JOHN L. BLAIR MEN'S CLASSIC PURE WOOL LUXURY BLAZER W/GOLD BUTTON ACCENTS (USA)

Founded in 1910 as the New Process Company by John Leo Blair, the company celebrated its 100th year in business in 2010 Blair was founded in 1910 by John L. Blair, who originally took up an offer to sell raincoats. After several unsuccessful attempts at selling the coats, he was asked by an undertaker if he had any attractive black raincoats. He didn't, but it gave him an idea. The idea John had was to take advantage of the relatively new process of rubber vulcanization to adhere an attractive black wool fabric to the outside of a rubber raincoat, with an inner lining of a Scottish plaid. His classmate agreed to begin producing just such a coat and supplied him initially with 1200 coats, which were purchased almost immediately. He had to send out letters of apology until new coats could be produced. Samples of his letters from as early as 1910 still exist. With the help of his father and siblings, John mailed 10,000 letters to undertakers across America and the coat quickly saturated the market. He expanded with letters to ministers and businessmen, and he also expanded his product line. For the first few years, his business was known as New Process Rubber Company, and by 1916 it was changed to New Process The company continued to grow. In 1989, Blair could process 100,000 orders per day and was shipping as many as 75,000 packages a day. It had sales in 1988 of US$414 million, US$ $506.8 million in 1998, and US$ $420 million in 2007& 15 million on its mailing list.