Vera, not to be confused with Vera Bradley and Vera Wang, owns the prints, original artwork, scarves, trademarks, and copyrights of the late designer and artist Vera Neumann. Neumann is known for the bold prints and patterns she created in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Vera was known for its prints and patterns, a sort of American Marimekko, in particular scarves. They are identified by a signed Vera on the corner of patterns. Pictured at right, a pattern on their website.

Their website says that the current Vera Company owns the extensive library of prints, original artwork, scarves, and the trademarks and copyrights of the late, iconic American artist, Vera Neumann. A report in Home Textiles Today says that the brand will be licensed by Town & Country Living, and expanded into housewares and linens.

Vera began on her kitchen table, and it grew into a multi-million dollar business. The company has a notable connection, in that Perry Ellis worked for Vera, and the company spawned Perry Ellis as a designer. Many famous women wore Vera, including Marilyn Monroe.

The brand was also worn by Mrs. Guion, my third grade teacher at Norfolk Academy, who as I recall had a particular affection for Vera scarves. She was a particularly stylish lady and in addition to her Vera scarves, she drove a Mercedes. In between SRA tests and bean-bag spelling tests in the early 1970s, she never missed an opportunity to sport the scarves.

NEW YORK

Featured on the main page of the New York City Department of Records is an undated photo of the S.S. United States and S.S. America, both liners of the now defunct United States Lines. The photo has to be before 1964, as S.S. America (in front) was sold by United States Lines in 1964.

While these Mad Men era vessels longer sail, they are still attractions, though not by design. The S.S. America, which had a slew of owners after she was sold by United States Lines in 1964, wrecked and broke off of Fuereventura, in the Canary Islands. Unlike the Costa wreck in Italy, there was no push to have it moved, and it became a stop on the tourist map there. Now is apparently (and according to Wikipedia) only barely visible.

The S.S. United States is still, amazingly, in Philadelphia, and it is some sort of major miracle that she has not been scrapped. While she has been gutted, she still looks graceful, and even to this day, is an attraction for the city, though sadly there is no way to go aboard her. (I was lucky enough to get a tour back in 1998/99, when she was first moved to Philadelphia after being gutted in Turkey.)

I grew up in Virginia Beach, and for almost two decades, the S. S. United States was docked first at Norfolk International Terminals and then at a C&O dock in Newport News. In each case, the vessel was the star attraction of all waterfront tourist cruises, and every single time anyone went out for an evening pleasure boat cruise, a close up view of the S. S. United States was irresistible. You were just drawn to the thing, anyone at the tiller or helm would just have to go a bit closer, just to see it. My parents and great aunt and uncle were blessed to have been, unwittingly, on the last cruise in 1969.

The vessel is one of those great American achievements of engineering and design that fate continues to smile upon. At the same time as it was featured on the home page of the city, boosters of the ship the S. S. United States Conservancy were holding a press event to announce that she would be the site of the filming of the movie Dead Man Down. While the fate is not 100 percent secure, there is at least talk of redeveloping her as an attraction in Philadelphia. If the project is successful, it will count as a major irony that other cities with more historic connections to the ship (Norfolk, Newport News and New York) passed on buying her for an attraction.

American business history is rife with hundreds of thousands of brand names that have been dropped, discontinued or made bankrupt by company managers.  In some cases, these brands just lie fallow, with no one picking them up. Many are not worth reviving; either the original product was not compelling enough or the concept was lame.

But in many cases, the products or names were interesting, and companies seek to hold onto the brand, not to develop it, but to keep it away from anyone else. In the best cases, companies seek clever ways to keep the value of the brand alive, just in case it might be of use another day. Recent cases of this include the revivals of the Hyatt House and Datsun brands.

But in the worst cases, companies sue small entrepreneurs after they have trademarked a discontinued brand, saying that the new startup is “confusing” the marketplace. They have no intention of doing ANYTHING with the brand, and instead just swoop down reluctantly with high priced lawyers ONLY when some clever entrepreneur else sees value there.

The Old Testament gives some good guidance here on how companies can behave. Many of us “fuddy duddy” Americans who grew up “going to church” occasionally find some sort of guidance in scripture. We managed to learn somehow in our years of “Social Studies” classes that our whole concept of Anglo-Saxon law came out of biblical principles, most of them Old Testament.

