Last week French Novelty was featured on the front page of the Florida Times Union. The feature was fabulous and we wanted to share it with you.
Here is the article copy and pasted below: The Article link here.
"It’s been 100 years since Salim Mizrahi opened his first store in downtown Jacksonville. Over the years, the business has grown and then shrunk, the name has changed, the merchandise has changed, the locations have changed.
But a century later, the company is still here in Jacksonville. It’s still owned by the Mizrahi family, and it’s still in the business of selling clothes. Along the way, linens have given way to wash-and-wear and those have given way to prom dresses.
What was once S. Mizrahi & Co. Ready-to Wear is now French Novelty. This week, it’s celebrating its 100th birthday.
Check out more photos from French Novelty
Though the company once had more than 50 stores under its three names — French Novelty, Strawberry Fields and Ice Lady — it’s now down to two.
It’s not in a prime downtown spot anymore, not in the malls it once was.
One store is on Blanding Boulevard, tucked in between a Winn-Dixie and the tax collector’s office. The other is on Dunn Avenue, next to a cash advance place.
“Over the 100 years, we’ve had a lot of close calls,” said Jack Mizrahi who runs the business his grandfather started. “But we’ve adjusted. If you can’t adjust, if you just look behind, you’re going to be shipwrecked.”
100 years ago
Salim Mizrahi came from what is now Lebanon and first sold merchandise on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J. But each Labor Day on the boardwalk, the tourists left and business dried up.
So he moved south to Jacksonville, a city that was booming again after the great fire of 1901. The film industry was setting up shop and winter tourists filled the grand hotels downtown.
Mizrahi set up seasonal shops in two of the grandest hotels, the Windsor and the Seminole. In 1911, he opened his first standalone store at 325 North Laura St., where the Museum of Contemporary Art now stands. He sold clothes, hats, linens.
The business grew, moved a few times and somewhere in the late 1930s or early ’40s, the name was changed to French Novelty.
“France was where all the fashion was,” Mizrahi said. “And 'novelty’ means new and exciting.”
But he admits that these days people sometimes do get confused and expect to find something more risque than prom dresses and church suits.
It was actually a series of stores back then, all side by side downtown. But in 1952, they were consolidated into a big, new store at 119 West Adams St. Full double page ads in The Times-Union heralded the event.
The grand opening party was shoulder-to-shoulder. A couple years later, crowds lined up around the block to see Clarabell the clown from the old “Howdy Doody Show.”
In the late 1950s, the business started to expand: A second store at the beach, a third at Gateway, a fourth at Lakewood.
By the early 1960s, downtown was changing and the store left. Expansion continued and in the 1970s, when Jack Mizrahi came onboard, took over a defunct arm of the business and turned it into Strawberry Fields. That specialized in what Mizrahi called “fashion at a price” and began to grow even faster than French Novelty.
Strawberry Fields grew to 35 stores, stretching from Savannah to Melbourne. French Novelty, meanwhile, grew to 15, mostly in Jacksonville but there were stores in Tallahasse, Valdosta, Fernandina Beach and Palatka.
But by the late 1980s, Jacksonville was changing.
“The attention was on the big box stores,” Mizrahi said, “and we were in the neighborhood shopping centers.”
With what Mizrahi described as “encouragement from the bank,” the company started downsizing.
Proms and the Net
But as the company shrank, it found its niches.
The Blanding store specializes in what Mizrahi calls “social occasion” dresses. That means some wedding and bridesmaid, along with a lot of prom dresses. (Average price: at least $300). Pageants are getting big, but the showiest dresses, those with more frills, more beads, are usually for quinceanera, a sweet 15 celebration in the Hispanic community.
On Dunn Avenue, the emphasis is on women’s suits and hats for church.
And it survives on tradition.
“We have women who come in say 'My mother bought a dress here,’ ” said Pam McRae, who’s been with the company since the 1970s.
Though photos of Salim Mizrahi in that first store on Laura Street hang on the walls of both his stores, Mizrahi sees the future as something else.
“They say 'location, location, location.’ Well, the location today is really on the Internet,” he said. “We’ll still have a brick-and-mortar store, people want to come and touch and feel. But the Internet, that’s where the wind is blowing.”
