Lillian Vernon (born Lilli Menasche; March 18, 1927 – December 14, 2015) was an American businesswoman and philanthropist. She founded the Lillian Vernon Corporation in 1951 and served as its chairwoman and CEO until July 1989, though she continued to serve as executive chairwoman until 2003, when the company was taken private by Zelnick Media. When it went public in 1987, Lillian Vernon Corporation was the first company traded on the American Stock Exchange founded by a woman. New York University's Lillian Vernon Writers House is named after her and houses the University's prestigious creative writing program.
Early life
Lillian Vernon was born Lilli Menasche in Leipzig, Germany in 1927 to Erna Feiner Menasche and Herman Menasche, a successful dry goods merchant (she later changed her name to Vernon, borrowing it from Mount Vernon, New York, where she settled with her first husband Samuel Hochberg). In 1933, Vernon's brother was attacked by an anti-Jewish mob, and the family fled Nazi Germany to Amsterdam. The family emigrated to the United States in 1937.
Taking up residence in New York City, her father, Herman Menasche, sold lingerie and later established a manufacturing company that specialized in leather goods, many of which were designed by Vernon. Vernon became a U.S. citizen in 1942. Her brother, Fred Menasche, later enlisted in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army and she joined a Woman's Auxiliary Canteen in support of the war effort. Fred Menasche, serving in Normandy, was killed in a grenade attack.
Vernon attended New York University from 1947 to 1949. In 1949, Vernon married Samuel Hochberg, who worked in his parents' women's clothing store. To supplement their family income, Vernon started a mail order service from the kitchen of her Mount Vernon home. She named the service the Vernon Specialties Company.
Business career
Lillian Vernon Corporation
At the age of twenty-four, using her combined wedding gifts, Vernon invested $2,000 in the business and placed her first advertisement in Seventeen magazine for personalized purses and belts. She received an overwhelming response and her business was launched. In the first years, the size of the business was limited to Vernon and her kitchen table, where she sorted and filled orders. The Vernon Specialties Company focused primarily on products for young women, advertising in magazines focused on that emergent market. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Vernon and Hochberg began to create their own jewelry, which they sold through the catalog. One particularly successful product, a magnetized bobby pin cup, attracted the interest of Revlon in 1962. Revlon offered them a distribution contract shortly thereafter. Other cosmetics companies including Elizabeth Arden, Max Factor, and Maybelline followed suit.
In 1969, Hochberg and Vernon divorced and split the company, with Hochberg taking over the wholesale division and Vernon continuing the catalog. In the 1970s, the company began to retool its strategy to draw from, and sell to, a global market. Lillian Vernon began to travel to European trade fairs in an effort to expand the catalog's offerings to include European products. In 1980, Vernon was one of the first American merchants to travel to China after President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit. In order to expand her brand, Vernon started The New Company, a brass manufacturer, and Provender, the Lillian Vernon Company's wholesale division, which sold Lillian Vernon brand toiletries and kitchen supplies.
The Lillian Vernon Corporation, founded in 1965, went public in 1987, making her the first woman to found a company publicly traded on the American Stock Exchange. The Lillian Vernon Catalog, which the company launched in 1956, became an iconic shopping resource for American women, much like its competitor, the Sears catalog. Produced monthly, the catalog was typically 120 pages and usually featured 750 items. In response to a catalog and shopping mall boom in the United States in the 1980s, the company produced a number of specialty catalogs in order to broaden its market, including ones targeted for children and homemakers.
Her two sons were also working in the business. Her older son, Fred Hochberg, upon receiving his MBA from Columbia University, joined the company full time in 1975. From 1975 until his departure in 1993 as president and COO, he oversaw a 40-fold increase in sales and moving the company's distribution and telemarketing center to Virginia Beach, VA. In 1993, her son, Fred left the company to advocate for LGBTQ civil rights and enter public service in the Clinton administration.