On some really crazy days, we can even find guidance in Leviticus that fits a business situation. One that fits perfectly is Leviticus 23:22, the passage about landowners reaping the harvest, and leaving the “gleanings” to the poor AND TO the stranger.

And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger: I am the LORD your God.

This gives clear instruction on how companies need to see their old brands. The biblical guidance is clear that the farmer (ie big company) is to fully “reap the harvest” of their field. The big company is to make money, and lots of it, hopefully hand over fist. But they are also instructed not to take every bit of the harvest, and to leave some corners for the “stranger.” The practice of destroying good brands (i.e. “making clean riddance”) only to keep them away from others seems applicable to this teaching of the man who took us out of Egypt.

So how does this apply to a large company that has shareholders and must be accountable? The lesson in the story is that when you are harvesting mass amounts in a big field, you need to go where the harvesting is most productive. You want to focus on those brands that are bringing the biggest returns, and fueling your company. But if a farmer tries to harvest too much in his field, even the dumb little scraps, the process of searching out the back corners that are not quite productive wastes time. This takes  him away from the big picture, and the big returns. Squandering time on “the corners of thy field” keeps companies away from the big profits, and their need to serve society by keeping the BIG fields productive.

A vibrant U.S. economy will have large brands, with scale and power, that serve the masses. But a vibrant society and economy will also have small company brands around the “corners” of the market that serve create opportunities for the margins, and even the poor. These small companies not only serve the poor, they help keep the “field” open for the big farmer. A healthy field (i.e. capitalism) serves all of us well.

In most cases, the brands have been forgotten; indeed the companies have purposefully made “clean riddance of the corners” by going so far as to take down signs of old brands and root out ANY reference to the old brand name.

We won’t single anybody out here, as fuddy duddy here doesn’t want to  “judge” anyone based on Leviticus!

But what is a fair thought going forward, and what I am hopeful of, is that companies (and the lawyers that advise them) are beginning to understand that if they want to keep a field fallow, they need to work and develop it. And in the case where there are overlooked corners, they might do well to at least ponder what Moses might have done, namely leaving a bit for the stranger.

Crosley was one of those amazing men who seemed to do and try everything, and much of it worked. Owner of the Cincinnati Reds, he also sold his own marque of car, radio and all manner of other invented items, mostly home appliances. The way he looked at business life was rather like an Asian corporate mogul, selling all manner of disparate items all under the same Crosley banner. He served the mid-market, and continued innovating to give his customers more useful goods.

Today, the Crosley brand is associated with reviving another antique idea, vinyl records.

The Crosley legacy lives on though:

• A line of electronics, totally retro in design. Interesting they have gone from totally retro to sort of Deco-hip (see Amazon below).
• In Bradenton, just south of the Sarasota-Bradenton airport, there is the Powel Crosley Estate. It sits on Sarasota Bay, right near the sumptuous estate of George and Mable Ringling. It is open for events and run by Manatee County.
• In Cincinnati, the radio station WLW, The Big One.
• In Cincinnati, the Pinecroft Estate is the home of Crosley.

The message? What a company with history, and a sense of itself, and its past. Wells Fargo is known for its archives, and they have put them to good use in their branches.

But all the goodwill was undone today with the launch of Abbot Downing, a trust company for high net worth folks who bank with Wells Fargo. The Abbot Downing name apparently comes from the carriage makers that made Wells Fargo’s carriages oh so long ago. The two names have nothing to do with banking, nothing more than a marketing ploy. Perhaps there are worse things (such as one of those contrived names), and this name has a good chance of succeeding because Wells Fargo has so many customers that it can market to.

In a Marketwatch story, division president James Steiner said that Abbot Downing would do lots of things for its clients, not just investments. “The firm is trying to differentiate itself by offering broad services that cover both soft (doing family histories) and hard skills (creating very complex investment portfolios).”

But it missed something. Authenticity. Banks are different from soft drink companies and fashion lines. They are companies that you trust with your most important possession, your money.

The move is reminiscent of SunTrust, and its odd experiment with a brand called Alexander Key (See 2002 Inside Business story.)  SunTrust in 2002 created the Alexander Key brand for its investment subsidiary. Like Abbot Downing, it was cooked up, apparently taken from an old president of the company, and in turn, the Alexander Key brand was cooked in a few years.  Now SunTrust uses the Robertson Humphrey sub-brand for its investments, just as BB&T uses the Scott & Stringfellow brokerage name.

