retail founded 1910 headquarters warren pennsylvania usa key people marisa smith president products men s and women s clothing household goods number of employees 2000 2008 parent orchard brands website www.blair.com blair is one of america s largest direct marketing mail order retailers selling clothing and household goods . originally founded in 1910 as new process company by john leo blair the company is celebrating its 100th year in business . 1 blair is headquartered in warren pennsylvania and has warehousing and distribution operations in nearby irvine pennsylvania as well as a call center in erie pa . 2 the company is well known for its retail catalogs which are sent to millions of customers in the united states . 3 while most business is done through mail order phone or online blair also maintains retail stores in warren and grove city pa . 4 blair is the largest employer in warren county pennsylvania where it is based . 5 blair employs around 2300 associates . 6 company history edit blair was founded in 1910 by john l. blair who originally took up an offer to sell raincoats . after several unsuccessful attempts at selling the coats he was asked by an undertaker if he had any attractive black raincoats . he didn t but it gave him an idea . the idea john had was to take advantage of the relatively new process of rubber vulcanization to adhere an attractive black wool fabric to the outside of a rubber raincoat with an inner lining of a scottish plaid . his classmate agreed to begin producing just such a coat and supplied him initially with 1200 coats which were purchased almost immediately . he actually had to send out letters of apology until new coats could be produced . samples of his letters from as early as 1910 still exist . 7 with the help of his father and siblings john mailed 10 000 letters to undertakers across america and the coat quickly saturated the market . he expanded with letters to ministers and businessmen and he also expanded his product line . for the first few years his business was known as new process rubber company and by 1916 it was changed to new process company . new process company went public in 1924 . by the mid 1980s new process was also said to be the largest publicly held direct marketer of clothing and home products in the united states and also had the oldest continually traded stock on the american stock exchange . 8 murray mccomas ceo at that time appeared in a filmed interview on the floor of the america stock exchange to discuss the unique position new process company found itself in . in 1989 the name of the company was changed to blair . the company continued to grow . according to the pittsburgh press in 1989 blair had capabilities to process 100 000 orders per day and was shipping as many as 75 000 packages a day . it had sales in 1988 of 414 million dollars . blair had 15 million americans on its mailing list . 9 blair corporate headquarters in downtown warren pa continued growth edit in the mid 2000s blair began to struggle with declining sales due to the recession in the economy . 10 in 2007 blair shareholders approved a merger deal with appleseed s later renamed orchard brands a subsidiary of golden gate capital partners . 11 orchard brands is a holding of several different catalog retailers who target the same market . under the leadership of orchard brands blair has seen re organization and increased efficiency as well as growth as blair facilities are being expanded to handle orders from other orchard brand companies . blair s modern distribution center is being used to ship not only blair orders but orders for some sister companies as well . the call center operations have been expanded as well to handle orders from those companies . 12 after the merger it was announced that 500 new jobs would be created in the region due to the expansion at the blair facilities . 13 in 2007 blair was ranked the 118th largest internet retailer by internetretailer.com . in 2010 blair president and ceo shelley nandkeolyar announced his resignation and he was followed by dave matthews who is serving as interim ceo . it was also announced that blair as part of orchard brands was the 59th largest internet retailer . 14 in april 2010 dave walde was announced as the new blair ceo . previously walde had served as the chief financial officer for orchard brands . 15 in 2011 orchard brands went through a bankruptcy ; it exited under the control of debtholders including american capital . 16 orchard brands had sales of us 1.02 billion in 2014 . on may 27 2015 orchard brands announced it was being acquired by capmark financial to be another business within the bluestem brands retail business . references edit http www.blair.com http www.fundinguniverse.com company histories blair corporation company history.html http www.answers.com topic blair corporation http www.answers.com topic blair corporation http www.warrenpachamber.com facts largest employers.php http www.hoovers.com company blair corporation rrkkif 1.html http www.blair.com custserv custserv.jsp pagename story international directory of company histories vol . 25 . 1999 . st james press . https news.google.com newspapers id dk0qaaaaibaj & sjid swmeaaaaibaj & pg 5231 % 2c4658569 http www.dmnews.com blairs net sales drop article 92052 golden gate subsidiary to buy blair corp. http www.bizjournals.com boston stories 2009 09 07 story3.html http nl.newsbank.com nl search we archives p product et & p theme et & p action search & p maxdocs 200 & p topdoc 1 & p text direct 0 11a52001aab092d8 & p field direct 0 document id & p perpage 10 & p sort ymd date d & s trackval googlepm http www.internetretailer.com dailynews.asp id 33596 http www.timesobserver.com page content.detail id 529548.html nav 5006 stone mike ; oran olivia ; roumeliotis greg 2014 12 09 . catalog retailer orchard brands retains goldman for sale sources . reuters . retrieved 2015 03 12 . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title blair corporation & oldid 743213072 categories mail order retailersonline retailers of the united statesretail companies of the united statesclothing brands of the united statescompanies based in warren county pennsylvaniaamerican companies established in 19101910 establishments in pennsylvania navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 8 october 2016 at 14 55 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view