Legendary Importer Sidney Frank Dies
The man who built Grey Goose and Jägermeister into huge successes had recently entered the wine business
Sidney Frank, a drinks-industry legend and one of its greatest brand-builders, died yesterday, Jan. 10, at the age of 86. As owner and chief executive of the Sidney Frank Importing Co., Frank built Grey Goose and Jägermeister into two of the U.S. market's best-performing spirits brands, employing a variety of innovative marketing techniques now imitated the world over. A long-time wine collector, he recently launched his own line of wines, with ambitious plans to expand that business worldwide.
A native of Norwich, Conn., Frank began his illustrious career in the drinks industry 60 years ago. After serving as an aviation troubleshooter in India and China during World War II, Frank returned to the United States and soon began working for New York-based Schenley Industries, then one of the world's leading distillers. The company's chairman was Lewis Rosenstiel, Frank's father-in-law. Schenley promptly shipped Frank to the Philippines for his first post with the company. He eventually became Schenley's president.
Frank left Schenley in the early 1970s amid a family dispute. Shortly after the death of his first wife, Louise, he created his own company: Sidney Frank Importing Co., based in New Rochelle, N.Y. Although the business lost money during its first six years, a sign of its future greatness came in 1973, when Frank saw a small German herbal liqueur brand named Jägermeister creating a buzz in bars in Yorkville, then a heavily German neighborhood on New York's Upper East Side. He quickly hopped a plane to Germany in an attempt to secure U.S. rights to the brand, which he successfully gained. Jägermeister sold just 600 cases in 1974, its first full year with Sidney Frank.
Eschewing traditional advertising in lieu of an aggressive on-premise campaign featuring the famed Jägerettes, Sidney Frank built Jägermeister into one of the U.S. market's greatest success stories. That success continues in full bloom today, as Jägermeister's ongoing exponential growth remains the envy of the industry. The brand jumped by a half-million cases to 2.3 million cases in the United States in 2005, and its 27.8 percent growth outdid every other major spirit brand.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Frank's next wave of inspiration came in 1997, when he created Grey Goose, an upscale French vodka. At the time, critics questioned both the wisdom of pricing a vodka brand so far above most of the competition and the appeal of a vodka brand from France. That criticism soon faded as Grey Goose quickly followed Jägermeister as a U.S. phenomenon.
After building Grey Goose into a 1.5 million-case brand and in the process essentially creating a high-end vodka boom that remains in full force today, Frank sold the brand to Bacardi in 2004 for more than $2 billion. Ever the philanthropist, Frank then donated more than $100 million to his alma mater, Brown University, to fund undergraduate scholarships for its neediest students and construct a new academic building. In recent months, Frank has been similarly generous, donating millions to colleges and universities that were affected by Hurricane Katrina.
In recent years, Frank had also turned his creative energies toward wine. In summer 2004, he launched the Sidney Frank Estate Selection line, starting with six small-release varietal bottlings from California. He followed that with Genofranco, a collection of five Sicilian wines. (The Genofranco line is named after his brother Eugene, with whom he founded the company in 1972 and who died in 2003.) Also initiated were a line of Argentinean wines and an estate-grown Oregon Pinot Noir. He had his eye on the rest of the world's wine regions, including Australia, Chile, New Zealand, Spain and other parts of Italy and the United States.
"I'd like to sell 40 to 50 million cases of wine a year from all over the world," Frank said earlier this year in an interview with Wine Spectator, tossing out numbers that would not only exceed the largest U.S. importer several times over, but place him in the top tier of wine marketers worldwide. "If we can bring out the best wines at a reasonable price, I think we have a good chance. The retailers know the Sidney Frank name and know that I bring out nothing but the best."
Frank's daughter, Cathy Frank Halstead, now becomes chairman of his company in an immediate succession plan.
Frank is also survived by his wife, Marian; his son, Matthew; five grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; his sister, Edna Nowitz; a nephew, John Frank, who is Sidney Frank Importing's vice chairman; and a niece, Linda Rodman.
Funeral services will be held in New York on Friday, Jan. 13, at 11:45 a.m. at Riverside Memorial Chapel at 180 W. 76 St.
