Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Max J. Reiter (1905-1987) was a salesman for Lampl Fashions in Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1930s. He and Maurice Saltzman founded the firm of Ritmor Sportswear Company in Cleveland in 1939 (Reiter was known as Rit, and Saltzman was Morry, hence Ritmor) with a capital of $4,000. Located in the Bradley Building on West 6th Street, the company produced dresses for young women, yielding millions of dollars in annual sales in the early 1940s. Reiter sold his share of the company in 1953. Ritmor Sportswear was renamed Bobbie Brooks, Inc., in 1960. The company merged with Pubco Corporation in 1985.
Reiter was also co-founder of Karen Sue Togs Inc. and Nassau Fashions. Karen Sue Togs produced fashionable clothing for seven- to fourteen-year-old girls. Reiter was later Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Printz-Biederman Company from 1954 until his retirement in 1979. Established in 1893, Printz-Biederman manufactured women's suits and coats in Cleveland.
The Max Reitter Papers, 1943-1950s and undated, consist of an invitation, newspaper clippings, a photograph, a program, and a scrapbook.
This collection will be useful to researchers studying the history of the garment industry in Cleveland, Ohio, during the mid-twentieth century, particularly the Printz-Biederman Company and the Ritmor Sportswear Company. The collection also documents the history of Jewish entrepreneurship in Cleveland during the early twentieth century.
Those interested in Printz-Biederman, Ritmor Sportswear, and the careers of Max Reiter and Maurice Saltzman will find the collection to be useful. The collection will be of interest to those researching the relationships between local businesses and manufacturers and the history of the business of fashion.
The collection is arranged alphabetically by document type.
The researcher should also consult MS 3870 Printz-Biederman Company Records; PG 461 Printz-Biederman Company Photographs; MS 4764 Bobbie Brooks, Inc. Records; and MS 5157 Bobbie Brooks, Inc. Records, Series II.
Processed by Sebastion Wuepper in 2011 and Sean Martin in 2015.
None.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 5311 Max J. Reiter Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Gift of Janet Reiter Greenberg in 2011.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.