting off as an apprentice to a local draper in Newtown, Wales, he took over the business in 1856 and renamed it the Royal Welsh Warehouse, selling local Welsh flannel. The establishment of the Uniform Penny Post in 1840, and the extension of the network to Newtown. In 1861, Pryce-Jones hit upon a method of selling his wares. He distributed catalogues of his wares across the country, allowing people to choose the items they wished and order them via post, he would dispatch the goods to the customer via the railways. It was a way of meeting the needs of customers in isolated rural locations who were either too busy or unable to get into Newtown to shop directly.
This was the worlds first mail order business, an idea which would change the nature of retail in the coming century, the further expansion of the railways in the years that followed allowed Pryce Jones to greatly expand his customer base and his business grew rapidly. He supplied his products to a variety of famous clientele, including Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria. He began exporting drapery to the US and British colonies, by 1880, he had more than 100,000 customers and his success was rewarded in 1887 with a knighthood. In 1845, Tiffanys Blue Book was the first mail-order catalogue in the United States, in 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward of Chicago produced a mail-order catalogue for his Montgomery Ward mail order business
Target Corporation
Target Corporation is the second-largest discount store retailer in the United States, behind Walmart, and a component of the S&P500 Index. The first Target store opened in Roseville, Minnesota in 1962 while the parent company was renamed the Dayton Corporation in 1967, the company has found success as a cheap-chic player in the industry. The parent company was renamed the Target Corporation in 2000 and divested itself of its last department store chains in 2004, as of 2017, Target operates 1,806 locations throughout the United States. Target is often recognized for its emphasis on the needs of its younger, image-conscious shoppers, the Westminster Presbyterian Church from downtown Minneapolis burned down during the Panic of 1893. Without insurance coverage to cover the loss, the congregation found itself unable to rebuild. The store was renamed the Dayton Dry Goods Company in 1903, Dayton died in 1938 and was succeeded by his son Nelson as the president of the $14 million business. Nelson died in 1950 and was replaced by his own son Donald, the company acquired the Lipmans department store company during the 1950s and operated it as a separate division.
John F. Geisse developed the concept of upscale discount retailing while working for the Dayton Company. Using his concepts, the company opened its first Target discount store at 1515 West County Road B in the Saint Paul suburb of Roseville, Douglas Dayton was its first president. The name Target originated from publicity director Stewart K. Widdess and it opened three additional units in the first year, and reported its first gain in 1965 with sales reaching $39 million. Later that decade, B. Dalton Bookseller was formed as a subsidiary of the Dayton Company, the parent company acquired the jewelers Shreve & Co. and J. E. Caldwell, the Pickwick Book Shops, and the electronics and appliances chain Lechmere. It went public with its first offering of common stock, in 1969, the Dayton Company itself merged with the Detroit-based J. L. Hudson Company, and together formed the Dayton-Hudson Corporation. The new company, at the time the 14th-largest retailer in the United States, consisted of Target and the department stores Daytons, Hudsons, John A.
Brown, Target reached $200 million in sales while Dayton-Hudson acquired Team Electronics and the jewelers C. D. Peacock, Inc. and Jessop and Sons in the 1970s, Target reported a decrease in profits in 1972, due to the rapid pace of expansion with the purchase and conversion of several former Arlans department store locations. New management marked down merchandise to reduce its overstock and only opened one new location that year, Dayton-Hudson was established as the seventh-largest general merchandise retailer in the United States with its acquisition of Mervyns in 1978. It sold the Dayton-Hudson Jewelers subsidiary to Henry Birks & Sons of Montreal, Target was established as the dominant retailer in southern California after purchasing fifty Gemco stores in the state in 1986, that year, Dayton-Hudson sold B. Dalton Bookseller to Barnes & Noble. The acquisition of several Gold Circle and Richway stores assisted its expansion into northwestern and southeastern United States, that year, Dayton-Hudson sold Lechmere to a group of investors.
In 1990, Dayton-Hudson acquired Marshall Fields and opened its first Target Greatland store in Apple Valley and it started the Everyday Hero clothing specialty store with two locations in Minneapolis in 1992, although they were closed in 1997
McDonald's
McDonalds is an American hamburger and fast food restaurant chain. It was founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard. In 1948, they reorganized their business as a hamburger stand, the first McDonalds franchise using the arches logo opened in Phoenix, Arizona in 1953. Businessman Ray Kroc joined the company as an agent in 1955. Based in Oak Brook, Illinois, McDonalds confirmed plans to move its headquarters to Chicago by early 2018. Today, McDonalds is one of the worlds largest restaurant chains, McDonalds primarily sells hamburgers, chicken products, french fries, breakfast items, soft drinks, milkshakes and desserts. In response to changing tastes, the company has expanded its menu to include salads, wraps, smoothies. A McDonalds restaurant is operated by either a franchisee, an affiliate, the McDonalds Corporation revenues come from the rent and fees paid by the franchisees, as well as sales in company-operated restaurants. According to a BBC report published in 2012, McDonalds is the second largest private employer,1.5 million of whom work for franchises.
The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald at 1398 North E Street at West 14th Street in San Bernardino, the first McDonalds with the arches opened in Phoenix, Arizona in March 1953. The original mascot of McDonalds was a man with a hat on top of a hamburger-shaped head whose name was Speedee. In 1962, the Golden Arches replaced Speedee as the company symbol, a new mascot, Ronald McDonald was introduced in 1965. The clown-like man having puffed out costume legs served advertising aimed at children. On May 4,1961, McDonalds first filed for a U. S. trademark on the name McDonalds with the description Drive-In Restaurant Services, on September 13,1961, the company filed for a trademark on a new logo—an overlapping, double-arched M symbol. By September 6,1962, this M-symbol was temporarily disfavored, although the Golden Arches logo appeared in various forms, the present version as a letter M did not appear until November 18,1968, when the company applied for a U. S. trademark.
Kroc purchased the McDonald brothers equity in the company and led its expansion. Kroc was noted for aggressive business practices, compelling the McDonald brothers to leave the fast-food industry and the McDonald brothers feuded over control of the business, as documented in Krocs autobiography. The San Bernardino restaurant was demolished in 1976 and the site was sold to the Juan Pollo restaurant chain and this area now serves as headquarters for the Juan Pollo chain, as well as a McDonalds and Route 66 museum
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