Pickwick International Inc. was founded in 1961 by Seymour Marvin ‘Cy’ Leslie. The company quickly established itself as a market leader through its low-budget record label, a label that greatly expanded the industry's marketing and distribution reach by licensing content from the majors for re-release in supermarkets and other non-traditional retail outlets.

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By 1961, Cy Leslie’s influence on the children’s music market had already earned him the title ‘King of the Kiddie Records’.  Having initially embarked on a successful business career with a pre-recorded greeting card service, Leslie founded Voco Records in 1946 and later Pickwick Sales Corp on May 25th 1953.

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A Dickens enthusiast, Leslie particularly admired the author’s ingenuity, initiative and perseverance, all of which had been deciphering factors in the literary success of the novelist’s The Pickwick Papers in 1836. Taking matters into his own hands, Dickens had had his manuscripts published himself, in segments, through the London news dealer network. Drawing on such inspiration, Leslie hoped to parallel a similar type of development as both an entrepreneur and a professional in the music industry and thus the Pickwick brand name was born on May 25th 1953, the birthday of his wife.

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Over 25 years, Pickwick achieved unprecedented success; Sales rose from $100,000 (sales of 254 children's records) in the first year to over 500 million in 1978. The company created, through its own catalogue of masters, a parallel to the paperback book business in licensing products from standard priced sources and consequently creating the largest economy priced- record company in the world. Indeed, by 1978, they had developed a product line in package, content and sound comparable to products many times the price in addition to developing the largest retail operation in the world from an initial embryonic state to over 350 outlets.

 

In 1962 the subsidiary UK Company Pickwick International Inc (GB) Ltd. was founded by both Leslie (president of the parent firm) and Monty Lewis, with Lewis becoming the long-standing managing director of the UK division. Under its label Pickwick Records, Pickwick UK quickly established itself as the market leader in budget-price LPs thanks to its innovative business practices, becoming the first UK company to put in place exclusive licensing deals with the major record companies. The UK division would subsequently become the official budget reissue outlet for labels such as RCA and CBS.

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Initially launching a predominantly classical repertoire released on the Allegro label, the Pickwick UK division began to diversify rapidly, supplying W.H. Smith and was consequently able to achieve a turnover of $24,000 in its first year of operation. By the second year the turnover had jumped to $155,000 and by the third year to more than $430,000. It was a snowball process, for as Pickwick opened up more and more outlets, so more and more record companies saw the good business sense in assigning their budget repertoire to a specialist company. By that time Lewis had taken the decision to move the company from the basement off Oxford Street to 11,000 square feet of building at Cricklewood in the northwest London suburbs and in 1972 another move was undertaken to a new headquarters in Colindale. Pickwick International (GB) Ltd. continued to secure products from CBS, RCA, Pye and then Phonogram on their established reputation of excellent distribution.

 

In the years to follow, the interests of the parent firm Pickwick International grew to include a Rack Jobbing division, a record wholesale unit, and, most successful of all, its discount reissue arm. In 1968 a noteworthy acquisition, in the form of a merger, was concluded between Pickwick International and Heilicher Brothers /J. L. Marsh and resulted in the merging of Musicland with Pickwick international Inc. At this point Leslie, who had been the long-standing president of the company retained the board chairmanship but passed the presidency to Amos Heilcher, a role which would later be bestowed upon Ira Moss in 1970.

During the early '70s, Leslie steered Pickwick in yet another new direction, reissuing LPs deleted from major-label catalogues. The partnership with RCA Records enabled the firm to produce a lucrative series of compilations spotlighting Elvis Presley. Pickwick also spun off the subsidiary labels P.I.P. and De-Lite, with the latter notching a series of hits via the funk band Kool & the Gang. The Pickwick Records division remained devoted exclusively to the production and distribution of budget priced records. These records were distributed both through the other divisions of the Pickwick operation; i.e., retail and rack, as well as through third party customers.

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Despite earning Record Industry Man of the Year the previous year, 1976 was to be a difficult year both for Pickwick and Leslie. Reports emerged that the company was to undergo major organisational changes, the result of which was to place less emphasis on its record division but with a continued expansion of its rackjobbing and retail operations. A phase-out of the front-line P.I.P (Pickwick International Productions) label and its two distributed labels were announced  and plans were put in place for De-Lite, one of those two distributed labels (licenced from De-Lite Recorded Sound Corp.) to go to independent distribution. 

