This company was a very important piece to Cleveland’s garment industry, coming from Meadville, PA in 1845 originally as Koch & Loeb, setting up a wholesale clothing store at 82 Superior St. This firm, which was run by Kaufman Koch, provided a general like of men’s and boys clothing as well as piece goods to tailors. After changing partners several times, the Koch & Loeb name would transition to the Joseph & Feiss Co. in 1907. During the 1920s, Moritz Joseph and Julius Feiss opened a new factory location. This factory would operate for years under the brand name “Clothcraft.” The company began by advertising their $15 blue serge suit, which had served as the “Model T” of the clothing industry at the time. Huge sales of this blue serge suit kept steady business for the company until 1925.

Though many may look to Henry Ford for introducing the five-day (and 40-hour) work week in the US, it would not have been around if it hadn’t been for the Feiss Company first introducing the idea in 1917. The confusion comes as many make statements that Ford had been the first to start it, but rather the company had only advanced the concept from Feiss. While this is the case, Feiss still was not the creator of the 5-day work week, and had only helped in popularizing it. The first American company documented to bring this to their workers was a New England mill in 1908. This was initially done to accommodate Jewish workers.  

On March 15, 1934, 1,800 garment workers went on strike at this particular facility. Many of the strikers were women. The strike was in protest of the firing of an employee who had allegedly engaged in union activities. Strikers also demanded a 25% pay raise. The strike was settled in a matter of days.

In 1966, Joseph & Feiss merged with Phillips-Van Heusen Corp. but remained under the same original name through operations in Cleveland, where the production and sales of tailored men’s apparel continued, only under the Cricketeer and Country Britches label. Women’s clothes were added to the line in 1980, and shortly after in 1989 Hugo Boss AG, a West German clothing and accessory firm acquired Joseph & Feiss.

By 1995 the company employed 800 people in the Cleveland area. The following year, production of the Cricketeer and Country Britches label was put to an end due to a growing acceptance of casual clothing among Americans, as well as harsh competition from lower-priced imports; this lead to the lay off of over 200 workers. In 1997, Joseph & Feiss, along with nearly 450 employees moved any remaining manufacturing operations to a distribution center on Tiedman Road in Brooklyn. The company still continues production of suits, sport coats, and slacks for the Hugo Boss brand.

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OHIO’S FORGOTTEN HISTORY

This is just one of many places that will be featured in my upcoming book “Ohio’s Forgotten History”

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