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https://textile.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/3e38caab161f7c6e74f059480436a6f0.png
11af7835c9234b17f744675b168f177e
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
Oral History
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
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Bruce Sheftel
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-15.xml
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5.4 May 31st, 2017 Bruce Sheftel, May 31st, 2017 LVTNT-15 1:52:28 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Bruce Sheftel Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 SheftelBruce_20170531 1.0:|27(2)|44(7)|63(3)|82(2)|133(12)|148(13)|167(2)|184(12)|207(3)|226(2)|249(3)|268(8)|289(2)|306(3)|323(4)|342(3)|361(2)|376(15)|393(4)|412(4)|429(17)|448(7)|467(2)|482(8)|499(8)|516(4)|535(5)|556(7)|575(2)|600(2)|623(7)|640(13)|663(3)|682(5)|705(5)|728(8)|753(2)|776(4)|803(2)|824(13)|841(4)|852(13)|873(3)|892(16)|911(13)|932(7)|953(2)|970(11)|989(12)|1010(16)|1031(8)|1050(11)|1071(15)|1090(9)|1107(16)|1124(14)|1147(7)|1162(15)|1181(14)|1202(14)|1227(3)|1242(7)|1263(2)|1282(6)|1301(4)|1322(15)|1341(7)|1360(10)|1383(11)|1402(16)|1425(7)|1448(7)|1469(2)|1496(16)|1513(12)|1530(6)|1541(17)|1558(11)|1581(5)|1602(4)|1623(12)|1642(14)|1665(15)|1686(18)|1707(6)|1726(15)|1753(2)|1778(4)|1807(3)|1826(3)|1849(14)|1870(3)|1891(2)|1904(12)|1919(13)|1938(13)|1953(14)|1968(15)|1987(8)|2006(14)|2027(6)|2040(3)|2051(15)|2068(11)|2087(3)|2104(7)|2127(2)|2138(12)|2157(10)|2174(13)|2197(9)|2216(11)|2233(7) 0 https://youtu.be/Gt_KrnwLhJ0 YouTube video 21 Introduction—Bruce Sheftel SC: Today is May 31st, 2017, an interview with Bruce Sheftel. And Bruce, I'm going to start by asking you your information, then go back to your family history. So what is your full name? Where were you born and where do you live?
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 ; BS: My full name is Bruce Howard Sheftel. I was born in Allentown and I've lived now in- outside of Philadelphia and in- I have a small apartment in New York. And yeah.
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 ; SC: What town outside of Philadelphia? 
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 ; BS: BlueBell — BlueBell, Pennsylvania. 0 64 Education SC: What is your education history? 
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 ; BS: I started in Allentown with elementary school at the Jewish Community Center and then Muhlenberg Elementary School and the Wright School, which was a nursery school. And my- I think my education was sort of like a woodier sampler. I went from there to the Jewish Day School for six years and on to Raub Junior High School. In Raub Junior High School, I was hit by a car in my ninth year, the beginning of my ninth year, and spent that year at home with a broken leg. So in the year of what would have been my- the end of my ninth grade, I went to summer school at Hun School in Princeton, New Jersey. They conditionally accepted me, and I went there for ninth grade again and left after a year, which- came back to Allentown, went to Moravian Prep and made sure we closed that school down. And I was in the last graduating class, but I didn't have two credits, had a disagreement with the school about what classes I was permitted to take, so I then went to Philadelphia and got my high school degree from- with two credits from Penn Charter School, I think it was, at 13th and Arch. So I was a little independent. I didn't go to college in the traditional way. I think, ten or fifteen years later, I went to, first, Harvard Business School — [they] had a special program. And while I was there, I enrolled- found myself accepted at Antioch College in an extension program. And I was- I graduated in the last year that they operated. So I have sort of a history of closing schools or at least attending the last year that they- they operate. So I graduated with a degree in business from Antioch — Business Administration. Then the Harvard experience was not degreed, it was predicated on experience and it was called the OPM Program--Owner/ President Management, which was an extension of their School of Advanced Management. 0 302 1969-72: Pursuing an Experiential Education by Traveling Through the U.S. and Abroad SC: [C]ould you talk now about where you have work — you were talking a little bit about your education and if you have more, go on — but then where you have worked and the type of work that you did and do?
