Photography: Gillian Gaughan
Marcy
Syms
The retail clothing store chain eponymously called SYMS revolutionized the apparel industry by selling high-quality name brand goods at steeply discounted prices, with the slogan “An educated consumer is our best customer”. At its height, Syms had 55 stores in 16 states, and also owned the Filene’s Basement chain. They blanketed their markets with particularly plain-spoken and memorable TV and radio ads in which Sy Syms, who founded the company in 1958, and later his daughter, Marcy Syms, would repeatedly proclaim the slogan, and then explain the Syms experience and how they were delivering true value.
In 1978, after Marcy had worked in jobs having nothing to do with Syms - as a paralegal, a radio producer, and the assistant to the president of a media company - Sy asked Marcy to come into the business, and Marcy agreed to take on the media buying function for their new markets in Washington DC and Virginia. Three months later, Sy asked her to become the Director of Marketing and Real Estate. After going public in 1983, Marcy was named President - making Marcy the youngest female President of a NYSE company at that time. And Marcy was named CEO in 1998.
Today, Marcy continues to serve as the President of the Sy Syms Foundation, which supports programs in education, scientific research, societal justice, and the arts, and which has given over $75 million in grants to date.
Leading with Respect
An educated consumer is our best customer
Marcy was also an original Trustee and continues to serve on the Board of Overseers of the Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University.
And, as an active supporter of gender justice, Marcy founded the Marcy Syms Equality Initiative at the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law, formerly at Columbia Law School, and has been the Chair of the ERA Coalition/Fund for Women’s Equality - which, in 2020, secured the 38th State ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - albeit after the expiration of the statutory period provided for ratification by the States to have taken place. The NYU Initiative’s goal is now to help States each pass their own ‘Equal Rights Amendment’, and particularly the passage of an expanded ‘Equal Rights Amendment’ in New York State, including provisions relating to pregnancy and religion and race protections.
She is a champion of public radio and serves on the Board of The National Public Radio Foundation. She serves on the Boards of the international Jewish Funder Network, The Forward, and Third Way, on the Leadership Council of the Tanenbaum Foundation, and the Advisory Board of Have Art Will Travel, and she is a past Overseer of Boston University. She has also served as an Independent Director on the Boards of a variety of private and public companies - she was awarded Women’s Inc. ‘Most Influential Director’ during her time on the Board of Rite Aid. Marcy is also a recently completed Fellow of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, and serves on the Women’s Leadership Boards at the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, the SAFRA Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and the Carr Ryan Center for Human Rights at Harvard University.
From the SYMS Archive
Notwithstanding her success in the world of business and her prominence as a philanthropist, life has not been easy for Marcy. Her story is one of determination and perseverance in the face of certain adversity. …And while she’s widely recognized by anyone old enough to have seen and heard the SYMS ads in the 80s and 90s, and also renowned for her charitable work …Marcy maintains a very private life. She lives in Katonah with her third husband, Lathan, who is now retired from a career in educational development, and their 28-year-old son, Miles, and usually only lifts the curtain enough to reveal that, “I met Lathan when we accidentally got into the same taxi from opposite doors. We didn’t see each other for a year, and then coincidentally ended up visiting different friends in the same house on Fire Island. We were married thirty years ago…and share the same moral compass.”
Telling her own story, Marcy starts out, “My paternal grandfather, Morris Merinsky, came to America from Russia and sold collars and cuffs as a traveling salesman. Years later, when my father was a baby, Morris opened a store on Wall Street to sell those collars and cuffs to the financial workers. My father, who was born Seymour Merinsky in 1926, was first a sportscaster with a radio show, and didn’t go into the family business until he and his brother later inherited ‘Merns’ - the Americanized version of Merinsky. In 1958, when the two brothers had a dispute, my father opened up his own store on Cortland Street in Manhattan, calling it ‘Sy Merns’ - and then, after litigation with his brother, he changed the store name to a contracted ‘SYMS’…and legally changed his own name to Sy Syms at the same time!”
“He’d borrowed money to open the store and was driven to pay-off the loan and become the master of his own business. Although he worked ‘retail hours’ - and Syms was the first to stay open in the evenings and on Sundays to accommodate the customers who Sy always said had jobs during most stores’ 9 to 5 weekday hours - he found the energy to be a little league coach for each of my three younger brothers, and he never missed a performance of mine in high school or even in college. He was a real visionary, but one of the basic and fundamental ingredients of his success was his insistence on sticking to his off-price policies - including ‘cash and carry’...you want the deals you need the cash. Syms was in business for twenty years before it started accepting credit cards. When I worked with him, Sy was always quite clear, with me and with everyone else, that he was the boss. He’d say, ‘Marcy this business is not a democracy’. But he also listened to good ideas - which always encouraged me to be prepared with more than one argument why a change was a better plan.”
