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Hall of Fame Biographies
Saks Andrew Saks established a successful clothing business in 1867, and opened a store in New York on 34th Street in 1902 as Saks and Co. His son Horace pushed to open a new store on Fifth Avenue, to appeal to a higher-class clientele, at the same time as Bernard Gimbel was considering the attributes of a merger between the two families. The Gimbels were a well-known retail family and owned the Gimbels store close to Saks. After going public in 1922, Gimbel Bros approached the Saks family, and the two joined forces. Although the Gimbel family ultimately secured ownership of the Saks stores, each continued to operate under the Saks name and Horace Saks oversaw operations. In 1924, the first joint effort of the Saks and Gimbel families was to create an upscale store on Fifth Avenue, between 49th and 50th streets. The new Saks Fifth Avenue opened on September 15, 1924 and Bernard Gimbel's cousin, Adam, became Horace Saks' right-hand man. Upon Horace's untimely death from septic poisoning in 1925, Adam Gimbel succeeded him as president of Saks Fifth Avenue and was credited with not only keeping the Saks vision alive, but turning an extraordinary individual store into a national chain. Adam Gimbel initiated a series of progressive changes with long-ranging implications. He turned the store into a modern art masterpiece à la Paris Exposition, and broke up the huge department-store floor into speciality salons for the discriminating tastes of his clients. Meanwhile, Gimbels had become the largest department store chain in the world, with some 20,000 employees and net sales of $123m in 1930. Bernard became president of Gimbels Bros Inc as cousin Adam made his name and reputation at Saks. As a purveyor of the finest in fashion and taste, Adam sought to distinguish Saks Fifth Avenue from its competitors and from Gimbels but Saks and Gimbels remained intricately connected through the years, the former often mirroring the successes of the latter. As US buying behaviour changed Saks eventually moved to suburbia as well and by the mid-1960s there were over two dozen Saks stores, many of them located at new suburban shopping malls. In 1969 Adam Gimbel retired from Saks, ending an era of close association with both the Gimbel name and its retailing enterprises. |
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