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 ; BS: Yeah. When I was finishing high school, the world that we lived in had a war in Vietnam that I had no real interest in visiting. I liked traveling, but the accommodations and the body bag coming back seemed a little cramped for me. So I left high school in the summer of I think it was 1969 and traveled across the country. I took my parents’ car, left them mine, and traveled across the country. And when I came back I met a psychiatrist I had been seeing through most of my senior year of school who told me about a square rig sailing ship, which was equivalent to the Coast Guard Eagle. This was a large training vessel for Merchant Marines. And what I didn't know was that he had put his two children on this boat, two of his three- four children. And I didn't know they were having lots of trouble — and the kinds of trouble, I mean, really almost mimicked what was going on in the country in 1970. 0 526 1972-1978: From Carpentry to Photography—Learning from Lisette Model BS: I came back to the United States in 1972 and I was looking for work. I was very concerned with connecting my head to my hands, and I had become a carpenter in the meantime and started building furniture. And long- this is probably ‘72, ‘74, I kind of wandered around the country and worked in various jobs, built furniture, as I said, built houses, but mostly moving towards art. And sometime in the- around ‘73, ‘74, after staying a year in New Hampshire building furniture, I revisited an old interest, which was photography, and found myself in New York City, 1974, an apartment on the Bowery — not an apartment, a loft — and spent the next- well, until today, photographing. But I was the town photographer for Huntington, Long Island, and studied with a woman who — for those people in the photography industry would know her, she was Diane Arbus’s mentor, teacher, friend — and that was Lisette Model. And Lisette had a master class I knew very little about, and when I went to show her my pictures, I didn't realize I was like number 19 in line, and there were two-hundred forty people outside that I didn't realize. And she- I was the first person she chose to join her class and that really set the stage for me. This is the first person who recognized that there was something I was- I was about that was of interest to them. 0 646 1978: Returning to Work for the Family Business BS: And when she heard that my family had a business, she encouraged me to return to that business, but to continue photographing ; and the way she constructed that was that commercial photography would sap the creative juice from you, and if you could prevent that from happening, by working elsewhere and not depending on working as a photographer, but photographing life as a photographer — we would call that being an artist today — that was the better trip. And she didn't know my family, she didn't know what she was telling me to do, and I followed her advice, much to my own chagrin at various times. So by around about 1978 or ‘79, I believe I began working for my family in an office they had in New York City, came back to Allentown really over my objections, but now as part of the family, so I did what the business in the end did. I came back, worked in the factory in Allentown, understood what was going on. 0 918 Early 2000s: Decline of the Textile Waste Industry in the U.S. BS: That continued until my father sold his half of the business to my cousins in around 2005. And since that time I continued as a photographer, mostly an art photographer, portrait photographer. And the industry of wiping clothes, textile waste really left the United States ; our manufacturing, which was the source of the material, left the United States. Papermaking that used that kind of process had already dwindled to almost only two factories. And they became- they came under pressure to bring some of the security elements that they were already selling in other countries to the American currency. So those things all kind of came together in about 2005. My cousins operated the- parts of the business individually, and I believe the trading of fiber pretty much came to an end in 2012. There is still a portion of the business that my cousin conducts, but ironically, there's no American presence. He has employees in Honduras and sells from Honduras to- whether it's Italy or Spain or- and- I'm not quite sure at this point how that all has migrated, but we really don't have that industry here any longer.
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 ; SC: Is that because some European countries want better quality paper, value ink? Rag-based?
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 ; BS: No. 0 1035 "Turning Rages into Riches into Rages"—History of Textile Waste in the U.S. BS: When we call paper “rag-based paper”, they're really talking about cellulose fibers, so whether it comes from- our understanding of what cotton was went something along the lines that if you grow cotton, the best of it goes to the manufacture of thread and yarn, and what's left, the thrums and the portion of the cotton plant that has seeds and little pieces of dirt motes, that's what they were called, they were second grade and third grade fibers. And the paper companies used to buy this, clean it, and then process it as cotton- cotton rag paper. Our — I don't think it was Sheftel & ; Sons particularly — but the concept that we came to was- for many years, people used used clothing to make paper because all clothing was made from cotton. But as that became more complex, there were buttons which was great, you snip them off and you had a rag that was all cotton, put it in a big vat of caustic and it would come apart and the fibers would float and there you had the beginning of your paper. But as clothing became more complicated, the zippers replaced simple buttons, and sometime in the ‘60s and ‘70s — I mean, already we had moved away from using used clothes — but the company that made cotton-based social papers and our currency was Crane & ; Company, and Elias Crane went to the Congress and said no- no confederation can be a true country without their own control of currency, and sold them the idea that they should make paper. The Crane and- Crane & ; Company has made the currency for the United States ever since — since 1873. 0 2347 Origins of the Family Business—Abraham Sheftel GE: So, let's just go to the beginning, the origins of the business as far back as you know. And I don't know if that starts with your father- grandfather, but if you just want to tell us a little bit the origins of the business and how that progressed, and then we'll talk more about the business as it was, the later incarnation of the business.
