Follow the River.......

Historical Recollections by Lula Mae Stewart

Contributed by the Greenwood Public Library, Transcribed by Janet Schwarze

Snyder's Fashion Service

In 1947 I was employed at Snyder's Fashion Service the work was very interesting. Our back room was filled with bolts of material which Mrs. Lee Snyder purchased on her trips to New York and Milwaukee and other cities. There were rhinestones and laces and patterns and many sewing machines that hummed constantly. This was a busy place as the ladies in the area could choose the material they liked and select a pattern and these materials were fashioned into anything their hearts desired. If we didn't have a pattern they wanted Mrs. Snyder would design something for them.

We also made complete weddings, dresses, hats, veils, bridesmaid's dresses and bride's aprons. These weddings were beautiful I am sure there are many ladies in the area who will remember having their wedding dresses made at Snyder's Fashion Service. Of course we were invited to all the weddings and what weddings they were.

Besides making wedding dresses we had a salesman who took our fashions in a station wagon and sold them to other shops in the surrounding areas. Mr. and Mrs. Snyder were wonderful people to work for. We were treated like partners not workers. It was surprising the amount of input she got from the workers. All of the ladies who worked there had good ideas. No one ever took advantage of the kindness the Snyders showed us, in fact we all worked harder to make the business a success.

This story appeared in the Eau Claire paper back in 1947. Snyder's Fashion Service gives spot delivery to area stores. I would like to see your Billie-Jo originals please, that is the request that has become frequent in dress shops through the area since Mrs. Lee Snyder conceived the idea of manufacturing women's ready to wear for spot delivery to area stores.

Now she has a thriving manufacturing business with retail and wholesale facilities in Thorp employing a dozen people. What Mrs. Snyder and her staff do is to manufacture women's clothes to suit the needs of the retailers in the area. In a station wagon her salesman contacts the near by dress shops in the area to supply the lack in their stocks.

Idea was born

Between here and Milwaukee there is very little in the way of manufacturing in ladies apparel. For years I made expensive trips to the large cities. Frequently in my efforts to cut expenses I over bought. Then came the change in women's fashions from short to long, sales dropped and losses were tremendous. One day I saw an Auto Accessory truck making a spot delivery so I said to myself why can't I do that also? The first garment offered for sale in the store was made from materials purchased from retail stores in Chicago. The next job was to contact jobbers and mills in other cities to obtain fabrics and other things needed in a dress factory. Mrs. Snyder's success is evident by the expansion of Snyder's Fashion Service into a thriving manufacturing plant. Billie-Jo originals were named after Mrs. Snyder's two boys.

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