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Frederick himself. The garments featured daring necklines, high slits, and sheer fabrics intended to appeal to men as much as women. In fact, Mellinger once wrote that his goal was to offer "the most alluring, body-hugging, figure-enhancing outer fashions Frederick opened his first retail stores in California in the early s. The flamboyant Art Deco flagship store soon became known as "the purple palace.
Soon pasties, anonymously-written sexual guides, and other "sexually oriented non-apparel products" appeared in the catalogs. Although Frederick's offered its stock to the public in , the Mellinger family continued to control a majority of the company's stock through the early s. By the end of the decade, the chain had expanded to over stores, accounting for over half of overall sales.
The company enjoyed peak prosperity during the mids. It was to be Frederick's highest-ever profitability, as a combination of societal changes and management problems converged on the lingerie retailer. Americans' sexual mores and their tastes in lingerie grew increasingly conservative in the s. However, the septuagenarian founder and his management team were slow to realize these trends.
Unbeknownst to the board of directors, in fact, Mellinger was afflicted with Alzheimer's disease during this time. In , Forbes magazine's Ellen Paris speculated that Frederick's dip into the red meant that sex must be "going out of style. Hansen assumed the presidency on an interim basis while Frederick's board of directors sought a replacement for the venerable founder. Townson brought two decades of experience in mail order retailing, although none of it was in apparel, let alone lingerie.
It didn't take Townson long to pinpoint Frederick's problems. He later enumerated the shortcomings to Direct Marketing 's Mollie Neal: "outdated business assumptions, deteriorating conditions of our stores, ineffective management, inadequate merchandising and financial reporting systems, a dwindling core customer base, more sophisticated competition, archaic structures and antiquated policies.
Store renovations shunned the traditional garish purples and hot pinks for more subtle lavenders and mauves, while softer lighting and new carpeting in the stores made for a more romantic, less burlesque atmosphere. Not only did the company redecorate, but it also celebrated its heritage with the opening of the world's first Lingerie Museum, featuring some of Frederick's earliest designs as well as undergarments of the stars. The vast majority 80 percent of Frederick's nearly stores had been redecorated by Levy, to assess the company's product line and target audience.
A new merchandising scheme emerged from his observations. Frederick's pared what had become an excessively broad and in the eyes of many Americans lewd line, dropping such items as explicit videos and bawdy games.
Frederick's stores also stopped carrying certain lines of apparel and accessories, including wigs, sportswear, and swimwear although these last two categories continued to be offered in mail order catalogs. At the same time, the company expanded its loungewear and men's undergarment lines. The revamp--or, as many company observers punned, "de-vamp"--of Frederick's of Hollywood catalogs also focused on bringing the publication out of the fringes and into the mainstream. Even into the s, the catalogs had featured explicit black and white photos interspersed with exaggerated and cartoonish line drawings.
The new catalogs featured heavier paper, a new logo and motto "An Intimate Experience" , and tasteful color photographs of models wearing Frederick's lingerie. Although catalog sales slid by about five percent with the first new issue, they quickly began to recover, with sales and profits gaining by double-digit percentages in the latter years of the decade. Frederick's move from mail-order's "red-light district" enabled it to buy mailing lists from catalogers who would have previously been embarrassed to be associated with the lingerie merchant.
As a result, catalog circulation more than tripled from 7. Behind the scenes, CEO Townson purged the executive ranks, bringing in 18 new managers within his first two years at the top. He also invested in a new computer hardware, including cash registers and data processing equipment and software.
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