National Linen Service history

He went to Atlanta in 1908 to look into establishing a branch there but instead decided to start his own towel supply company.

On April 1, 1919, Weinstein and a partner, Herman Gross, formed the Atlanta Linen Supply Company, with total start-up capital of $1,700.

Athans moved the business to South Boston before partnering with another linen supplier and opening his own commercial laundry in the 1920s.

In 1922 Jacobs opened the company’s first branch in Birmingham, Alabama.

1928: Southern Linen stock begins trading over the counter, and the company changes its name to National Linen Service Corporation.

Zaban began working for his father full-time at an early age, dropping out of high school at age 15 in 1936 to help his father’s company withstand the debilitative effects of the Great Depression.

By the time National Linen Service acquired Zep Manufacturing, Zaban already had invested 25 years of his life in his family’s business, a janitorial supplies company started by his father, Mandle Zaban, in Atlanta in 1937.

In 1939 National Linen expanded even further geographically by opening offices in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Los Angeles.

The company had been formed by Sam Freeman in Lithonia, Georgia, in 1946.

But starting in 1953, Lithonia began focusing on the commercial and industrial fluorescent market.

The company went public in 1961, which provided funding for further growth.

Buoyed by its dominant position in the linen supply industry, National Service augmented its investment in insulation services, a business line entered into with the acquisition of North Brothers, Inc., by paying cash for Jackson, Mississippi-based Mid-South Insulation Co. in 1967.

By 1970, then, National Service Industries had established each of the business lines that would form the core of the company for the next two and a half decades.

In 1972, its original linen business generated roughly 40 percent of the company's total revenues and more than 50 percent of its profits.

Kirschner had joined the company in 1973 and, consequently, owned a substantial amount of National Service stock.

In 1979 the company purchased the outdoor aluminum lighting pole business belonging to Kaiser Aluminum in Louisville, Kentucky.

And, in 1981, it purchased the assets of Major Corp., a Chicago-based supplier of anodized parts.

1992: Graham Group, the second largest specialty chemicals company in Europe, is acquired.

Its three core businesses—lighting equipment, textile rental, and specialty chemicals—contributed the bulk of the company’s $1.80 billion in revenues in 1993, a sales volume that ranked National Service as the 255th largest industrial company in the United States.

Riddle became chairman as well in September 1994 when Zaban again retired, though he remained on the board of directors as chairman emeritus.

During 1996 the plant, built near Monterey, was expanded by an additional 96,000 square feet.

The National Linen Service textile rental unit was substantially reduced in size in July 1997 when 29 underperforming plants and related assets were sold to G&K Services, Inc. of Minneapolis, Minnesota, for about $287 million.

The firm achieved 1998 sales of $215 million.

In November 2002 the company announced that it had entered into an agreement to settle a large number of asbestos claims that were pending in Texas state courts.

In October 2014, Chris Spilios, his son George, Arthur Spilios and his son Plato joined in the ground-breaking ceremony for new Brockton plant which would combine the Fall River and South Boston locations.