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Company History |
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Charles Abrams spent 25 years in advertising as an executive creative director with several Madison Ave Ad Agencies including Doyle Dane Bernbach and Saatchi & Saatchi where he created numerous award winning campaigns for major national and international clients. Polaroid, British Airways, Procter & Gamble and Seagrams, were some of the many accounts he worked on. Charles also created the first AIDS Prevention Campaign for New York City.
In 1991, Charles read an article in the New York Times about a Sotheby’s auction in which a 1941 Detective Comic Book sold for $55,000. He thought about the striking colorful cover and wondered what someone does with multi-page art. If it’s framed, how does one get to see the story behind the cover? Checking with some local custom frame shops, he found that no standard frame existed that allowed someone to easily take out framed artwork.
Determined to find a solution, Charles left advertising and spent a year of trial and error in developing a hinged frame system using custom framing materials that were readily available. His persistence paid off in 1993 when Charles received a patent for his idea, a multi-purpose frame and display system with a unique hinged system that allows for the rapid change of printed and dimensional items. |
He started out of his home and with the help of his wife and partner Barbara, founded SwingFrame Mfg. Within a year they opened a small manufacturing facility in Rockville Centre, New York. He marketed the idea with small space ads and exhibited at trade shows for the Picture Framing Industry. Custom framers could buy finished readymade SwingFrames and also partial frames “Swing Shells” that allowed them to use their own metal framing materials to build and customize SwingFrames.
Within a short time, SwingFrame Mfg. started receiving calls from other industries. Major retail companies such as; Zales Corporation and Saks Fifth Ave. placed large orders. The company started focusing more of its efforts towards the Visual Merchandising and Store Fixture Industry. The founders realized that the SwingFrame concept had far more applications than they had envisioned.
The business started to expand steadily. Product expansion and improvements have taken the company to other areas of growth. Although SwingFrame have numerous standard sizes in metal and wood finishes, much of the work is custom. Designers, Architects, Purchasing Agents etc… have different design applications and SwingFrame Mfg. has been able to provide many of the framing and display solutions they are looking for.
SwingFrame Mfg. continues to develop new framing and display products and expand into new areas of opportunity. New online divisions “floorstands.com" and “SwingPanels.com” developed by a young new marketing team, that includes Craig Abrams and Brian McAuley will help further expand the SwingFrame brand as well as offer other display products.
Operating out of a facility in Freeport, New York, SwingFrame Mfg. works with numerous small and large companies in a wide-range of industries. Many repeat customers including, major Retail Chains, Corporations, Health Organizations, Product Marketers, Financial & Educational Institutions, Museums, Exhibit Companies, Imaging, Publishing, Display/POP companies and all branches of the Military have come to SwingFrame for its products, commitment to customer service and/or developing the right products for their display projects.
By reading the New York Times, Charles Abrams took a simple product idea and built SwingFrame Mfg. into a provider of unique frame and display solutions for numerous industries and distributors throughout the Americas. |
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