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 I.M. Singer, a self-styled tragedian, had five "wives", three at the same time, and fathered 24 children. Where others bred a baseball team, he grew his own theatre troupe
Isaac Singer retired fourteen years after inventing the Singer Sewing Machine
Singer's last, beautiful wife Isabella was almost certainly the model for the Statue of Liberty
Singer's widow Isabella and various Singer children used their vast wealth to marry their way in to the minor European nobility
British Singer agent Woodruff gave an underage Winnaretta Singer astute financial warnings and advice, enabling her to keep her fortune from the grasp of her step-father, who bought himself the title of Duke of Camposelice with Isabella Singer's money and rapidly depleted the remainder of his wife's fortune
As the Princesse de Polignac, Winnaretta Singer became a celebrated music patron. Her Parisian salon, for which she regularly commissioned new works by artists like Fauré and Ravel, was frequented by the likes of Proust, Monet and Diaghilev
Paris Singer was Isadora Duncan's lover. Their son Patrick drowned in the River Seine at a young age
A persistent urban legend claims that Singer's granddaughter Daisy died intestate in England. Several years after her death a beach bum in San Francisco found a bottle with a note in it from Daisy, giving whoever found the bottle half her estate. Her lawyer, who would never otherwise have known of his good fortune, inherited the other half
Edward Clark's grandson Robert Sterling Clark was one of three industrialists who masterminded America's last failed coup d'état in 1933, a plot to kidnap President Roosevelt and restore the Gold Standard
The Clark Family Foundation quietly aided ailing Singer employees and their families all over the world through the 1960s
Singer President F.D. Bourne was a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt
In addition to steering the great Singer ship, Frederick Gilbert "Commodore" Bourne cornered the market on Portland cement and built the Panama Canal
Bourne's descendants squabbled over their Singer stock for decades, launching so many lawsuits against each other that they became known as the Jarndyces (after the famous "Jarndyce vs Jarndyce" case lasting generations in Dickens' Bleak House.) As in Bleak House, the Bourne lawyers pocketed most of the estate in fees
Poor little rich girl Whitney Bourne, Commodore Bourne's granddaughter, became a Hollywood starlet
President Alexander was awarded Belgium's Order of the Crown and inducted into France's Legion d'honneur for mysterious services rendered to the Allied cause during WWII
President Donald Kircher was murdered by his brother-in-law for alleged financial wrongdoing
President Flavin succumbed to a fatal heart-attack in his limousine while on his way to one last meeting to try to save the company from a corporate raider
President Bilzerian has twice been charged with corporate fraud
President Ting is currently awaiting trial in Hong Kong on charges of massive corporate fraud
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Only 12 men have been presidents of the Singer Company. Each had a distinctive background and personality, and each put his own unique stamp on the company.
Isaac Merritt Singer (1851-1863)
Inslee Hopper (1863-1875)
Edward S. Clark (1875-1882)
George Ross McKenzie (1882-1889)
Frederick Gilbert Bourne (1889-1905)
Sir Douglas Alexander (1905-1949)
Milton C. Lightner (1949-1958)
Donald P. Kircher (1958-1975)
Joseph Bernard Flavin (1975-1987)
Paul Bilzerian (1987-1989)
James H. Ting (1989-1997)
Steve Goodman (1998-2004)
Isaac Merritt Singer. The original American "self-made man," I.M. Singer was a second-generation American immigrant, born to an impoverished family, whose mother abandoned the family when he was young. The myth, fostered by the Singer Company, is that the inventor was a hard-working idealist and friend of all women, who invented the sewing machine after watching his wife labour over her hand sewing.
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 Mahatma Gandhi, who learned to sew on a Singer while
imprisoned by the British, clearly believed this story, writing in 1924:
"Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the back of millions. I would
make intelligent exceptions. Take the case of the Singer Sewing Machine. It
is one of the few useful things ever invented, and there is a romance about
the device itself. Singer saw his wife labouring over the tedious process of
sewing and seaming with her own hands, and simply out of his love for her he
devised the sewing machine in order to save her from unnecessary labour. He,
however, saved not only her labour but also the labour of everyone who could
purchase a sewing machine."