WILL DICKEY/The Times-Union
Jack and Nancy Mizrahi in their French Novelty dress shop in Cedar Hills Tuesday, October 25, 2011 in Jacksonville, Florida. The family business is celebrating its 100th anniversary.
Here is the article copy and pasted below: The Article link here.
"It’s been 100 years since Salim Mizrahi opened his first store in downtown Jacksonville. Over the years, the business has grown and then shrunk, the name has changed, the merchandise has changed, the locations have changed.
But a century later, the company is still here in Jacksonville. It’s still owned by the Mizrahi family, and it’s still in the business of selling clothes. Along the way, linens have given way to wash-and-wear and those have given way to prom dresses.
What was once S. Mizrahi & Co. Ready-to Wear is now French Novelty. This week, it’s celebrating its 100th birthday.
Check out more photos from French Novelty
Though the company once had more than 50 stores under its three names — French Novelty, Strawberry Fields and Ice Lady — it’s now down to two.
It’s not in a prime downtown spot anymore, not in the malls it once was.
One store is on Blanding Boulevard, tucked in between a Winn-Dixie and the tax collector’s office. The other is on Dunn Avenue, next to a cash advance place.
“Over the 100 years, we’ve had a lot of close calls,” said Jack Mizrahi who runs the business his grandfather started. “But we’ve adjusted. If you can’t adjust, if you just look behind, you’re going to be shipwrecked.”
100 years ago
Salim Mizrahi came from what is now Lebanon and first sold merchandise on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J. But each Labor Day on the boardwalk, the tourists left and business dried up.
So he moved south to Jacksonville, a city that was booming again after the great fire of 1901. The film industry was setting up shop and winter tourists filled the grand hotels downtown.
Mizrahi set up seasonal shops in two of the grandest hotels, the Windsor and the Seminole. In 1911, he opened his first standalone store at 325 North Laura St., where the Museum of Contemporary Art now stands. He sold clothes, hats, linens.
The business grew, moved a few times and somewhere in the late 1930s or early ’40s, the name was changed to French Novelty.
“France was where all the fashion was,” Mizrahi said. “And 'novelty’ means new and exciting.”
But he admits that these days people sometimes do get confused and expect to find something more risque than prom dresses and church suits.
It was actually a series of stores back then, all side by side downtown. But in 1952, they were consolidated into a big, new store at 119 West Adams St. Full double page ads in The Times-Union heralded the event.
The grand opening party was shoulder-to-shoulder. A couple years later, crowds lined up around the block to see Clarabell the clown from the old “Howdy Doody Show.”
In the late 1950s, the business started to expand: A second store at the beach, a third at Gateway, a fourth at Lakewood.
By the early 1960s, downtown was changing and the store left. Expansion continued and in the 1970s, when Jack Mizrahi came onboard, took over a defunct arm of the business and turned it into Strawberry Fields. That specialized in what Mizrahi called “fashion at a price” and began to grow even faster than French Novelty.
Strawberry Fields grew to 35 stores, stretching from Savannah to Melbourne. French Novelty, meanwhile, grew to 15, mostly in Jacksonville but there were stores in Tallahasse, Valdosta, Fernandina Beach and Palatka.
But by the late 1980s, Jacksonville was changing.
“The attention was on the big box stores,” Mizrahi said, “and we were in the neighborhood shopping centers.”
With what Mizrahi described as “encouragement from the bank,” the company started downsizing.
Proms and the Net
But as the company shrank, it found its niches.
The Blanding store specializes in what Mizrahi calls “social occasion” dresses. That means some wedding and bridesmaid, along with a lot of prom dresses. (Average price: at least $300). Pageants are getting big, but the showiest dresses, those with more frills, more beads, are usually for quinceanera, a sweet 15 celebration in the Hispanic community.
On Dunn Avenue, the emphasis is on women’s suits and hats for church.
And it survives on tradition.
“We have women who come in say 'My mother bought a dress here,’ ” said Pam McRae, who’s been with the company since the 1970s.
Though photos of Salim Mizrahi in that first store on Laura Street hang on the walls of both his stores, Mizrahi sees the future as something else.
“They say 'location, location, location.’ Well, the location today is really on the Internet,” he said. “We’ll still have a brick-and-mortar store, people want to come and touch and feel. But the Internet, that’s where the wind is blowing.”