The owner and president of the company was Leon Atwell Olmsted, a native of New York who moved to Chicago in the 1890s. After opening his first store in 1896, he eventually expanded to seven stores in Chicago and another seventeen throughout the nation. It was reported that he died in a fire at his home in Minocqua, Wisconsin, at the age of 63, but it was soon learned that he died of exhaustion after fighting the blaze. At the time of his death in 1936 the stores were being managed by his son Leslie B. Olmsted.