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November of that year witnessed an elevation of C. Charles Smith to chief operating officer (which had been Leslie’s post as chairman) of Pickwick US. Leslie would elect to remain in Woodbury, New York to oversee the music and financial communities whilst Smith accompanied the relocation of Pickwick International’s corporate headquarters from Long Island City, New York to Minneapolis, Minnesota. By January 1977, a four day meeting of Pickwick International executives was underway in order to clarify the disordered corporate command in the Minneapolis control centre. With C. Charles Smith now in the role of chief operating officer in Minneapolis, Leslie had been declared Chief Executive Officer. Subtle underlined tensions had long existed between Leslie and the Heilicher Brothers (Amos and Dan Heilicher) who had merged their Minneapolis corporation with Pickwick International in the 1960s. This tension deepened when Leonard Stern, president of Hartz Mountain Corp bought 287,000 shares in June 1976. Stern had initially been a corporate supporter of Leslie but had subsequently developed a stronger working affiliation with the Heilicher Brothers, reportedly purchasing an additional 450,000 shares of common from the brothers in Oct, 1976.

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Prior to this crisis meeting and amidst the reports of in-house quarrelling, The American Can Co. had made a surprise announcement of its intention to acquire all stock outstanding of Pickwick International Inc. The proposal was favorably received by Pickwick’s executive committee and Pickwick was bought outright in 1977. American Can had long been established in business packaging products including metal cans and paper containers as well as chemicals, pharmaceuticals and health‐care products. In 1975 it reported a net income of $77.2 million on sales of $2.87 billion. The purpose of The American Can Co.  in acquiring Pickwick International was to expand on its vital consumer product distribution area, and American Can vowed to offer a wealth of services for Pickwick to plug into to provide a positive influence on the music industry. C. Charles Smith, Pickwick’s remaining President (in addition to holding his then- newly appointed position of Chief Executive Officer) announced that the new parent company would operate Pickwick as a separate subsidiary, keeping Pickwick’s then-present management. Pickwick would continue to operate autonomously out of Minneapolis under Smith, but with close ties to the Connecticut based parent company. In June 1977, the Sam Goody chain, with 28 stores concentrated in the New York - Philadelphia area. was acquired by the American Can family and would merge to operate as part of Pickwick’s retail network.

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Monty Lewis had attempted purchase the UK division (the only overseas subsidiary that the group had) though the bid was not accepted by American Can. He was promised, however, that should a change in policy occur, he would be given the opportunity to acquire the company. Such an opportunity would present itself within five years as, despite initial high hopes, the acquisition of the parent US Pickwick International by The American Can Co. would ultimately prove to be an unsuccessful venture.

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Almost from the outset, the then-recently purchased Pickwick US company, at the time the world's largest record distributor and retailer, became problematic for the American Can Co. Problems originated for American Can when the bottom fell out of the record buying market in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Record prices increased significantly during this period, alienating younger customers and leading them to record borrowed albums on blank cassette tapes rather than buy them new in the stores. Perhaps more noteworthy, the Sam Goody record store chain, then-part of Pickwick's retail network, had been investigated by the Justice Department. A number of the top officials at Goody were indicted for allegedly dealing in counterfeit records and tapes. Although American Can reported the improprieties quickly and in good faith, the majority of the damage had already been done. Reports suggest that many Wall Street analysts and members of the container industry already believed that American Can had gone too far afield in entering the record business and that it was unsound financial planning. The Goody scandal, if nothing else, confirmed these misgivings and undermined the remaining confidence of investors in American Can's ability to make successful acquisitions. American Can, in response, enacted a plan of action in the form of "asset redeployment," a program in which less unprofitable businesses would be sold so as to generate the liquid capital needed to invest in areas of greater growth potential for the parent company. The attention of the parent firm was instantly drawn to Pickwick and a company restructuring was implemented whereby Pickwick International Inc was split into Pickwick Distribution (for wholesaling) and the Musicland Group (for retail)

American Can had reportedly already sold the rights to the back catalogue of Pickwick’s original recordings (particularly the contract and back catalog of Kool & The Gang, who were on their De-Lite Records label) to PolyGram. PolyGram maintained the De-Lite Records label for releases by Kool & the Gang who experienced a second wave of success. Polygram later did away with the De-Lite imprint, and subsequent Kool & The Gang records were issued by PolyGram's Mercury label. Today, this back catalogue is owned by Universal Music Enterprises, PolyGram having merged with Universal in 1998.

