The treasure of her company - Lillian Katz; Lillian Vernon Corp

Nation's Business,  Feb, 1987  by Martha I. Finney

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

The Treasure Of Her Company

Lillian Katz is in her office today because she is not in China. She is not in China because she broke her ankle. She is also in her office --wearing high heels that are perilous for someone at her stage of recovery --because her doctor did not reckon with his patient's personality.

"The doctor took the cast off two weeks ahead of schedule because her ankle is mending quickly,' says her secretary, Geri Harty. "Knowing how Lillian is, he should have kept the cast on four more weeks, just to keep her from trying to do too much.'

Katz says the pain is distracting, but there is no trace of a limp as she gets to the wheelchair behind her desk.

Casual catalog shoppers may not know Lillian Katz--but they probably know her Lillian Vernon Corporation. Katz's $137-million-sales company, which she named after herself and its hometown, Mt. Vernon, N.Y., collects and sells colorful knickknacks made of plastic, cotton, glass, wood or porcelain. Mainly, the company markets nifty solutions to problems so trivial that you may have given them little thought before looking through its catalog.

Tired of those pesky notepads that bulk up your briefcase? Buy a personalized black leather jotter, "fine executive gift,' $8.98. Have paperbacks coming out of your ears? Try the handy book rack that hangs on a door, $7.98. A Lucite rack organizes your food processor blades and discs, $19.98. The triple magnifying mirror helps myopes put on makeup, $12.98.

Then there are the frothier items, aimed more squarely at gift-givers: stained glass windows, baskets, umbrellas with duck-head handles, even red and green Italian toothbrushes with a Christmas tree motif. And there are monogrammed gifts. You can celebrate a couple's first Christmas with a tree ornament with their name engraved on the attached plaque. Door knockers, lint brushes, contact lens cases, pencils and terry cloth bathrobes can all be monogrammed.

This is how Katz got her start. She made her name in other people's initials.

"Monogrammed items make such nice gifts,' she says. "You simply can't rush out to a store and buy a present that's instantly monogrammed. It takes planning and thought. That makes the gift all the more special to the recipient. No one can start a mail-order business today the way I did in 1951, but if I had to start over now, I'd definitely begin with monogrammed merchandise again.'

The daughter of a Jewish industrialist, she was born Lillian Menasche in Leipzig, Germany, in 1927. Her family fled to Holland in the mid-1930s, then to Manhattan in 1937--presumably to keep her brother from fighting in a war that was clearly on the way. "As far as I know, we had no inkling that we were all in danger,' she says. "I just thought we were protecting Fred. He died anyway --fighting on the American side.'

The Americanization of little Lillian did not take long. Soon she was devouring True Confessions magazine with her young friend, Hannah Mayer, who recently wrote her a letter: "I've been a Lillian Vernon customer since 1968. Could you be the Lili who went to Joan of Arc Junior High and lived on Amsterdam Avenue?' Her father also plunged into his new American life by making reconditioned zippers (zipper manufacturer Talon was busy outfitting the war). At war's end, he began making leather goods--first camera cases, then handbags and belts.

He had the necessary merchandise in stock when 24-year-old Katz wanted to add $50 to her husband's weekly income of $75. Pregnant with their first son, whom they named after her brother, Katz took $2,000 of wedding-gift money, bought some supplies and dropped $500 into a Seventeen magazine ad for personalized handbags and belts. "Be the first to sport that personalized look,' read the ad for purses ($2.99) and belts ($1.99).

Katz's relatively modest motivation of supplementing her husband's income did not foreshadow how those early years would affect the rest of her life.

"I figured that for $125 a week we could do everything we wanted to do,' she says. "I liked the stimulation of work, and I wasn't prepared to do only child care. I chose the mail-order business simply because it was the only thing I could think of that would allow me to work at home and be with my children.

"Many people tried to talk me out of the business. Sam Hochberg, my first husband, treated it like a hobby. I felt it was very important to me because it was mine, and it gave me a wonderful sense of independence.'

Within six weeks of the first ad, Katz was at her kitchen table sorting through $16,000 worth of orders. That first taste of success brought out a driven side to her personality that no one expected to see.

"When we first were married, she took a clerical job,' says Hochberg. "She never showed any drive or ambition. Never before had she felt she had it in her to run a business.'

Hochberg says differences in work philosophy eventually ended their marriage in 1969. "I'm more the playboy at heart, while she's the hard worker,' he says. "I just wanted to earn enough money to live the good life. I would have retired 25 years ago, if I could have afforded it.' When they divorced, Katz got the mail-order business.