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 ; BS: You know in our family, we did not really speak about my grandfather's family, where he came from — the interest in our historical origins is probably typical of other families? But what I understood was that my grandfather, who was born on the Russian border or Polish border, never quite clear, as a 16-17 year old was pursued by the Red or the White Army and essentially was a draft dodger who had some brothers and sisters who had come to the United States. And as I understood it, he had some relatives in upstate New York around where the Concord Hotel used to be, and they were in the egg business. I don't know what the family business was, I am told that it may have been beef, but I- whether they had 10 cows or two steers in the front yard, I have never been able to clarify. But my grandfather came to this country in probably 1914 or 1917, and went to Chicago and worked as a butcher, and had some relatives who had a restaurant in New York called the Black Angus and somehow settled back in Allentown. 0 2740 Recycling of Cotton Fibers BS: There's another side of the story which I'm very curious about and don't know the answer to, which is why the New York Jews came to the Lehigh Valley to establish the underwear companies, for instance, that the Lesavoys or other families did. Whether it was the labor pool or what, but my father was in a cycle of business that they created waste, he took the waste away, and there was a use for that waste — it [was] truly recycling. Ironically, when people spoke about recycling in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, my father had very little respect for the conversation because we're talking about a hundred million dollar companies where they were recycling scrap or steel, and rags were never mentioned — fiber recycling, I don't think was ever mentioned in the- in the fiber industry news and some of these other publications. It was recycling of steel mostly. So it's kind of ironic that my father was truly in a recycling business that had a product, the client, purpose. But really no- no- no presence, even during a national recognition of this as being something valuable. 0 2826 History of the Family Business (cont'd) BS: So my grandfather simply found a need — people needed to have this waste taken away and, on the other side, people had a raw material requirement, fiber, that was the waste of these other people. So, you know, it always was interesting when we filled out tax returns, were we manufacturers or were we distributors? And of course we answered the question in a way that was advantageous to us. If there was more tax to be paid for a manufacturer, we were distributors. If there were less taxes to be paid for manufacturer, then we manufactured. But the actual process was visualizing how the product that was waste from one industry could be used as the raw material in another. 
 ; 
 ; And there are several stories that float through the family about fabric that we just had no idea what to do with, and many of these ideas precede me, although I did in my own time make use of this story. But a- it's a story of during the Second World War, when nylon was first produced, and my family had 30 truckloads of this material that no one knew what to do with, and they began taking it to the dump, which my grandfather started in 1917. This- we're talking about 1946. He already had a Cadillac. He had a- a building that he bought in 1931 during the Depression on 15th and Sumner Avenue. I suppose my grandfather thought of himself as quite a success, and the idea of taking something to the dump and paying to have it take- taken away was just antithetical. 0 3027 Milton Sheftel—Expanding Operations to Greenville, SC BS: And as I say, my grandfather got his truck probably in 1919. They had a building, I believe it was on Front Street in Allentown, by 1940- by 1931, they bought out of bankruptcy the Bear Manufacturing, which was a furniture company, at 15th and Sumner Avenue, and operated that until they bought a- a ribbon mill, which I think was operated by Haines, in Catasauqua —they bought that I think in 1951 or- they may have bought in Catasauqua before that, I'm not really quite sure, but in 1951 or ‘52, my father — already seeing that the textile industry was leaving the Northeast — traveled to South Carolina. He had been traveling to the South since he got out of the army in ‘46. And by ’51 he hired a young man who was traveling in the South and he hired him to go to the mills and make an introduction into- now this was a pretty established business in the South because they were doing this with cotton waste, not clothing rags, but cotton waste, it was a very developed business — people had minters and motes, a whole language and a whole process, and much of that went to papermaking or to other kinds of stuffing for pillows. So in a certain way they were Jewish and they were Yankees and they were coming into the South, and it wasn't a friendly time. It was difficult. And my father saw that there was a young Jewish man from Chattanooga who was living in Greenville, South Carolina, and he would give him cash, three thousand dollars, and he'd go out and buy rags. And eventually that man opened the facility with my dad there. 