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As the early 1980’s progressed, American Can continued de-constructing and ‘redeploying’ what remained of Pickwick ‘surplus’ assets: Pickwick's last classical release was in January, 1982 at which time it was rumored that the entire budget line was to be discontinued. Shortly thereafter, Pickwick ceased releasing on its more recently formed Excelsior label for full -price country and pop product. When its Keel manufacturing plant on Long Island was disposed of in 1981, seemingly all that remained in operation in the US were the company’s giant rack and independent distribution divisions and its retail Musicland division, both continuing to be based in Minneapolis. Pickwick vice president of corporate relations, George Port, later confirmed that the company's budget line had been completely discontinued and Pickwick's Canadian record operations were also to shut down.

 

In a deal finalised on February 27th 1983, Monty Lewis finally acquired ownership of the Pickwick International UK division (both the budget label and distribution company) from the American Can Co. This was one of the final steps taken by American Can in divesting itself of the remainder of what had been the former Pickwick empire. The only overseas subsidiary of the US parent firm, Pickwick International Inc (GB) Ltd. had retained its position as the leading UK budget record operation and continued to operate successfully as a manufacturer in Great Britain. In the previous year, Pickwick Video, a British home video division had been established in London. The video division would be divided into eight video labels ; Pickwick, Screen Legends, Ladybird Video, Longman Video, Fairtrade Video, Children's Choice, Mr Pickwick, Hallmark, Rank Classic Collection and was already enjoying considerable success by 1983. Moving from strength to strength, Pickwick UK would continue as a market leader in the budget record label, now operating independently of a parent firm. Among the labels owned and distributed by Pickwick UK at the time of Lewis’ acquisition were Hallmark, Pickwick, Mr. Pickwick, Camden, Contour, Marble Arch.

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In 1986, a London consortium of city-based investors acquired a ‘significant stake’ in Pickwick which had sold 17 million disks and tapes the year before. Founder and long-time Chairman Monty Lewis and his family were to retain a 50% holding in the company. Lewis planned to move further into the low-price video software market using the company’s powerful sales and distribution network. Further expansion was expected in the company’s international and compact disk division. Overseas business had been recently developed by licence deals with US, Australian and New Zealand record companies featuring original Pickwick recordings. The following year Pickwick International Inc GB Ltd.  listed on the London Stock Exchange becoming Pickwick Group PLC. and remained independent until 1992.

In 1992, Pickwick Group PLC was purchased by Carlton Communications PLC for 65 Million Pounds and three short years later the London-Based Pickwick Group unveiled a new name, a new logo and a new internal structure ; Carlton Home Entertainment. Following the re-structuring in 1995 the Pickwick branding was to become marginalised in favour of the popular Hallmark label. The then-33 year old Pickwick name did not disappear completely but was to be reserved solely for the Children’s Entertainment division while Carlton Records, Carlton Classics, Carlton Video, and Carlton publishing were retailed for those respective divisions. Pickwick’s Hallmark label would appear specifically under the classics division.

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A somewhat dark period in the history of Pickwick UK would follow almost immediately thereafter.  At the end of 1998, Carton had sold the company to The Point Group which went into receivership in 2000. ABM, (Hertfordshire England-Based Audio Book and Music Co.) which had been part of The Point Group bought the business including Hallmark, Pickwick and the Cool Note labels and some rights and stock. ABM would release some titles under the Pickwick branding but, as had been the case with Carlton, it largely focused on the Hallmark label. Even more disappointingly, however, history was set to repeat itself for Pickwick UK as ABM also went into receivership at the end of 2001. This was the culmination of a three year decline for what had long been the most successful budget label record in the UK.

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The following year, Pickwick UK would re-emerge when an investor group bought the company and set off to revitalize it, launching The Pickwick Group Ltd. on June 10th 2002. Today, based in Amersham, Buckinghamshire the company remains dedicated to the release of products across labels such as Pickwick, Hallmark, Pickwick Vision and Elstree Hill. In the spirit of its namesake, Pickwick has persevered and survived against all odds and continues to accomplish the dreams and hopes of Cy Leslie, a vision of success which was formulated almost 60 years ago.

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