“Marcy this business is not a democracy.”
Sy Syms“My mother was my father’s first love and they married young. They were together for thirty years, and I am the oldest of six children. When my mother found out she was pregnant her sixth time she wanted to have her tubes tied which, at the time, required a woman getting three doctors and her husband to sign-off! Hearing those conversations and seeing how my mom had so little control over her own body, I felt anger and was humiliated for her. …That’s when I became a feminist! …My father had always hoped he would have many kids because, he said, his purpose was to make up for those lost in the Holocaust. He seemed satisfied with a half-dozen.”
“I knew my father and mother loved me and, as a little kid living on Lee Avenue in Yonkers and attending P.S. 21 and then Lincoln Middle School, we were enjoying a perfectly normal and happy suburban life.
…Then my Dad won the trifecta at Yonkers Raceway and had the down-payment for a home my parents had been looking to move to in Bronxville. The house was a magnificent ten-room Georgian Colonial with a lovely acre of lilac trees, a grape vine, and mature azalea plantings. …It was a total mistake and a complete disaster! We Syms kids were the only Jews in school, and I experienced virulent anti-semitism! …I vowed to prove myself, and that Jews were just as good or better than all those haters - but I was totally stressed each and every day of school. I was in a constant cycle of overpreparing and overcompensating. …And while my story is about overcoming the adversity I faced, the stress had very negative consequences on my health, which impacted my college experience and continues to plague me to this day - but you can read all about how my experience toughened me up for the world I was to pursue in business and beyond in my first book Mind Your Own Business and Keep It in the Family.”
“Although working for and with my father at SYMS, where he continued as Chairman until his death in 2009, was professionally fulfilling and rewarding…he was strong willed, a big second guesser, and - even though I was his daughter - at least a bit of a male chauvinist. In fact I had to work my way up from the bottom in the company, and outperform at every task, because I was his daughter. I used to joke that the good news and the bad news about my job was getting to work so closely, day-in day-out, with my dad. …But, in the final analysis, the beauty of a family business is that you get to work with the people you love. During my tenure as President and CEO of Syms, I had, at one point or another, all of my siblings working for the company!”
“Looking back, my dad was right about most things having to do with the business. He was honest and always operated on the principle of respect - for his customers and for his employees. He instilled in me that respect for others, as I emphasize in my latest book Leading With Respect, is a guiding principle in business and in life! …And I realize also that he did give me the space to shine.”
Leading with Respect
“Most importantly to me, my dad helped teach me the value of being what I call a ‘social entrepreneur’ and really using charity to make a difference. He asked me to join him as a Founding Trustee of the Sy Syms Foundation back in 1985, and from the beginning I helped to direct our giving and community investment. Over the years we’ve provided support for causes including Juvenile Diabetes, the American Heart Association, Little League, and Meals on Wheels. And we have been particular and steady supporters of Jewish philanthropies, including notably providing help for Jews to emigrate from Russia, and substantial funding for Dorot - which provides meal delivery for elderly Jews who can’t leave their homes.”
“When I was 16, my dad brought me to see Golda Meir speak at a big United Jewish Appeal event at the Waldorf Astoria,” Marcy pauses for full effect. “There were almost three thousand people in the room all having dinner and talking up a storm…and as soon as she opened her mouth, you could hear a pin drop! The power of her power was inspirational!”
“With none other than Eleanor Guggenheim as my mentor and guide, I’ve made women’s rights and advocacy my number one mission. I’m very proud of having been part of the first generation of members of the Women’s Forum, and the Committee of 200. The goal of both these organizations was to give women a safe place and an ‘old girls network of helpful contacts’. Eleanor would be proud to know that the Women’s Forum now boasts a membership of over 8,000 women-of-influence from countries all around the globe. And I couldn’t be more proud than to have played my part in advancing the Equal Rights Amendment at the Federal level and to now be advancing equal rights at the State level. …But I also won’t mind being remembered, if I am remembered, the way a young woman addressed me at a recent conference when she called out, ‘Hey, aren’t you the PBS and NPR lady’?”