0 3236 The Sheftel and Malenovsky Family Business BS: So my grandfather married Sarah Malenovsky. Her brother went to work with her husband. And I don't know if there ever was a peaceful time. Stories don’t- family stories don't speak of a peaceful time. They speak of Abraham wanting to get ahead, he was more aggressive than Jacob. Jacob had two brothers in the business that I didn't know about until I was in my twenties. And another strange, ironic twist is that in 2012- 2012, I came to Allentown to sit with my parents who were looking for a new home and… Next door neighbor who I had gone to elementary school with, showed them a house just catty-corner from their home on Main Street, which they had been in 50 years. So I was 12 when they bought that house. While we were in this house just across the street, I kept hearing something about “Uncle Jake, Uncle Jake.” And I said, “What is- what’s Uncle Jake got to do with the house?” And they said, “Well Uncle Jake lived here.” And I'm not sure if I'm putting this together for you, but my father and his uncle, Jake, separated in business in probably 1960- No. My father came into the business in ‘46 and I believe they separated from Malenovsky in ‘51 or ‘52. 0 3660 "Inside & ; Outside Guys"—the Partnership of Harold & ; Milton Sheftel BS: My father and his father were in business after ‘46. You know, my grandfather, according to my father, would regale him with stories of how unfair the other side of the family was and, you know, how he had been alone and had been fighting this battle. It almost sounds like my grandfather confused the- the battles of the First and Second World War with his business history, but now- now my grandfather had his son and his brother, and now it was a fair fight. My father led on one time that he thought it wasn't so very fair and that he was selfish and that he had not only been used as a tool with his father, but that he was happy to have been the blade. We never got back to that conversation. And when I defended him and said, “Well, Dad, you know, I mean, it was-” he really cut me off and, you know, it was a part of the history I wasn't really going to ever really get to.
 ; 
 ; And what I did learn from the Malenovskys is that Jake's son was eight years old, went into a new business, really didn't know anything about the business, and probably my understanding was more emotionally laden than his. I don't know about the sister of Jake, who maybe — I guess that was Rose — who thought it was unfair. 0 4222 "Perfect Timing"—Milton Sheftel's Business Success BS: But the irony is that my father, in addition to not knowing exactly what to call him — a salesman isn't really enough, entrepreneur is not really accurate ; owner operator, well, he was a partner also — and, you know, he was a bit of- I think he had a bit of a Napoleonic complex, which I think to some degree was necessary. But I don't know what the word was for all that and it was- it was, it was fascinating to watch it when it worked, it was. And the irony is that as my father, I looked at this man and was amazed at his sense of timing, which he never spoke with me about, no matter how many times I tried to create a conversation ; he seemed not to be aware of it, but I found that to be really quite impossible to believe. And ironically, here we are at the end of an industry. Perfect timing. And he seemed to be one of these entrepreneurs, and again, there must have been many of them who just found themselves- this is not what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to be a raconteur — I'm not sure he knew what that word meant, but what he thought it meant was he wanted to stay in Hollywood and produce talent. This is a guy who I never saw read a book or really go out to the movies unless he was asked to. And yet this is what he claimed that he- he really wanted to have done. And had he done it, he would have probably made hundreds of millions of dollars because of residuals that we didn't have in the rag business, you know? But he left the business in 2005, and there was really no business left. He- he really rode the horse... I mean, you know, he didn't know what business cycles were, didn't really care. But the irony is that he- his timing in life was perfect. 0 4474 Differences in the Textile Waste Industry in the U.S. and Europe BS: In the United States, we manufactured at a scale that the Europeans didn't recognize was much grander, and the advantage to that was if you were purchasing something that was waste, the volume of that waste was on a scale that Europe didn't operate at. In Europe, if somebody bought twenty-six bales of something, twenty six thousand pounds of something, [it] would be a big order. Their trucks were smaller. And, you know, in this period of time, we went from trucks that were thirty-six feet up to fifty — fifty feet. Fifty-two feet. But in Europe, you found that there were many more manufacturers, users of textile, and after the war my speculation is that capital was less important than labor. So you had cities- towns- Prato, which was just north of Florence. You had Bella, which was just south of Lake Como in the north. And these cities- towns became specialty centers. So in Biella, they use cotton thread, cotton fiber. And they made a finer denier yarn. 0 4696 Sorting to Color for Europe—the Process of Making Color from Textile Waste BS: And when we saw them doing that in 1960, we had the idea of doing that on a much larger scale and began separating to color — and not only separating to color, but separating to fiber. So we would- and then, they got- if that wasn't complicated enough, they got the idea that if they sold it to the paper company and the color was bleachable, instead of paying a premium — thirty five cents for a piece of cotton that was all white — they could pay twenty-two cents, put six cents of bleaching into it, and have a two cent discount. But that meant that Sheftel & ; Sons would have to be able to identify and sell bleachable colors in a packet- in a pack, packing. And then what would happen with the non-bleachable? Well, there's the beginning of the story of sorting to color for Europe. They didn't care about bleachability. They were looking to make yarn. So the dark blue that didn't bleach went to a blue that was not bleachable and was then sold by a salesman of ours who traveled to Europe twice a year to Bella, to Prato, called on these factories with a card of colors, with different shades. Why? Because different manufacturers had different shades of color and we were known for blending them. And we would make bales of one color, but we would pack them all into the same number. And these people were really quite genius and this is an opportunity to tell a story that won't get lost to history. 