It reminds me of department stores that come up with WASPy sounding names for their store brands, in the hope that people will think that the brand is something old.

Abbot Downing will have to produce incredible results in its trust services department to compete with the other older, established banking brand names that have been trusted over generations. And across the U.S., there are dozens of small, family run trust companies that have devoted followings. For instance, Burke & Herbert (1852) of Alexandria has its own trust department. And there are hundreds of these across the nation.

Some of the biggest names include (with their year of founding) :

• 1853: U.S. Trust, the trust company founded in the 1850s that is now part of Bank of America.
• 1907: Bessemer Trust is an invented name, a nod to Bessemer, the steel innovator, but that name had some integrity as Henry Phipps was working with Andrew Carnegie’s money when he established the firm at the turn of the century.
• 1899: Northern Trust founded in Chicago.
• 1903: M&T owns Wilmington Trust, with roots in Delaware and T. Coleman duPont.
• 1931: Fiduciary Trust, now part of Franklin Templeton.
• 1935: The Whittier family of California establishes Whittier Trust (oil $$).

Surely the name tested well, though I am not sure how many ultra rich folks would switch to a bank name that was created to “sound” rich and “historic.” Furthermore, you don’t want the word “down” in any brand that has to do with investments. It has bad juju, kind of like when American Idol contestants sing songs about “going home.”

This is but another annoyance for those of us who hate the constant churning of our bank names. Can we have a bank that is not a manufactured “brand” but derived from the names of bankers or places?

Or maybe the company could go back into the old names that made up Wells Fargo, and dredge something fun up.

• Perhaps Crocker Bank and Trust? Connotes old California, as well as Patty Hearst! An old nightclub is apparently using the Crocker name for a nightspot. My cousin’s husband used to work for Crocker, and its a funny old name, but it might be a bit more authentic.
• Bank of North America, though probably used by someone else, was a predecessor company of Wells Fargo, and among the first federal banks in the U.S.
• A.G. Edwards and Wheat, predecessor investment companies of Wells Fargo and Wachovia, could be better names.

Question: Will the Abbot and Costello brand work, or will they need to do something else in a few years? Leave comments below.

One such niche is the category of brands that solve unique problems; in this case the “problem” is people who leave drink glasses on furniture without a coaster.

Jasco Furniture White Ring Remover is one  of those brands; it is basically a small hand towel inside a jar doused with some sort of secret waxy potion. When you rub the cloth on a tabletop drink ring, it removes it. The product is made by Homax of Bellingham, Wash.; from what I understand the JASCO name has been dropped and it is now the Homax White Ring Remover. Ingredients aren’t listed, though it really smells like wax.

Curious if other folks find it useful.

Eau Sauvage was released in 1966; it is still a total classic and sold around the world. Apparently, its key ingredient is hedione (also known as methyl dihydrojasmonate), which is a chemical copy of a jasmine smell. It inspired a whole line of other related fragrances.

Eau Sauvage was created by the late Edmond Roudnitska, a self-schooled Frenchman perfumer who created other scents that included Diorissimo and Elizabeth Arden’s On Dit and It’s You, as well as some scents for Rochas. Roudnitska, who grew up in Nice, eventually moved to Paris to create perfumes. His firm Art & Parfum is apparently still around, run by family.

It got attention as it appeared in the Preppy Handbook; today The Trad blog has it among his favorites. (Ones in his medicine cabinet include Canoe, Old Spice, Aramis, Devin, Royal Copenhagen, Eau Savage, Greenbriar, Eau D’Hermes, Vetivier, D.R. Harris Sandlewood, Knize 10, Trueffit & Hill Spanish Leather and Molton Brown.)

Of course Sheraton and Hilton had new hotels, but those were brands with glamour from an earlier time. Hyatt (and maybe a bit Omni, though there were only a few) was fresh and new in the 1970s.

So it was a bit of a surprise when I saw that Hyatt was re-branding the Summerfield Hyatt extended stay brand as Hyatt House, but in their blog, about it, they did not mention the Hyatt House history. In the Hyatt blog item, Gary Dollens, Global Head of Franchise and Select Brands, and Kristine Rose, Vice President of Select Brands, talk about the “new” Hyatt brand. Whether they mention the history or not, it’s a smart move to use the Hyatt House brand, as the name has much equity with anyone over 40. It’s a true throwback brand, the original identity of the company.

