Esquire Shoe Polish of Williamsburg by the company Knomark was the best selling shoe polish brand in America from the 1940s to 1960's. It was owned by Revlon.
The brand was created in 1938 by the brothers Albert Abrams and Sam Abrams, two chemists from Brookville, LI. During the Depression, they took over an ailing boot polish maker, the Knomark Manufacturing Company of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 1938, they bought the Esquire brand and built its reputation with an enormous advertising campaign. By 1944, the company had become the best selling shoe polish manufacturer in the US. An advertising campaign featured the singer and television star Kate Smith. In the late 1950s, they sold Knomark, the Esquire Brand and the Esquire Building on 330 Wythe Avenue in Brooklyn. The building was acquired in 1984 and converted to a condo by Stephanie Eisenberg in 2000. In 1957, Revlon acquired Knomark and the Esquire brand which made annual sales of 15 million dollars for 5 million dollars. Revlon sold the Esquire shoe polish brand and other esquire product brands 1969. The Knomark company became a Thayer Laboratories subsidiary, then Thayer-Knomark, Inc. In 1984, the advertising agency Creamer was commissioned by Knomark Inc. to do a one million dollar advertising campaign for Esquire. The Sara Lee shoe polish company purchased the esquire brand and the Knomark company in 1987. In 1994, Lee was forced to sell the company and brand in order to avoid the monopoly on the market. Today Knomark is based in Jamaica, Queens.
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