of Harry and; David Harry and; David Operations Corp. was officially established in 2005 as an umbrella organization over the company's fruit, rose, and other business ventures. However, the company really had its beginnings much earlier, just after the turn of the 20th Century. Samuel Rosenberg, father of Harry and David, was a successful hotel owner in Seattle, Washington, but his true love was agriculture. In 1910 he traded the luxurious Hotel Sorrento for 240 prime acres of pears in Southern Oregon's Rogue River Valley and named them Bear Creek Orchards after the nearby waterway. Following Sam's death in 1914, his two sons, Harry and David, took over the family orchard business. The brothers were schooled in agriculture at Cornell University and they put their agricultural training to good use. Harry and David decided early on to specialize in the Comice pear for which there was a good export market to the grand hotels and restaurants of Europe. The Rogue Valley proved even better suited to the Comice pear than its birthplace in France. Harry and David named their luxurious pears "Royal Riviera" to set them apart from varieties grown elsewhere. Throughout the Roaring 20's, the fame of Royal Riviera pears spread, and business boomed. Then came the Crash and Great Depression and Harry and Davids affluent market vanished. There was no question that the Royal Riviera pears were unsurpassed in quality, but how would Harry and David find new buyers? Always innovating, the brothers came up with the idea of selling their pears by mail. In 1934, they made their famous sales trips to San Francisco and New York to visit the captains of industry and pitch their pears as ideal business gifts. Soon orders were rolling in. It was the beginning of Harry and David as America's premier direct marketer of fruit and food gifts. We are proud to be one of the nation's oldest catalog mail order companies.
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