Even Richmond, Virginia had a Hyatt House. The Richmond Hyatt opened in 1974; it was one of 52 Hyatts around the country, most of them Hyatt Houses. While it was made of Virginia mossy brick, it was totally modern and was in a wooded parcel just across Broad Street from the Gordon Bunshaft-designed headquarters of Reynolds Aluminum. Having a Hyatt House was a sort of badge of honor for the city; if you had one you were big time.

The Richmond Hyatt House hotel was known for all sorts of shenanigans on parents weekends and such for the city’s prep schools. Unfortunately, it’s a low-tier hotel now. In each city, the Hyatt was a bit different; no cookie cutter.

There were many other Hyatts that became infamous, including what is now the the Andaz Hollywood, which was a Hyatt House and made a cameo in this Rockford Files Episode. There was also the Mills Hyatt House in Charleston, and the Del Monte Hyatt House in Monterey, California (still a Hyatt). There were also Hyatt Regency hotels, but those were all mega-hotels.

History Starts in L.A.

The Hyatt brand started with Jay Pritzker’s purchase  of the LAX Hyatt House in 1957. The company reinvented hotels in the 1960s and 70s with their massive atrium hotels, including John Portman’s design for the Atlanta Hyatt Regency, which made architectural history and is discussed by Tom Wolfe in his From Bauhaus to Our House diatribe.

As the Hyatt House brand grew, it made it into the pop culture as Hyatts were often the places where rock stars, staying in new coliseums and arenas built around the U.S., would stay. For instance, Warren Zevon’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” talks about the Hyatt House; the song was later covered by Linda Rondstadt. It goes:

She asked me if I’d beat her
She took me back to the Hyatt House

The re-use of the brand is proof that while business trends change, and sometimes brands are modified, very often old concepts can be reinvented as new ones.

Keep your old brands around; you might need them four decades later.

See larger image The Cornell School of Hotel Administration on Hospitality: Cutting Edge Thinking and Practice (Hardcover) List Price: $39.95 USD New From: $21.85 In Stock Used from: $21.86 In Stock

Some brands:

1. In the 1960s, Garrard was the legacy brand. I had one in the 1970s, but it was, by then, the cheap end, and was lots of plastic.
2. By the 1970s, Technics by Panasonic had the quality cheap end. Technics was upscale from Panasonic (which made transistor radios and cassette players), but it was still among the cheaper ones at places like Circuit City. Still, they were good quality and design for their price.
3. Pioneer had the middle. Other brands in the middle were JVC, BSR, ADC and Marantz.
4. Yamaha was a bit better than Pioneer, and it had the advantage of being quite stylish. Plus, Yamaha also made tuning forks and pianos so that made them “high cred” with snobby audiophiles.
5. Kenwood had many followers; can’t recall why though.
6. Fisher was well regarded, as was Sansui.
7. The top was defined by the likes of Denon.
8. Dual tables had a mystique.
9. Fancy but a bit prissy and aesthete were pricey brands like Bang & Olufsen.

Today, there are only a few surviving turntable brands; on Amazon I could only see brands like Technics, Crosley (really a nostalgia play) and Sony. Surprised to see a Sony brand, actually.

But the top seller was and is the Audio Technica AT-PL60. It’s automatic, and has a belt drive. Somewhere in the audiophile argument drawer is the old belt driven/direct drive issue. But today, you just can’t be picky. The Audio-Technica name (it’s a Japanese company) was all about cartridges and headphones, and was not known until recently for its turntables.

Love to get some reader perspective on turntable brands, and which were the best and what the brands symbolized.

See larger image Audio Technica AT-LP60 Fully Automatic Belt Driven Turntable (Electronics) List Price: $139.95 USD New From: $63.90 In Stock Release date July 28, 2009.

And so we hear that Nissan might just bring back the Datsun brand. And it’s not because Generation X remembers that The Bionic Woman, Jaime Sommers, used to drive a 280Z, and still wants one.

Not sure why they switched brands to Nissan in the first place. The Datsun brand was very well-crafted; the cars were completely understandable. The King Cab was a bigger little pickup; the 280Z a sports machine and the B-210 a zippy little econobox. I really don’t recall anyone ever complaining about a Datsun. In fact the opposite was true; like a Honda they just go and go and go til they rust out or get wrecked.

