Gimbels
 |
|
| Industry | Retail |
|---|---|
| Fate | Liquidation |
| Successor | None |
| Founded | 1887 |
| Defunct | 1987 |
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
|
Key people
|
Adam L. Gimbel, Bernard Gimbel |
| Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products and housewares |
| Parent | Formerly Gimbel Brothers Inc. |
| Subsidiaries | Formerly Saks |
Gimbel Brothers (Gimbels) was an American department store corporation from 1887 until 1987. The company is known for creating the Gimbels Thanksgiving Day Parade, the oldest parade in the country. Gimbels was also once the largest department store chain in the country. By the time it closed in 1987, Gimbels had 36 stores throughout the United States.
The company, founded by a young Bavarian Jewish immigrant, Adam Gimbel, began as a general store in Vincennes, Indiana. After a brief stay in Danville, Illinois, Gimbel relocated in 1887 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was then a boomtown. The new store quickly became the leading department store in Milwaukee. However, with seven sons Adam Gimbel saw that one store, no matter how successful, would not accommodate his family's future. As a joke of the time put it, he had "a surplus of capital and a surplus of Gimbels".
In 1894, Gimbel acquired the Granville Haines store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (originally built and operated by Cooper and Conard), and in 1910, opened another branch in New York City. With its arrival in New York, Gimbels prospered, and soon became the primary rival to the leading Herald Square retailer, Macy's, who had a competing branch across the street. This rivalry entered into the popular argot: "Would Macy's tell Gimbels?" To distinguish itself from Herald Square neighbors, Gimbels' advertising promised more: "Select, don't settle."
Gimbels became so successful that in 1922 the chain went public, offering shares on the (though the family retained a controlling interest). The stock sales provided capital for expansion, starting with the 1923 purchase of across-the-street rival Saks & Co., which operated under the name Saks Thirty-Fourth Street; with ownership of Saks, Gimbel created an uptown branch called Saks Fifth Avenue. In 1925 Gimbels entered the Pittsburgh market with its purchase of Kaufmann & Baer's. Also acquired in this transaction was Gimbels' third radio outlet, WCAE; the company already owned WGBS in New York and WIP in Philadelphia. Although expansion spurred talk of the stores becoming a nationwide chain, the Great Depression ended that prospect. Gimbel did increase the number of more upscale (and enormously profitable) Saks Fifth Avenue stores in the 1930s, opening branches in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco.
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Wikipedia