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Comment: Fails WP:NCOMPANY, lacks any reliable independent sources or references. Dan arndt (talk) 01:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
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Weiss & Neuman Shoe Company was founded by Charles H. Weiss (b. 1903) as a leased shoe department in SA Barker’s ladies clothing store, in downtown Springfield, Il, in 1925. Weiss, a Romanian immigrant, had begun his career selling shoes as a teenager in Enid, Oklahoma.
Weiss returned to St. Louis shortly after opening the Springfield unit and partnered with a man named Kramer. They opened several stores in St. Louis and named their corporation Weiss- Kramer. At some time in the 1920s, they leased a small space on the 8th floor of the 1209 Washington Building in downtown St. Louis as their office and warehouse.
Around 1928, Weiss dissolved his partnership with Kramer and took on a new partner, Ben Neuman. The company became Weiss Neuman Shoe Company. Several decades of expansion followed, encompassing many smaller towns in the Midwest such as Terre Haute, Indiana, St.Joseph,Missouri, and Wichita, Kansas.
Weiss’s son, Sanford (b.1932) and Richard (b.1927) joined the business in 1957 and 1962, respectively. Ben Neuman retired in 1963 and sold his interest back to the Weiss family. At the beginning of the 1960’s, Weiss Neuman had around 40 stores. The second generation of Weiss’s presided over a transition to mall-based stores in many of the same smaller cities and towns, generally in the Midwest of the US.
By 1970, Weiss-Neuman occupied the top two floors of the 1209 Washington Building. The Weiss brothers purchased the building from the Nooney family of St. Louis. Charles Weiss retired that year, assuming the ceremonial role of Chairman, while his sons became President and Executive Vice-president.
Around 1975, at the urging of a relative, Harold Seidel, Sanford and Richard Weiss contacted Dr. Aldo Gucci, asking him to consider granting them a Gucci franchise store in St. Louis. Dr.Gucci had been looking to expand in the US, thus the inquiry was well-timed and well received. Eventually, the group would own three Gucci stores in the Midwest. Although the Weiss-Neuman Corporation did not own the stores, they were operated from 1209 Washington, through an agreement with Weiss Neuman.
In the late1970’s, Weiss-Neuman acquired a family-owned chain of 12 shoe stores, Rollnick’s, in the Denver Colorado area, moving the store count over 90 for the first time.
By the mid-1980’s, Weiss-Neuman had over 100 free-standing stores and leased departments. Stephen Weiss (b. 1961), son of Sanford Weiss, went to work for the for the family business as the first member of the third generation. Within a few years, however, he left to pursue his passion in the photography business. Richad Weiss’s daughter, Alyson Weiss (b. 1968) would also work for Weiss Neuman from 1995-1997.
Richard Weiss died suddenly in 1995 at age 57. Sanford Weiss sold a majority ownership stake of the chain in 1997 to Peter Edison, scion of the Edison Brothers Stores family, along with a group of investors. With the sale, Sanford retired, and while the Weiss family retained a minority holding of the company’s stock, their affiliation with the company that Charles Weiss had founded was over. Charles Weiss passed away at age 103 in August, 2006, and Sanford Weiss died at age 89 in May, 2022.
Under Edison’s leadership, the chain acquired 140 Baker’s shoe stores and 10 Wild Pair stores from bankruptcy in 1999, and was renamed Bakers Footwear Group. The company went public a few years later, but eventually succumbed to the decline of regional malls, a glut of retail space, and the advent of online retailing, closing its doors permanently in late 2012.
References
editCharles Weiss, verbal history of Weiss-Neuman as told to Ellen Weiss, circa 1972 Sanford Weiss, verbal history of Weiss-Neuman as told to David Weiss, circa 2000.