Levenger Company
Levenger Company is a specialty retail company established in 1987 in Belmont, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The company sells leather goods, furniture, writing instruments (including fountain pens), and office accessories, including its proprietary Circa disc-binding notebook system. Many of its products are designed and produced exclusively.[1] It also publishes several books a year through its Levenger Press imprint[2] and positions itself as a destination for organizers and thinkers.[3][4][5] Products are sold through its catalogs, website, and stores in Chicago, the Washington, D.C. area (McLean, Virginia), and Boston. The fulfillment and customer service center is in Memphis, Tennessee, and its headquarters is in Delray Beach, Florida.
History
Levenger was established in 1987 by Steve Leveen and his wife, Lori Granger Leveen.[6] The name “Levenger” was derived from their surnames, Leveen (Leve-) and Granger (-nger). Noticing a need for a good beside-the-bed reading lamp in their first home together in Belmont, Massachusetts, and aware of the up-and-coming halogen lighting technology, the Leveens placed an ad in The New Yorker[7] magazine and began selling lamps, using their neighbor’s garage as the fulfillment center and their own spare bedroom as the main office. The first tagline was “Serious Lighting for Serious Readers.” The tagline later changed to “Tools for Serious Readers.”[8]
Events and milestones
- 1990 - Levenger’s first catalog was mailed out.
- 1993 - Inc. (magazine)[9] ranked Levenger as the eighth-fastest-growing privately held company in the United States.
- 1996 - The Levenger.com Web site became operational in July.
- 1998 - The company’s book-publishing imprint, Levenger Press, was launched in September, with titles including reprints of works by Robert Louis Stevenson and Winston Churchill, plus Steve Leveen’s own The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life (2005).
- 2003 - The first Levenger store opens as a department inside a Marshall Field’s in downtown Chicago. That Marshall Field’s location is now a Macy’s.
- 2004 - Another store opens in Boston.
- 2006 - A new store opens in McLean, Virginia, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.
- 2006/2007 - The warehouse and customer service center move from Delray Beach, Florida, to Memphis, Tennessee.
- 2007 - A new store opens in Boca Raton, Florida.[10]
References
- ^ About Levenger at Levenger.com.
- ^ LevengerPress.com
- ^ Dream. Think. Become. Essays for the Mind of a Strategic Thinker, by James B. Haybyrne, CreateSpace Publishing, 2011, pp. 84-87.
- ^ The Organized Life: Secrets of an Expert Organizer, by Stephanie Denton, North Light Books, 2006, p. 218.
- ^ Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking - Revised Edition, by Andy Sernovitz, Kaplan Press, 2009, p. 161.
- ^ Harvard Business Review, Myra M. Hart et al., Levenger Case Study, Dec. 17, 2004, 18 pp.
- ^ The New Yorker, Oct. 12, 1987 issue.
- ^ Company history at Levenger.com.
- ^ Inc. Magazine, Oct. 1993 issue, p. 113.
- ^ Company history at Levenger.com.
External links