Fortunoff history

Fortunoff started her career in 1953 working for her husband Alan Fortunoff’s family business, which at the time was a mom-and-pop enterprise selling housewares in Brooklyn.

Alan's wife, Helene, the secretary-treasurer of the company, was responsible for jewelry and had founded the company's fine-jewelry business in 1958 as an extension of the gift items being sold.

The 150,000-square-foot Westbury site where this store opened in 1964 was about three times the size that the Fortunoffs really wanted, but they decided to take the risk.

Annual volume for the chain was running at a $30 million level in 1969, with the Westbury store accounting for about 90 percent of the sales.

In 1972 Fortunoff announced it would more than double its Westbury space, to 440,000 square feet, making the store the second largest on Long Island.

By 1977 Fortunoff also had opened a 12,000-square-foot store in a mall in Paramus, New Jersey.

Fortunoff's sales were estimated at close to $100 million annually in 1979, when the company purchased a building at 681 Fifth Avenue, between 53rd and 54th streets in midtown Manhattan, for $5 million.

By 1987 Fortunoff had added stores in Wayne and Paramus, New Jersey.

A Woodbridge, New Jersey, store opened in 1989.

In 1991, however, he won approval for an indoor mall downscaled by about 40 percent, with two levels and enclosed atriums, and a Price Club to the west.

Price Club Plaza, the 401,000-square-foot plaza whose centerpiece was a members only, warehouse style Price Club store, was completed in 1992.

Fortunoff began sponsoring home shopping on cable television in 1994, when it started offering, on a trial basis, programs displaying its upscale women's jewelry.

Construction of the mall, which was renamed The Source and became Long Island's first new regional mall in nearly 25 years, did not begin until 1996.

Fortunoff became president of the company, formally known as Fortunoff Fine Jewelry & Silverware Inc., after her husband died in 2000.

Fortunoff retired in 2005 after the family sold its majority stake in the company to private investors.

In 2006, she received the Jewelers of America’s Gem Award for lifetime achievement.

The iconic Fortunoff® brand returned to the New York/New Jersey market with the opening of seven Fortunoff® Backyard Store locations in February 2010.

© 2021 Fortunoff Fine Jewelry.