Datsun Saves! I got one! Nobody demands more from a Datsun than Datsun. We are driven.

The Datsun brand will come back to market in the Third World (guess that term doesn’t apply anymore). Let’s write that sentence again. Reports say that Datsun will return to emerging markets such as Indonesia, India and Russia as an entry-level brand. Nissan wants to go further upmarket, and this is a way to snag the low end. A true economy car.

The return of the brand is proof that companies should not throw old brands aside. Instead, they very well may have a use for them a few decades down the line.

Below, and just for fun, a reel of Datsun ads, including an ad from Steve Wozniak.

VIRGINIA BEACH – One of my first childhood memories is being on the kitchen floor of our garage apartment on 78th Street, looking at a corrugated Brach’s Candy box. It had to be before 1969, when we moved to a real house, and my parents got out of the business of beach cottage rentals. I would play on the floor of the kitchen and one day I looked under the sink, and there was that Brach’s Candy box. I believed it was full of candy, but they showed me, and they had to prove that there was no candy there. Even after they showed me, I would look to see if somehow Brach’s appeared.

It was before I could read, so I must have connected the images I saw at our neighborhood Be-Lo store Brach’s Pick-a-Mix display with the logo on the box. (Be-Lo, headquartered in Virginia Beach is now owned by www.freshpride.com. The Be-Lo brand could do with a bit of nostalgic freshening, as well, btw.) Pick-a-Mix was the legendary grocery display where you could dish up your own assortment.

I recalled that memory today when looking at the new Brach’s candy logo. It’s not good, and keeps none of the block lettering that has been its design scheme for at least the last 50 years. A few years ago, they jazzed it up a bit, but now they have discarded that legacy with the new design under the brand’s ownership by Farley & Sathers. The story of the redesign is posted on the company website.

Under Farley’s & Sathers, there is investment in the brand, which is what it needed. The company was sold out of family ownership in the 1960s, and under American Home Products it was sort of ignored, but preserved.  By most accounts, Raider Klaus Jacobs pillaged the company, which once employed 3,700, but at least he was wise enough to see some value in the brand. I will give him that. Look here for his foundation; perhaps it could invest in a run-down neighborhood in Chicago? Funding Universe says a major mistake was reducing SKUs from 1,700 different candies and packaging types and sizes to only 300 SKUs.

The tragedy was that the company had a Wonka-like candy factory in Chicago, and an iconic status that was connected to the plant. The factory ruins are the subject of great interest, including a View Master version created by Wurlington Brothers Press. But the brand was stronger than the corporate vampires, and Farley’s & Sathers wisely found value in Brach’s, and decided to invest. Farley’s is a company to be trusted; they have preserved Chuckles packaging pretty much as it was. They also own other classic brands like Fruit Stripe gum and the Heide brands which include Jujyfruits and Jujubes. Thankfully, they have preserved Heide because it was so connected with its products.

The company, in an article published by Candy and Snacks Today, contends that the design change harkens back to an earlier time, when the purple dominated. That’s good. The company also said in the piece that they made the changes with intensive market research. The article quotes a consumer who said that they’ve actually had people in focus groups cry. The article also has a declaration that private capital status of Farley’s doesn’t mean that it is for sale. All good.

In an magazine interview back in the 1980s, graphic designer Lou Dorfsman told of a time at CBS when that network almost eliminated the eye logo. Smarter heads prevailed, but the episode is proof that good work (and the decades of public goodwill that it stirs) can be easily destroyed by the unthinking.

Brand relationships are formed over the years, and when companies nurture those images and connections, customers feel that the product is consistent. When they screw with the images and brand design, it tells the consumer that things have changed. Sometimes, brands need to be tweaked; this is a delicate process and it shows the older customers that the product has changed, but then makes the product attractive to new customers. But when it changes too much, and the actual factory even changes, customers begin to wonder…is this the same product that I loved, or not?

No matter what happens, however, if a brand is still in business, and still has sales, mistakes in packaging are easy to correct. In fact, time begins to fix errors, and what’s new today is old tomorrow, and when the new becomes old, companies can easily go back to classic.

See what you think. Is the new package design better, or not?

Logo History of Brach’s

Below, an early version of the logo from the now-shuttered factory in Chicago. This image was posted on Ken Faber’s excellent blog on gritty American history, American Urbex, at americanurbex.com.