0 5032 Seeing Hues Without Color—the Artistry of Harold Sheftel BS: I want to add one other story. I say that he stood in front of this wall of color that he had received from- it was only at this point two or three other providers like us. And we would be in America, someone would send us a truck of waste, we’d open the truck, take out a bag, thirty five pounds, and we put it on a pallet, put it on- the next one was yellow, we put that on a pallet. But there may be three or four shades of t-shirts being made. How did you know where it went? Now, I don't think anybody really cared about this, but I said that I was a photographer living in New York and I was a color photographer. And that was- my teacher said to me, “Sweetheart, I'm not-” I’m sorry. She said, “Darling, nobody ever makes serious pictures in color.” And well, that was that. I nevertheless had this passion for color. And when I came to work in the company, I simply looked at the rags and thought about it through my curiosity. And I wondered how my uncle, who separated the colors and organized them on the charts, how he did that, because when I’d go to Europe, they’d say of all the four people that we get color cards from, yours are the best. Really? It's a commodity item, what are we doing? It couldn't possibly be because my uncle is colorblind. I mean, that doesn't make any sense. 0 5313 More Products of Sheftel & ; Sons—Wiping Rags BS: So I told some anecdotes about one portion of the business, but when that truck would arrive and the door would open and we began to separate out what the cloth was, some went for fiber recycling that we just described ; but the larger pieces, they went for wiping cloths, and that was an entirely different industry in America. You know, there was- there's a wiping rag association called I Whack ‘Em [?]. We never were quite sure who they whacked, but... 
 ; 
 ; GE: And so that would be the rags that you’d buy at Home Depot?
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 ; BS: Yes. Now they- now they're buying basically cloth made in Pakistan, but- you still can see a bag of rags, especially at the paint stores, is where you'll see them. Yeah. 0 5421 Paternal Family History SC: So what do you know about your father's family as far back- You talked a little bit about that, but as far back as you know?
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 ; BS: As I said that my father did not dwell in the land of reminiscence, I didn't- I was young when my grandfather died, I was about eight or ten, so I didn't have that opportunity to question them ; and when I did question them, my father wasn't especially interested. What I learned was that they came from Vilna, I believe, or in a town near Vilna. And my grandfather had left to follow his older cousin- older sister and maybe her husband. And he did that because he was avoiding inscription in the- either the White or the Red Army. So that would have been around, I’m assuming, 1917 [or] 1914 during the revolution. I heard that they were in the cattle business, but as I said, I don't know whether that meant they had a cow in the front yard of the shtetl or whether they had ten cows. I have a side of my family that went to Rhodesia and then eventually back to the United States, and they were in the cattle business. They were cousins in New York who owned the Black Angus Restaurant in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and is that an accident or did they know something about beef? I know he didn't know much about women because he gave one prospective date a piece of beef, couldn't understand why she wouldn't answer his calls. He said, “It was a nice piece of meat!” Yeah, so I don't know. 0 5964 Changes in Allentown and Its Community BS: And I think if we look at the city today, which will not resemble the city I grew up in, all the West End and what appeared to be very modest homes are the homes of people who ran businesses, employed a hundred people or two hundred people, and I think the modesty belies some kind of- these people operated their businesses, they- they weren't looking to sell out and be bought out, they- they operated them. And the complexion of the city is quite different, unrecognizable really, to the days that I grew up when the sign said, “ Allentown, 1960, All American City.” You know, it was a city of people making things, doing- having people working for them. And we- what did we do? We made rags. I mean- it's very- it's a peculiar transition for someone like- like myself who's thoughtful about it because we- we don't seem to be making anything. And it's ironic how the industry that I caught the tail end of would really- well, you know, what was it? And yet it was really quite fascinating, all the different things that people made from fiber. 0 6052 Maternal Family History SC: How about your mother's past? Do you have anything to add about your mother's background? Not really?
