Bloomingdale's today is part of the chain of Federated Department Stores, Inc., one of the leading department store operators in the United States. Federated is based in Cincinnati and includes under its wing some of the most prestigious names in retailing, such as Lazarus, Bon MarchT, Abraham & Straus/Jordan March, Stern's, Rich's/Goldsmith's, Burdines, and Bloomingdale's. Federated has also added to this list with mergers with R.H. Macy & Co. and the I. Magnin chain. In 1993, Federated operated 219 department stores in 26 states, and it has been seeking opportunities to place its stores at shopping malls and to acquire groups of department stores close to areas it already serves (Hoover's Handbook of American Business 1995 492).
Federated began in 1929 when Fred Lazarus, who then controlled the giant Columbus, Ohio department store F. & R. Lazarus and the oldest department store west of the Alleghenies, John Shillito Company, met with three other retailers to bring about a merger forming one of the loosest federations in American corporate history. The other three retailers were Walter Rothschild of Abraham & Straus, based in Brooklyn; Louis Kirstein of Filene's in Boston; and Samuel Bloomingdale, head of Bloomingdale's in Manhattan. The reason for forming this federation was to reduce vulnerability to local economic fluctuations. The new company had no head office, though it did create one in 1945 in Cincinnati. It continued to be run by powerful, well-paid merchants in each city in which it operated. The company acquired many new department store chains over the years. The company provided extreme autonomy along with talented people, good training, conservative and profitable financial management, and the world's best merchandising (Hoover's Handbook of American Business 1995 492).
Bloomingdale's was founded in 1872 by two brothers, Lyman and Joseph Bloomingdale. It sold hoop skirts to genteel ladies in New York (Jo...