Salkin & Linoff
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Salkin & Linoff was a Minnesota-based retailer of primarily private label women's, junior (and to a lesser extent) men's and children's clothes. The retailer had a wide variety of name plates, including S&L, Bostwicks, Peck & Peck, Stevensons, Wrangler Wroost, Hurrah!, Morrey A, Nina B, Bostwicks for Men, Bostwicks for and Mauritizos. Founded by visionary retailer Sam Salkin in the early 1940s, the company filled the void in smaller midwest towns with a slightly better selection of goods then offered by local mom and pop retailers.
At its peak, Salkin & Linoff was the largest independent clothing retailer in the United States, with had over 400 stores across the contential United States. However, poor/in-bred family management, widely decentralized locations, inability to utilize new technologies and the too-broad mish mash of apparel offerings (never dominating any piece of the market but attempting to offer everything) combined to shutter the entire chain. Furthermore, never a dominate force in the marketplace, S&L lacked the infrastructure and senior management wisdom and focus which store managers and buyers needed to make proper merchandising decisions.
These factors combined to force them out of business in 1990 and as such, the chain was basically shut down and sold off in smaller pieces. Some specific store locations of the surviving Peck & Peck chain were sold by Salkin & Linoff in the mid/late 1980s to H.C. Prange and a few single stores may remain but are now considered, at best, an extremely tiny and insignificant afterthought of American fashion retailing. In retrospect, the whispered insider phrase which compared the remaining Salkin & Linoff management team to a "three legged dog of fashion retailing" did actually come true.
After closing down, many of the store fixtures and other purchases implusively acquired by the then third-generator owner were sold for pennies on the dollar. That factor didn't help matters either and was referenced in the article below as "a bit of high living was evidenced by the many antiques purchased to decorate stores. The company also disposed of condos and apartments in Miami, New York, San Francisco and London."