Below, the 1960s look of the brand. The concept is a bit cheesy, but earnest (more ads online at CandyFavorites.com):

Next, the revised version, familiar to many today. It is patently awful, with a horrid smiley face in the middle. Good riddance:

The current design.

Love some reader thoughts; you can comment before you shop from the obligatory ad for Brach’s on Amazon!

CHICAGO – An American-born graphic designer is working on a project to explore Cuban brands. It’s a visual exploration of Cuba through the lens of branding, and the designer, Emily Lozano, hopes to document the Cuban brands in order to tell about daily life.

Writes Lozano:

As an American-born Cuban I grew up surrounded and influenced by brands before I could even articulate what a brand was. From the cereal we eat to the cars we drive our lives can be roughly described through the brands we prefer. Coke or Pepsi. Cubs or Sox. Democrat or Republican.

My plan is to document Cuban life through these very broad brand categories. It’s a chance to look at Cuba in a way that has not been done before — through branding. I’ve taken a few sample photographs around Chicago (as well as some stock photos of Cuba) to give you an idea for the layout of the book.

It’s an interesting idea; there is a large amount of nostalgia in Eastern Europe for old Commie brands of the Iron Curtain. Even though they can remind people of a system that was oppressive, because they were so ubiquitous, there is some nostalgia for them as time goes on.

One overlooked part of tourism branding is local brands. Where there are none, the place becomes generic. Brands are intimately connected to a community’s sense of place.

Lozano is raising money on Kickstarter for the project. If you like the idea, please donate!

Interested in Cuban brands? Read the original BrandlandUSA story on the history of pre-Castro Cuban brands.

Founded in 1952, Carnival was one of many household brands that have disappeared in recent years. For a time they were made by Clear Shield National, part of Envirodyne. They were also apparently associated with Diamond Brands.

Roadfood.com says that they were purchased by Solo, but the trademark was not renewed.

The clown on the package was a bit creepy, but they were sturdy and the colors on the outside were bright.

Better yet, they were strong enough so they did not crack when you used them and bent the top. Unlike current cheap ones, they were wide enough so you didn’t have to work hard to drink with it.

The package here was found in our church kitchen. They advertise on the package that they are “Supra-Plastic” and “Squash Proof.”

Below, a few varieties on sale with Amazon.

Would love to know from BrandlandUSA readers which brands are decent, and which ones are junk.

Since the 1970s, the greatest magic marker for kids has been the Sanford Mr. Sketch. You know this one; its a set of a dozen or so markers, all water soluble, that smell like their colors. They are sold in sets of different sizes, including 4, 8, 12 and 16.

They have great cult appeal; on YouTube all sorts of folks have posted videos, including the favorite practice of Mr. Sketch users, painting the smelly moustache!

Urban legend says that they had to stop making them because the government didn’t want kids to be sniffing pens, but this is not true.

Taste wise, they sort out  like this, for instance:

Black/Licorice
Red/Cherry
Yellow/Lemon
Brown/Cinnamon

Of course, my favorite is the cinnamon, but they are all pretty good. However, there is some debate as to whether the quality is what it used to be, and the markers apparently don’t last as long as before. Currently part of Newell Rubbermaid, the Sanford brand has been ignored, and Mr. Sketch too. There is definitely alot more that could be made out of the brand; it just needs to be connected to Sanford, not Sharpie, which is all about being indelible.

Sanford as a brand has a long history. It was apparently founded in Massachusetts in 1857 by Frederick W. Redington and William H. Sanford, Jr. as the Sanford Manufacturing Company. It later moved to Illinois.

Question for BrandlandUSA readers..is the Mr. Sketch as great as it was? And if you were to give some advice to Newell Rubbermaid, what would you say?

Below, a vintage marker box from Flickr.

This did not happen with British brushmaker Mason Pearson, a favorite brand of preppies and style conscious folk in the U.S. and other Anglophone  countries.

Mason Pearson, who apparently worked at a company called British Steam Brush Works, was an inventor in what became known as Raper Pearson and Gill. In the late 19th century, Mason Pearson invented a machine to mechanize brush production

In 1885, he invented the rubber-cushion hairbrush. Today’s design is remarkably like the old, and have minor improvements, all in the same sizes of Large Extra, Small Extra, Popular and Junior.