Type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | library supplies |
Founded | Newark, New Jersey 1939 (founded as Library Service. Company name changed to Brodart in 1946) |
Founder | Arthur Brody |
Headquarters | |
Products | book jackets, library products, furniture, support, training, and consulting services |
Revenue | $170.8 million (2005) |
Website | www |
Brodart Company is an international products and services company that serves libraries. Brodart is made up of three divisions: Books & Automation, Contract Library Furniture, and Supplies & Furnishings.
Brodart was established as Library Service in 1939, when Columbia University Electrical Engineering student Arthur Brody, the son of pharmacy owners and owners of the Bro-Delle Book Shoppe in Newark, New Jersey, invented the plastic book jacket. [1] [2] [3] Brody washed the emulsion off some film and folded it around his books for added protection. The covers are used to protect the original paper jackets of books. [4]
In 1946, the company's name was changed to Bro-Dart (later revised to Brodart).
The company grew, and in 1959 Brodart began manufacturing furniture. Brodart’s furniture is sold to schools, universities, and libraries internationally.
In the 1950s Brodart expanded into book distribution. Many books are offered to libraries already cataloged.
Starting in about 1980, Bro-Dart expanded into the area of stationery stores (now commonly called office-supply stores) and book stores. It acquired the California stores of the Oregon-based J. K. Gill Company in the first half of 1980, and in September 1980 acquired the entire J. K. Gill company, which had 36 stores and about 500 employees in four western states. [5] In 1982, Bro-Dart Industries (BDI Investment, Inc.) acquired Burrows, an Ohio chain of book- and office-supply stores, which was based in Cleveland and had 45 stores in 1979 and about $18 million in annual sales. [6] (The company was known as Burrows Brothers before 1944 and after 1988.) [6] By mid-1987, the number of Burrows stores had declined to 29, [7] and the last stores closed in 1992. The J. K. Gill chain continued in operation (as a Brodart subsidiary), but its revenue also fell, in the face of competition from national chains, and the last Gill's stores closed in early 1999. [8]
In 2005, Brodart was featured in an episode of the NBC television show Three Wishes . The show outlined a young girl suffering from cerebral palsy who had a wish to bring a library to her small Ohio town. Brodart endorsed the show and created a library for the town.
Barnes & Noble, Inc., is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of March 7, 2019, the company operates 627 retail stores in all 50 U.S. states. In August 2019, Elliott Management Corporation acquired the company.
A discount store or discount shop is a term that has been used over time and across different countries for a number of different retail formats, all of which sell products at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price".
W. & J. Sloane was a prominent furniture and rug store in New York City that catered to the prominent, including the White House and the Breakers, and wealthy, including the Rockefeller, Whitney, and Vanderbilt families.
Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is an American publicly traded consumer retail company that sells kitchen-wares and home furnishings. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. The company has 625 brick and mortar stores and distributes to more than 60 countries with brands including Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, PBteen, Williams Sonoma, Williams Sonoma Home, West Elm, Mark and Graham, and Rejuvenation. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. also operates through eight corresponding websites and a gift registry.
Waldenbooks, operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain and a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware, as well as a children's educational toy chain under Walden Kids. In 2011, the chain was liquidated in bankruptcy.
S&H Green Stamps was a line of trading stamps popular in the United States from the 1930s until the late 1980s. They were distributed as part of a rewards program operated by the Sperry & Hutchinson company (S&H), founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson. During the 1960s, the company promoted its rewards catalog as being the largest publication in the United States and boasted that it issued three times as many stamps as the U.S. Postal Service. Customers would receive stamps at the checkout counter of supermarkets, department stores, and gasoline stations among other retailers, which could be redeemed for products in the catalog. Top Value Stamps, acquired by Tom Ficara in 1990 and now a division of TVS Television Network, and S&H are the only two surviving legacy stamp programs.