When Gandhi became leader of India, he banned foreign imports with few exceptions; one of them was the Singer sewing machine. |
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In reality, Singer was an indolent, self-regarding would-be actor and
self-promoter, with an uncanny knack for seducing women, who also happened to have a knack for invention, for being at the right place at the right
time, and for attracting astute financial backers.  In 1849, in Boston, Singer was working at a machinist's shop where rudimentary sewing machines were being built for industrial purposes. The machines kept breaking down, and the owner of the shop asked Singer if he could figure out the problem. Singer was at first scornful, thinking the sewing machine beneath him, but eventually agreed to tinker with it. Almost immediately he had figured out how to perfect it. His innovations were elegant in their simplicity, and they worked. He drew up plans for a machine built to his specifications, and within days, with borrowed funds, had supervised the building of the first prototype. By then, he'd already understood the market potential of this machine; "the dimes are what I am interested in."
Singer patented his invention in 1851 and immediately turned his attention to marketing. A showman, with a forceful personality and imagination to burn, Singer designed bold advertising campaigns that quickly created a market where none had existed, particularly for domestic machines aimed at housewives.
Singer patented several new sewing machine prototypes and innovations, but most of his prodigious energy was spent designing and building enormous homes and spectacular carriages, seducing women, and fathering children. His straight-laced lawyer and partner, Edward Clark, worried about the company's reputation, eventually persuaded Singer to retire from active involvement in the company. Clark created the Singer Manufacturing Company, giving Singer 40% of the stock, which was dramatically rising in value.
Singer took his tremendous wealth and retired to the south of England, where he built an enormous, 115-room mansion, with a separate theatre and riding stables.
Whereas his previous residence, an opulent home on 200 acres in Yonkers, New York, was simply called "The Castle," Singer decided to give his last, even more palatial home an American name. He chose "The Wigwam," no doubt delighting in the incongruity of naming so grand a dwelling after an American Indian tent. Singer loved all of his 24 children, and many of them moved to the Wigwam with him, where they staged plays and put on musical evenings. When he died, his estate of $13 million was divided among all of his children and three of their mothers.
Inslee Hopper. Singer and his former partner Clark had parted on frosty terms, and Singer stipulated that Clark could not succeed him as president of Singer while he was still alive. They settled on Hopper, a former office boy, earning $20 a week, who was working as a general factotum, running the office when the partners were away.
Singer and Clark insisted that the bachelor Hopper first become a respectable family man. Hopper duly married his girlfriend, and assumed the presidency of the Singer Manufacturing Company. Though his salary was at first raised only $10 a week, this was soon increased to $6,000 a year, and eventually to $25,000. Hopper stepped down as president in favour of Edward Clark at Singer's death, though he remained with the company.
Edward S. Clark.The Singer Company's early success was due in large measure to Edward Clark's brilliant management skills. A deeply religious, former Sunday school teacher, Clark was a partner in a prestigious New York City law firm when he left to become Singer's business partner. Clark encouraged Singer to move the company headquarters from Boston to New York, where he assiduously advanced the company's interests while Singer basked in the role of resident genius. Clark oversaw every aspect of the business, stealing ideas from their competitors and pitting one against the other, while expanding the Singer empire to include Europe, Southeast Asia and South America.
 By the start of the Civil War, in 1860, the company owned 74 factories in the US, producing 111,000 machines a year. During the Civil War, Singer's foreign operations became so successful that they accounted for 40% of the company's revenues, enabling the company to survive, and indeed to grow, throughout the war. Clark kept expanding the company, inventing franchising and setting up agencies throughout the United States and in an increasing number of countries, until foreign demand outgrew production. The first Singer manufacturing plant outside the US opened in Glasgow in 1867, and was soon followed by plants in Russia, Canada, and Germany.
Clark remained president until his death in 1882. He masterminded brilliant advertising campaigns, introduced the "hire purchase" plan allowing the poorest women all around the world to buy sewing machines on easy payment terms, and invented the modern way of doing business.
Clark left an estate of more than 25 million. The Clark family owned the controlling shares of Singer until 1959 and ran the company like a family firm, choosing the next four Singer presidents.
George Ross McKenzie, Singer's fourth president, "entered the company a mechanic, and retired a millionaire." A pious, driven Scot, McKenzie took a salary of $100,000 per year, but built his fortune through his Singer stocks and judicious real estate investments. McKenzie was a tough taskmaster who ran the company as though it were his own. He crisscrossed the Atlantic 55 times on company business, and sent his five sons and a nephew to take charge of key Singer operations around the globe.
