Jerome Fisher

Jerome Fisher, who helped found Nine West, a women’s shoe company that imitated designer styles at affordable prices, and turned it into an industry juggernaut, died on June 23 2016 in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 85. Mr. Jerome Fisher, Jack, served as a Co-Founder at Nine West Group Inc. in 1977. Mr. Fisher was responsible for long-range corporate strategy, long-range financial planning, review and evaluation of potential mergers and acquisitions, and Nine West Group Inc.'s international expansion. Mr. Fisher and Vince Camuto began building the company that became Nine West in the 1970s. Nine West went public in 1993. Later in the 1990s, it paid nearly $600 million to buy the shoe division of the United States Shoe Corporation, its main competitor. The shoe business flagged in the late 1990s, and Nine West was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for accounting irregularities. In 1999, the Jones Apparel Group, a women’s clothing company, bought Nine West for nearly $900 million. Mr. Fisher continued to serve as Chairman Emeritus of Nine West Group Inc. He served as a Trustee at Penn Medicine and as a Trustee of University of Pennsylvania. He received a degree in industrial engineering from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1953. He married Anne Pozatek, who survives him, in the 1960s. At his death he lived in Palm Beach, Fla. In addition to his wife and their son Marc, he is survived by another son, Jeffrey; nine grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.