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 ; BS: My mother, you know, grew up in- my mother grew up in Brooklyn. She was the daughter and sister of Jack Lobell, who was also a merchant. He had his own business, he sold Pearl buttons and apparently was quite a character, you know — he had- his first wife and two children died in the 1914, 1917 flu epidemic. And then he began dating my mother's mother and she died in 1945, leaving Gene and Ronnie, who was 17 — my mother was 17. And then he remarried about six weeks later… my mother's mother's brother's wife, so her aunt. And my mother resented that for a good part of her life and not quite sure why, but he- you know she- she loved him very much, and he apparently was quite a character. He was a salesman on the road, but a businessman, independent. And he- there's a story that they called him in Chicago and told him that Hilda was quite ill and he should come as quickly as he could. And he was home that evening and no one seemed to notice because, you know, she recovered from whatever it was and- It was a long- apparently, it was a long and not very nice illness. She was in the house for quite a few years with some caretakers, and he tried to have a- as my mother says, a “quack doctor” take care of her in a rented hotel room. 0 6413 Bruce Sheftel's Values and Creative Inspirations SC: That's perfect. So I have two questions for you. The first one is, what do you value most in life?
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 ; BS: Me personally? I think probably honesty. Trustfulness. Telling- Telling what’s honest, but in the context that it was- I can understand that your- your truth may be different, but tell me it, unadorned, and you'll have my respect.
 ; 
 ; SC: And secondly, what has made you feel the most creative in life? 
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 ; BS: It's an interesting question because I've been in situations where I didn't understand that I was creative — which really is kind of silly when you look back over- I was a drummer in a band here in Allentown, photographer — I photographed Queen Elizabeth, I think I was twelve, I was the youngest photographer to commercially do that. But I never thought of myself, per se, as creative ; I never been given that permission. 0 MovingImage Bruce Sheftel talks about how his grandfather (Abe), a young immigrant, started as a junkman with his brother-in-law. Later, when Abe’s sons (Milt and Harold) were in the business, they bought textile waste from the many mills that existed up and down the Lehigh river. Harold focused inside the factory/warehouse and Milt (Bruce’s father) focused outside the factory selling the processed textile waste to customers. Their main customer was Crane & ; Company who used cotton rags to make US currency. The final generation in this business (sons of Milt and Harold) witnessed the disappearance of the U.S. textile waste industry as the textile and needle trade industry moved overseas. Interview with Bruce Sheftel, May 31st, 2017 BRUCE SHEFTEL: Hello, we're testing to see if the air conditioning can be heard. SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Yes, it can be heard. Just keep turning it up to 90 and we'll deal with it. There you go. BS: Is that better? SC: Yes, it is. That's fine. Okay. Today is May 31st, 2017, an interview with Bruce Sheftel. And Bruce, I'm going to start by asking you your information, then go back to your family history. So what is your full name? Where were you born and where do you live? BS: My full name is Bruce Howard Sheftel. I was born in Allentown and I've lived now in- outside of Philadelphia and in- I have a small apartment in New York. And yeah. SC: What town outside of Philadelphia? BS: BlueBell -- BlueBell, Pennsylvania. SC: What is your education history? BS: I started in Allentown with elementary school at the Jewish Community Center and then Muhlenberg Elementary School and the Wright School, which was a nursery school. And my- I think my education was sort of like a woodier sampler. I went from there to the Jewish Day School for six years and on to Raub Junior High School. In Raub Junior High School, I was hit by a car in my ninth year, the beginning of my ninth year, and spent that year at home with a broken leg. So in the year of what would have been my- the end of my ninth grade, I went to summer school at Hun School in Princeton, New Jersey. They conditionally accepted me, and I went there for ninth grade again and left after a year, which- came back to Allentown, went to Moravian Prep and made sure we closed that school down. And I was in the last graduating class, but I didn't have two credits, had a disagreement with the school about what classes I was permitted to take, so I then went to Philadelphia and got my high school degree from- with two credits from Penn Charter School, I think it was, at 13th and Arch. So I was a little independent. I didn't go to college in the traditional way. I think, ten or fifteen years later, I went to, first, Harvard Business School -- [they] had a