Jack Benson, an apparel manufacturer who owned a sportswear company with his father and brothers called Benson and Partners that developed the Outlander and Jeanne Pierre labels has died.
In a WWD article in 1971, Benson gave an interview about how he started the family business, and the risk it took giving up making skirts for Sears Roebuck and J.C. Penney and acquiring more fashionable brands. “We’ve got all our money on the table, and now it’s a matter of seeing whether we win or crap out. We think we’re going to win,” Benson said.
“We began to make skirts for Sears. In the first year we made $100,000 profit on sales of $1 million, not bad for a new company which was producing skirts to retail at $22. We then decided to sell also to Penney’s and we boosted our volume to $2.5 million. But it became something of a routine operation. We would sketch a line, and work out the skirts, manufacture them and ship them and then have nothing much else to do except watch the stock market ticker,” said Benson.
“We make entire wardrobes — anything from rainwear to bikinis, if we think something looks good and is hot, but our greatest strength is in dresses and sportswear,” said Benson in the 1971 story. The Bensons were experts in sewing, cleaning machines, cutting and manufacturing. In fact, Jack Benson said topflight production men were the unsung heroes of the apparel business, and he counted his brother, Sam, among them.
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