page_title: Lawrence Heisey
section_title: Business career
hierarchical_section_title: Lawrence Heisey / Business career
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of Larry Heisey , God’s Lake , Manitoba
context_page_description: Larry Heisey, OC was a Canadian businessman and philanthropist. He was president and chairman of Harlequin Enterprises Limited.
context_section_description: Heisey joined Procter & Gamble in 1954 and left in 1967 to serve as executive Vice President in Sales for Standard Broadcasting.
  From 1971 to 1982, he was President of Harlequin Enterprises Limited.  In 1971 under Heisey's leadership Harlequin bought Mills & Boon a publisher of romance novels making Harlequin the largest publisher of Romance novels in the world.  From 1982 to 1990 Heisey served as Chairman of Harlequin.  Described as a "marketing genius", he revolutionised the sale and marketing of books in the international publishing industry.  At Harlequin drawing upon his experiences at Procter & Gamble he first put free books in boxes of detergent and feminine sanitary napkins. Under his leadership Harlequin was the first publisher to sell books in drug stores and grocery stores.   He pioneered the mail order book club and, contrary to publishing industry practise, refused to sell publishing rights to foreign publishing companies establishing new publishing ventures in new markets.
  He served as a director for Aetna Life Insurance Co. of Canada, Business Depot Ltd., and Staples Inc.
caption: Larry Heisey at Gods Lake 1967
exif: {"Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Brother", "Image Model": "MFC-J615W", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "iPhoto 9.6.1", "Image DateTime": "1967:01:01 13:40:16", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "214", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "462", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9711", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "1967:01:01 13:40:16", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "1967:01:01 13:40:16", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1825", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1741", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}