The Greenleaf family successfully led C. G. Conn Ltd. for 54 years until the firm, estimated to be worth $35,000,000, was sold to the Crowell-Collier MacMillan Company, known primarily as a book publishing company, in April 1969. According to Leland Greenleaf's obituary in The Music Trades, Lee, at the threshold of his retirement, "recognized the danger of a takeover threat" and began negotiations with MacMillan after Conn's earnings and the price of its stock were "severely depressed" in the late-60s.
The MacMillan era (1969-1980) might be called Conn's decade of dispersal. The corporate headquarters were moved out of Elkhart for the first time in its history (at which time virtually all the company's historic records were deliberately destroyed) and relocated in Oak Brook, Illinois. The Conn Organ Division was moved to Carol Stream, Illinois, reed instrument manufacture was relocated in Nogales, Arizona, the Conn Guitar Division and the company's student brass production were shipped to Japan, while the Scherl & Roth subsidiary continued production in Cleveland. Selmer bought Conn's new brass factory in Elkhart's Industrial Park (now the Vincent Bach plant). The old Conn plant, built in 1910, was sold to Coachman Industries. All but a small portion of this 17-acre factory site between Beardsley Avenue and Greenleaf Boulevard was razed in 1979. Unfortunately for Conn, the labor-intensive manufacture of musical instruments was foreign to the MacMillan Co., not to mention unprofitable in comparison with their other holdings. Subsequently, Conn's historically fine reputation in the field suffered dramatically during the 1970s.
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