An eye for winners

by Lillian Vernon

In 1951, using $2,000 of wedding gift money, Lillian Vernon founded a mail-order business - on her kitchen table! She placed an ad for personalized belts and handbags in Seventeen magazine, then filled the orders from her home. The ad was a huge success, and the Lillian Vernon catalog was born. This year, her company had sales of $238 million to its lifetime customer base of 18 million people. This is her story: how her family fled Nazi Germany; how she grew up as an. Immigrant in America; her travels, marriages, and children. But mainly this is the story of one determined woman and the business she built - relying largely on her gut instinct and her "eye for winners"--Into a mail-order industry leader that is a national institution. Beyond the story of this one extraordinary woman's success, An Eye for Winners provides an intensive how-to manual for aspiring entrepreneurs. From building mailing lists to the art of picking "winners." For her catalogs, Lillian Vernon gives us an insider