Spencer LLC Prize , doing business as Spencer is , is a North American mall retailer with over 600 stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Their stores specialize in novelty and joke gifts, and also sell clothes, band merchandise, sex toys, room decorations, collectibles, fashion and body jewelry, as well as fantasy and horror items. The company also owns and operates a seasonal retailer, Spirit Halloween.
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History
Spencer Gifts was founded in 1947 in Easton, Pennsylvania by Max Spencer Adler as a mail order catalog selling a wide range of new merchandise. In 1960, Max's brother Harry Adler, who had worked for the company since 1947, sold his shares and left.
In 1963, Spencer Gifts opened its first retail store at Cherry Hill Mall in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where it operates to this day.
After opening about 450 stores under the name Spencer Gifts, Adler merged the Spencer Prize with an entertainment conglomerate MCA in 1967. In 2003, the Spencer Prize was completely renamed after being under new management, and with the change it was known as simply Spencer.
In 1990, Spencer Gifts closed its mail order catalog division.
In 1993 and 1996, respectively, the Spencer Prize acquired DAPY outlets and opened the first GLOW! store. DAPY and GLOW! trademark terminated some time before 2007.
In 1995, MCA was acquired by Seagram Company Ltd. and renamed Universal Studios. Spencer Gifts began operating the Universal Studios store as a subsidiary of its parent company.
In 1997, Spencer Gifts opened its first store in Canada.
In 1999, Spirit Halloween acquired by Spencer, a seasonal retailer founded by Joseph Marver in 1983. At that time, the business had 60 temporary locations. Spirit stores are only open for two months before Halloween, although it keeps a website year-round. Shops are generally operated out of the recently emptied business spaces. In 2013, Spirit has more than 1,000 locations, comprising about half of Spencer's annual income of $ 250 million.
In 2000, Spencer expanded to England. This chain opened up to 14 stores in the UK before closing it in the mid-2000s.
In 2001, Vivendi acquired Universal Studio and recruited the entire organization as Vivendi Universal Entertainment. Less than two years later, in 2003, GB Palladin, a joint venture between Gordon Brothers Group and Palladin Capital Group, won the Spencer Prize from Vivendi. Steven Silverstein became CEO of Spencer Gifts and also CEO and president of Spirit Halloween.
In the fall of 2004, Spencer began redesigning his shop.
In 2006, Spencer started the "Spirit of Children" program, which increased donations through Spirit Halloween stores for, and organized Halloween parties at children's hospitals in Canada and the United States. Since 2007, the program has raised more than $ 16 million for more than 130 children's hospitals.
ACON Investments acquired the company in 2007 and sold it in 2015.
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Legal issues
The company has been investigated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for its advertising practices.
In 1962, the Spencer Prize was found by the Federal Trade Commission to violate the Federal Trade Commission Act by making misleading statements in advertising the "Reduce-Eze" belt and ordering to stop making false claims. The girdle is advertised with statements like "Slim 4 Inch Without Diet" and "Trims 4 Inches Off Your Image".
In 1969, the Spencer Prize was invented by the FTC for, through the use of words like "stone", "birthstone", and "gold", has misrepresented its jewelry product. Since the jewelry does not contain "original precious or semiprecious stones", or gold made of 24 carat gold, the Spencer Prize is ordered to stop the use of deceptive statements in the promotion of jewelry.
In 1970, the Spencer Prize was found by the FTC to mislead its customers about the effectiveness of "unprespected magnifying glasses" by not revealing that the correction of vision defects is limited to older people who do not have eye diseases, such as astigmatism, but require only "enlargement or subtraction simple lenses ". The FTC instructs retailers to discontinue use of advertising that misrepresents the quality of their optical products.
Controversy
Spencer's reward has been criticized for its merchandise, which is considered sexually explicit and racist.
In 1989, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) sent thousands of pamphlets to Arab-Americans across the United States to campaign against Halloween Spencer 'sheik' and 'Arafat' Halloween masks, which were marketed as part of "Fright Stuff". "product line The pamphlet featured a picture of a 'sheik' mask and claimed that it was" the only ethnic in the product line and marketed with traditional monster masks that reinforce the notion that the Arabs are frightening. "Spencer Gifts pulls two masks from his shop in October after a three-day "protest and phone call" by the ADC, but decided that month to put back the sale of the mask, prompting the ADC to boycott and fire Spencer's shops.In a letter to ADC spokesperson Faris Bouhafa, Spencer's general counsel , Ronald Mangel said that "after reviewing the masks of 'Sheik' and 'Arafat' and discussing the mask's appearance with others, president Spencer John Hacala decided to reverse earlier. disconnect and put the mask back in the shop. "We will not rearrange the mask for next year," the letter added.
The Spencer Prize has been criticized for allowing children to access adult toys and other explicit products. While adult-specific products seem to be stored in restricted areas for children, there are instances where it does not occur. In one instance, police seized mature materials from Spencer Prize in Rapid City, South Dakota as "a possible evidence of a national retailer's failure to register as an adult-oriented business".
In February 2014, the Ancient Order Hibernian, the largest Irish organization in the United States, called on Spencer to stop selling the merchandise feeling stereotyped about Irish Americans, such as T-shirts with the slogan "F *** I am Irish" and hat sports phrase "Irish Girl Wasted". AOH's National Anti-Defamation Chairman Neil Cosgrove protested, "We note that the Spencer Prize was a recidivist when it came to undermining the heritage and culture of Irish Americans." St. Pat's's Spencer's merchandise seems to pierce new lows every year. "
References
External links
- Official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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