Casual Corner was an American retail clothing chain founded in 1950. It operated stores under the names Casual Corner, Petite Sophisticate and August Max Woman brands, among others, with more than 525 stores at its peak.

History

In 1950, childhood friends^[1] Charles E. Carples, a Sage-Allen manager, and Brown-Thomson buyer Stanley W. Vogel^[2] each borrowed $5,000 (~$60,816 in 2022) to co-found Casual Corner, opening its first retail store that April Fools Day^[1] in West Hartford, Connecticut.^[3] The first shop was 750 square feet and used poles, beams, and nets from old tobacco barns, and employed the founders' spouses as staff.^[1]

Casual Corner broke tradition with retail conventions of the day, allowing women to physically browse clothing and try on items in fitting rooms, rather than encasing apparel behind glass. The store's name was chosen, in part, to reflect a more casual shopping experience than was typical of the era.^[1]

Throughout the 1950s. each store displayed the following poem near its front door:^[1]

Come in and browse and tarry and chat

Casual Corner is meant just for that

Come in and leisurely look awhile

And find here what’s good and fine in style

And if you wish your business we’ll tend

Come in as a stranger—leave as a friend.

In its first year, company sales were $45,000; a decade later, annual revenue had increased to $2 million. In 1969, annual sales were reported as $14 million.^[2] Casual Corner was sold to United States Shoe Corporation (U.S. Shoe) in 1970, when the chain included 20 stores.^[4] Cofounder Vogel became president of the company's specialty retail division, retiring a decade later.^[2]

A year after acquisition by U.S. Shoe, the chain opened its twenty-fifth store^[5] and continued to grow rapidly after that. Many of the original stores were constructed by George Zunner III of West Hartford,^[6] including those in Warwick and Providence, Rhode Island; Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts; Buffalo, New York; and at least one store in Ohio.

Under U.S. Shoe's ownership, Casual Corner became the foundation of a larger holding company, Women's Specialty Retailing Group.^[7] During its market height, in 1989, US Specialty Retailing included over 1,500 stores nationwide.^[2]

In April 1995, Luxottica purchased U.S. Shoe for $1.4 billion with the goal of acquiring its LensCrafters division;^[8] losses of US$22 million were reported that second quarter.^[9] In October 1995, Luxottica spun off the Women's Specialty Retailing Group, renamed Casual Corner Group, to Italian-controlled pLa Leonardo Finanziaria S.r.l., a Delaware company operated by Luxottica founder Leonardo Del Vecchio and his family.^[9] With 525 stores operating in 2000, Casual Corner closed its remaining locations in late 2005, after selling them to a liquidator,^[7][10] due to increased competition.^[11]

Brands and market

The chain's original merchandise was women's sportswear,^[12] but by the 1990s, it has pivoted to target working women.^[13] Under the Women's Specialty Retailing Group, the company owned and operated Casual Corner, Casual Corner Annex, August Max, Sophisticated Woman (subsequently merged and rebranded as August Max Woman), Petite Sophisticate, Ups & Downs, Caren Charles, and J. Riggings, a menswear store, which it sold in 1987.^[7]

References