The company was founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914, when Mortimer Slater, with Charles Anson Bond and Lester Cohen, founded the stores as a retail outlet for their suit manufacturing company. Charles Anson Bond, whose name was chosen for its market value and meaning left Cleveland for Columbus, Ohio where he opened a branch of the company. Bond stepped away from active management when he was elected mayor of Columbus in 1907. The first store featured fifteen-dollar men's suits. As president, Slater built the concern into a million-dollar corporation, increasing the number of employees from 50 to more than 4,000. At his retirement in 1924, the concern had 28 stores in large cities. Charles Anson Bond also sold his interests in the 1920s. Bond Stores, Inc. was organized in Maryland on March 19, 1937, by the consolidation of Bond Clothing Company, a Maryland corporation, and its subsidiary, Bond Stores, Inc. The principal executive offices of the corporation were located at 261 Fifth Avenue in New York City.^[1]

During the 1930s and 1940s, it became the largest retail chain of men's clothing in the United States, best known for selling two-pant suits. In 1975, the company was sold to foreign investors,^[2] then broken up and sold in smaller groups to its management. For instance, 13 stores were operated by the Proud Wind, Inc. company.^[3]