Innovations

Into the chain store field last week went Innovation Trunk Co. of Manhattan, makers of wardrobe trunks. Following recent new financing, the trunk company has announced its intention of marketing its product, both wholesale and retail, through a chain of stores soon to be established in various large U. S. cities.

Ponderous, squat, ungainly were the trunks of the 1890's, trunks that grandfather and grandmother packed, trunks that still repose in many a U. S. attic. Women packed them with patient art, men loaded them with chaotic haste; bent backs and weary arms accompanied their movement. Travelers, arriving at destinations, had first to unpack trunks, lest folded garments acquire permanent wrinkles.

Yet the trunk of today might mucH resemble the trunk of yesterday were it not for Innovation Trunk Co. and Innovator Seymour W. Bonsall. In 1897 Mr. Bonsall was a Manhattan stock broker, but interested in inventions as well as in the market. To him, in a dream, came the vision of a trunk which should be a portable closet rather than a travelling chest of drawers. Awakening, Mr. Bonsall remembered his dream, built the first wardrobe trunk. It looked much like the old style bulbous trunks, but in its interior were racks for hangers, thus embodying the essential principle of the modern trunk in which clothing is hung rather than folded. In 1898 he organized Innovation Trunk Co., began the manufacture of the original wardrobe trunk.

Obviously a notable trunk improvement, the wardrobe trunk was well received; soon other companies were making trunks of the wardrobe type. For a time, Innovation, the pioneer, remained the leader. Eventually, however, Oshkosh, Hartmann and other trunk companies became more potent in the field. Finally, in 1924, Innovation had a renovation. Inventor Bonsall turned over the direction of the company to its present head, Anthony J. Trentacoste, who has been an Innovation trunk-man for 22 years and is responsible for the present expansion policy. Mr. Bonsall is now Director of International Interests of the Dewatered Products Combination, a chemical organization with a de-watering process of Mr. BonsalL's invention.

Still interested in Innovation, however, Mr. Bonsall last spring visited the Innovation plant in Long Island City, last fall wrote to Mr. Trentacoste a letter which later was used in the sale of an Innovation stock issue. Said Mr. Bonsall, in part:

"Since my visit last May to your beautiful factory, the effect on me has been cumulative, and the receipt the other day of an announcement of your arrangement for expansion through a chain of stores not only prompts but impels an expression of my sentiment held in check since that time.

". . . In my day the quick growth and insistent daily unsolicited demand for the Innovation Ingenuities precluded planning for future possibilities, and we had to add one factory after another, which while giving a certain advantage of segregation, increased the fixed charges of the products.

". . . The assurance of determination to revert to the old and successful policy, interrupted by an unfortunate interval of ignorant commercial greed, gives me the courage to hope that once again the Innovation may sustain itself as preeminently the real thing. . . . I wish to assure you of my unrestrained disposition to help you all I can. . . . Please keep me informed of your inevitable progress and call on me unreservedly. . . ."