Frederick Gilbert "Commodore" Bourne started his career as a modestly-paid cashier and then bookkeeper in New York, the sole support of his widowed mother and younger sisters. The young Bourne attracted the attention of Alfred Corning Clark and was invited to join the Clark Family real estate company. Clark started sending Bourne to Singer board meetings in his place when he was out of town. Soon thereafter Bourne became secretary of the company, and then president at the tender age of 38.
Perhaps Bourne's greatest contribution to the growth and impact of the Singer Company was his commitment to advertising, creating a stand-alone advertising department in 1889 which was extremely creative and effective, setting the standard for the companies that followed. But Bourne was too ambitious to stay Singer president very long. He leveraged his position to become one of the wealthiest and best-connected men in America, a neighbour of the Vanderbilts and a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt. He built several estates, including "Indian Neck Hall," a 110-room mansion on 2,500 acres designed by Ernest Flagg, the architect who created both the Singer Building on Broadway and its Art Nouveau headquarters in St. Petersburg, and "Dark Island," an enormous castle in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, complete with dungeons, turrets, secret passageways and winding stone staircases. Bourne had many interests, but the dearest to his heart was yachting. He was named Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, and proudly used that title for the rest of his life.
Sir Douglas Alexander, in contrast to Bourne, was a workaholic who devoted his life to the Singer Company. A British citizen, born in England and raised in Canada, Alexander was committed to expanding Singer's international operations. He mastered French, German, Italian and Spanish, and made more than 100 transatlantic trips in Singer's service. When Alexander was made a baronet by King George VI for his services to the British war effort during World War II, he chose for his escutcheon the motto "Vita perit, labor non moritur [Life perishes, labour does not die."]
Presidents Lightner and Kircher, like Clark and Alexander, were lawyers. They presided over a company that began to lose its preeminence after World War II. Kircher was the first Singer president to be fired.
Singer president and would-be Senator Joe Flavin, who had previously worked for Xerox and IBM, regarded the sewing machine industry as antiquated and faintly embarrassing. He began selling off its more lucrative operations around the world, using them as "cash cows" to prop up company shares and underwrite new acquisitions, particularly in aerospace companies. He was blindsided by corporate raider Paul Bilzerian, who orchestrated a hostile takeover in 1987.
Paul Bilzerian, who had never successfully managed a company, justified his takeover by arguing that "businessmen are money grubbing and greedy and need to be controlled." Bilzerian broke the once-great company into 12 parts and sold off ten to the highest bidders, making an almost $1.5 billion profit in only four months, before he was arrested on (unrelated) charges of corporate fraud.
 Paul Bilzerian's 36,000-square-foot mansion in Florida. It is named Steffen Manor for his wife, Terri Steffen, and has 11 bedrooms, five bathrooms, an indoor racquetball court, a basketball court, a wine cellar, an elevator with a telephone and Brazilian cherry floors.
In 1989 the Singer Company, now a shadow of its former self, was purchased by James Ting, a Chinese-Canadian businessman born in Canton and educated in Australia, who understood the continuing value of the Singer brand around the world. "There's magic in the name," he told Asiaweek. "It's well-known from the jungles of Africa to Latin America, Europe, all over the world. You couldn't buy a better name."
Ting managed to convince banks in the US, Canada and Hong Kong to lend him hundreds of millions of dollars to revitalize the company and the brand. Instead, he set up an elaborate network of companies, including the Shanghai Singer Sewing Machine Company, through which he defrauded the banks and the company, stripping it of its assets and leaving it an empty shell before "disappearing" somewhere in Mainland China in 2000. Did anyone say "Shanghaied?" Mr. Ting finally surrendered to the Hong Kong authorities in May 2003, where the scandalous demise of his global empire, which no one in North America is paying any attention to, is known as the "Hong Kong Enron."
Steven Goodman took over the Singer Company in 1998. Goodman has overseen the dismantling of what remained of the Singer pension fund for retired overseas executives, including Canadians. The entire international pension fund amounted to $500,000 US; Goodman and his attorney were personally awarded $500,000 US by the United States judge for their creative restructuring of Singer's finances.
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