Patents: Crease & Increase

At first glance, San Francisco’s Koratron Co., Inc., seems to be merely a little outfit with a big name. Its offices are located in the city’s seedy Mission District. Its small staff is crammed into a bare bullpen and a few spartan cubicles. Koratron sells neither a product nor a service, but an idea. The idea, however, is the biggest thing to hit the clothing industry since Sanforizing appeared 35 years ago: a formula for permanently creasing fabrics.

Organized only 21 months ago, Koratron already does an $18 million business, has 413 clients who pay for the right to use its process. It is about to open a Canadian branch, will soon license a Far East operation to be called Koratron Technique Hong Kong, which will take advantage of the huge clothing market in the Orient.

Threatening Child. Koratron’s founder, San Francisco Garment Maker Joseph Koret, came upon the permanent-crease process in 1956 while searching for a way to keep creases in the pleats of his women’s sportswear. By coating fabrics with a resin solution and then baking them in 325° ovens, Koret’s chemists found that they could “memorize” a crease into most kinds of material. As a result, 85% of men’s slacks in the U.S. are now Koratron-treated, and the permanent crease is becoming a feature of everything from bathing trunks to blue jeans. Koret’s formula, patented in 1961, has been eagerly licensed by such companies as Levi Strauss, Jantzen, Alligator, Botany, Burlington, J. P. Stevens, Deering Milliken and Talon.

Koret set up Koratron as a licensing subsidiary of his Koret of California (annual sales: $25 million), but the child threatens to outgrow the parent. Koratron is run by Herman A. Greenberg, 57, a Harvard Law graduate and onetime New York Daily Mirror reporter who was hired because of the policing experience he gained as the wartime Office of Price Administration’s enforcement director. The com pany collects 2% on all Koratron-treated material, then another 1% on every garment. It requires that the Koratron trademark be prominently shown on garments, backs up the tag with a snappy advertising campaign and a quality-control program in which Koratron technicians wash, pull, rip and rub samples to make certain that they crease as they should. The company moves swiftly against patent infringements, recently won a consent decree against Los Angeles’ Swede Co. for selling Koratron-processed goods without paying royalties.

Keeping Lead Time. Greenberg intends to expand Koratron by means other than patent protection. “We’ve got the lead time in this field,” he says, “and we intend to keep it.” Koratron has lately extended its process to knitted goods, sponsors studies at the Stanford Research Institute to explore additional uses. It is also cooperating with Department of Agriculture chemists in experiments to find a way to shrinkproof and permanently crease wool, one fiber that still resists artificial processing. If the researchers succeed, men will one day be able to toss wool suits into washers, put them on again without ironing.