J. Pascal's Hardware and Furniture was a Montreal, Quebec, Canada-based chain of hardware stores and furniture stores.
Spiegel is an American direct marketing and catalog company. It was founded in 1865 by Joseph Spiegel. Spiegel's main product is its namesake, the Spiegel catalog, which advertises various brands of apparel, accessories, and footwear. The company also distributes brands under the names of Newport News and Shape FX.
Essendant, formerly known as United Stationers, is a national wholesale distributor of office supplies, with consolidated net sales of $5.3 billion. Essendant stocks over 160,000 items including traditional office products, office furniture, janitorial and break room supplies, technology products, industrial supplies and automotive aftermarket tools and equipment. Essendant is headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois and also has operations in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The company operates as an online retailer and sells industrial tools direct to consumers. As of February 13, 2015, Essendant employed approximately 6,500 people.
Gamble-Skogmo Inc. was a conglomerate of retail chains and other businesses that was headquartered in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Business operated or franchised by Gamble-Skogmo included Gambles hardware and auto supply stores, Woman's World and Mode O'Day clothing stores, J.M. McDonald department stores, Leath Furniture stores, Tempo and Buckeye Mart Discount Stores, Howard's Brandiscount Department Stores, Rasco Variety Stores, Sarco Outlet Stores, Toy World, Rasco-Tempo, Red Owl Grocery, Snyder Drug and the Aldens mail-order company. In Canada, retail operations consisted of Macleods Hardware, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Stedmans Department Stores, based in Toronto, Ontario. Gamble-Skogmo carried a line of home appliances, including radios, televisions, refrigerators, and freezers, under the Coronado brand name.
Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc. is an American home furnishings manufacturer and retailer, headquartered in Arcadia, Wisconsin. The company is owned by father and son team Ron and Todd Wanek. Ashley Furniture manufactures and distributes home furniture products throughout the world.
Raymour & Flanigan is an American furniture retail chain, based in the Northeastern United States.
Baker & Taylor, a distributor of books to public libraries and schools, has been in business for over 180 years. It is based in Charlotte, North Carolina and currently owned by Follett Corporation. Before being acquired by Follett in 2016, Baker & Taylor had $2.26 billion in sales, employed 3,750, and was #204 on Forbes list of privately owned companies in 2008.
Tom Peterson was an American retailer, pitchman, and television personality from Portland, Oregon. Peterson opened his first store in 1964, which grew to a regional consumer electronics, home appliance, and furniture chain in the 1970s. His memorable television commercials and unusual promotions made him a widely recognized personality in the Portland area by the 1980s, leading to several cameo appearances in the films of Gus Van Sant.
Joseph Kaye Gill was an American retailer and publisher in the state of Oregon. A native of England, he came to the United States with his parents and settled in Oregon where he managed a bookstore in Salem. Later he entered the business and became the owner of the now-defunct J. K. Gill Company that operated in the Pacific Northwest as a book and office supply store.
Nelson Entertainment was a Los Angeles-based film production and home video distribution company, a subsidiary of Nelson Holdings International Ltd., a Vancouver, Canada, holding company formed in 1985 by British film producer Barry Spikings and Richard Northcott, a British financier who amassed his fortune from a chain of hardware and furniture stores. The company acquired Galactic Films as well as Spikings Corporation in 1985, then later acquired distribution rights to a majority of Embassy titles after purchasing its home video division. Sometime in August 1987, Embassy Home Entertainment was renamed Nelson Entertainment, but retained the earlier brand as well as Charter Entertainment for sell-through products. Nelson then financed a deal with Castle Rock Entertainment to co-produce their films, and in addition handle the international distribution rights. In September 1988, Orion Home Video took over sales and marketing for Nelson; in addition, Orion Pictures would later theatrically distribute a few of Nelson's titles. By February 1989, Orion was the official home video distributor of Nelson product.
The J.K. Gill Company, also known as J.K. Gill and Gill's, was an office supply company specializing in books and school supplies, based in Portland, Oregon, United States. The company existed for about 130 years. Operating mainly in the Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and Washington, the company at its peak employed over 500 and had retail stores in four western states, including California and Arizona.