Albert D. Cohen
| Albert Diamond Cohen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 20, 1914 Winnipeg, Manitoba |
| Died | November 21, 2011 (aged 97) Winnipeg, Manitoba |
| Occupation | entrepreneur, community builder, philanthropist |
| Awards | Order of Canada |
Albert Diamond Cohen, OC LLD (January 20, 1914 – November 21, 2011) was a Canadian entrepreneur, community builder, philanthropist, and Officer of the Order of Canada. He was Chairman, Co-President and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Gendis Inc. www.gendis.ca, a listed Canadian real estate and investment company headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba. At one time, Gendis held a 51% stake in Sony of Canada and owned the SAAN Stores retail chain. He was married to Irena Cohen (née Kankova) from 1953 until his death, and they had three children: Anthony, James, and Anna-Lisa. He was the author of several books: The Entrepreneurs: The Story of Gendis Inc...The Triangle of Success: The Gendis/Saan Story...The Story of SAAN...and...I.D.E.A. His latest and last book, published in the fall of 2010, was titled Reminiscences of an Entrepreneur - How Sony came to Canada and then to the World in 1955. His interest and talent for writing stemmed out from his close personal friendship with the late British author Ian Fleming. He died peacefully at the age of 97 years, 10 months, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Cohen came from a poor immigrant family of eight, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba as the son of Alexander and Rose (Diamond) Cohen, and he served with the Royal Canadian Navy from 1942 to 1945.
Albert's five brothers, John C. (Chauncey), Harry B. Cohen, Morley Cohen, Samuel N. Cohen, and Joseph H. Cohen set up a small retail store and, by 1939, the family had scraped together enough monies to create General Distributors Ltd., a wholesale import firm.
By 1950, General Distributors sales amounted to $1 million. In 1952, the company obtained exclusive Canadian rights for Paper Mate pens. Albert negotiated the sale of Papermate in Canada to the Gillette (brand) Company of Boston, Massachusetts in 1955 whereby Gendis continued to distribute the Papermate pen in Canada until 1962 when Gillette fully took over. Then, in 1955, Cohen accomplished the feat of landing the Canadian distribution rights to Sony products. Spotting an ad in a Japanese newspaper seeking a distributor for a new portable transistor radio, Cohen met with Sony co-founder, Akio Morita. On the basis of a handshake deal, Cohen cemented a partnership that would last for decades. The Cohen brothers scattered across Canada in order to manage the national business, each brother establishing himself in a major city: Morley (Montreal), John (Toronto), Joe (Vancouver), Harry (Calgary), and both Sam and Albert setting up headquarters (Winnipeg). Gendis' stake in Sony of Canada was sold back to Sony Corporation of Tokyo, Japan in 1995 for $207,000,000. This was a crowning achievement for Albert, the man who launched Sony's first national export business. In recognition of his forty-year association with Sony, Albert received the Sony Lifetime Achievement Award in Tokyo in 2000.
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