Sexy Friday – 20260731

TGIF! Folks complain there is a dearth of sporting contests occurring right now and I have to disagree. We have dirt ball, ladies hard ball, banana ball, golf, auto racing, hat footy, aussie footy, professional stick ball, etc. Oh, we also have all the lovely injury news coming out of football camps.

Word Count Filler Time

Today we learn the backstories of inviduals that created commercial empires.

Edward Bauer
Aged 20 years old in 1920, Edward used $25 to open a tennis store. (Inflation, amiright?) One of his products were badminton shuttlecocks which were made with goose down which was the style at the time. It occurred to Edward that the goose down might be a good clothing insulation material.

After some testing, he got a government contract to provide down jackets for WWII pilots. The pilots loved them so much, that after the war they reached out to his Seattle store for personal down jackets, which resulted in him starting a mail order business. Edward maintained his single store and mail order business until he retired in 1968. In 1988 a Chicago based catalog merchant company bought the business and expanded to 500 locations, cementing the “Eddie Bauer” brand.

Cliff Hillegass
Cliff was a prolific reader and loved books. So much so that while attending the University of Nebraska, he got a job as the buyer for the college bookstore. During that job he met a Canadian named Jack Cole. Jack Cole had created a line of literary study guides called Cole’s Notes and suggest that Cliff do that same thing for the US.

So, in 1958, Cliff took out a loan and did exactly that, calling his line of books Cliff’s Notes which covered classic works of literature starting with Shakespeare. Eventually, his business was sold to the owners of the For Dummies series of books and went on to sell more than 5 million guides a year, with the guide on Great Expectations being the best selling.

Liz Claiborne
Liz was born in Belgian but moved so often she never graduated high school. Her family finally settled in the US, but she studied art in Europe. Her father wouldn’t allow her to study fashion design. Despite that she entered a fashion design contest and won, after which a New York fashion designer hired her in the 50s. For two decades she tried to persuade her employer to let her design fashions for the emerging class of working women but was continually rebuffed.

Finally, she left in 1976 and started her own company that designed office appropriate attire for women. After two years she was making north of $20 million per year. The company went public in 1981 and its annual sales were $2 billion. Needless to say, there were regrets by her previous employer.

I had more, but I have like 2 minutes to get this published, so that’s what you get.

Click here to get to commenting

Sexy Time

Enjoy the weekend, folks! Alright, now let’s get to the comments!