special program. And while I was there, I enrolled- found myself accepted at Antioch College in an extension program. And I was- I graduated in the last year that they operated. So I have sort of a history of closing schools or at least attending the last year that they- they operate. So I graduated with a degree in business from Antioch -- Business Administration. Then the Harvard experience was not degreed, it was predicated on experience and it was called the OPM Program--Owner/ President Management, which was an extension of their School of Advanced Management. SC: Testing, testing, talking. BS: You want me to talk? I don't really... SC: Let me just say-- Let me just try- a red dot came up. GAIL EISENBERG: No, that's what we want. That's for record. SC: That's what we want -- okay. I get so frightened of this thing anymore. GE: So the earlier part, that had the red dot, right? SC: It did, yes, it did. BS: Did you want to listen to it? SC: No, that's okay. BS: This is the time to re-do it. SC: Yeah, but we'd have to go back. GE: Yeah, I don't know [how]. BS: Should we call Marcus in here? GE: Jeff. SC: Jeff. BS: Jeff. GE: We have a new camera, we're not- we haven't done it for years so we're not as familiar. SC: Yeah, I think we're okay. BS: Marcus! GE: As long as it was on. SC: It was on, I just all of a sudden got-. GE: We understand. SC: I always get- BS: We understand your reason. SC: Because I turned it off and he turned it on. So, could you talk now about where you have work -- you were talking a little bit about your education and if you have more, go on -- but then where you have worked and the type of work that you did and do? BS: Yeah. When I was finishing high school, the world that we lived in had a war in Vietnam that I had no real interest in visiting. I liked traveling, but the accommodations and the body bag coming back seemed a little cramped for me. So I left high school in the summer of I think it was 1969 and traveled across the country. I took my parents' car, left them mine, and traveled across the country. And when I came back I met a psychiatrist I had been seeing through most of my senior year of school who told me about a square rig sailing ship, which was equivalent to the Coast Guard Eagle. This was a large training vessel for Merchant Marines. And what I didn't know was that he had put his two children on this boat, two of his three- four children. And I didn't know they were having lots of trouble -- and the kinds of trouble, I mean, really almost mimicked what was going on in the country in 1970. And he had me meet the director who encouraged me to join the program as a paraprofessional. And I agreed, only to discover -- and these were all large issues in those years about independence -- that they were actually soliciting my father for three thousand dollar contribution to the program, which I had been led to believe was not the case. The case was I would be selected on my own. This economy was really a large deal for us in those years. So I started my engagement with them by confronting the director. I created a telephone call where my father said he wasn't going to give any money, and I asked her, so am I still coming? And she said, yes, of course. And then somewhere between Madrid and Dakar, I met her in the- near the head of the 747 and she grabbed my lapel and said, "You know, you're a little [expletive]." And I said, "Hey, you told me I was coming for me." So that was the start of that trip, and that was about two years -- I was on the program with the Norwegians about a year after, sailed to Senegal and generally had the kind of education that if you go back and read the popular magazines of the 1970s, people were talking about. I didn't go to college at the time, and I went and experienced the world, and I didn't do it with the military, which, looking back on it, was pretty, pretty interesting. I came back to the United States in 1972 and I was looking for work. I was very concerned with connecting my head to my hands, and I had become a carpenter in the meantime and started building furniture. And long- this is probably '72, '74, I kind of wandered around the country and worked in various jobs, built furniture, as I said, built houses, but mostly moving towards art. And sometime in the- around '73, '74, after staying a year in New Hampshire building furniture, I revisited an old interest, which was photography, and found myself in New York City, 1974, an apartment on the Bowery -- not an apartment, a loft -- and spent the next- well, until today, photographing. But I was the town photographer for Huntington, Long Island, and studied with a woman who -- for those people in the photography industry would know her, she was Diane Arbus's mentor, teacher, friend -- and that was Lisette Model. And Lisette had a master class I knew very little about, and when I went to show her my pictures, I didn't realize I was like number 19 in line, and there were two-hundred forty people outside that I didn't realize. And she- I was the first person she chose to join her class and that really set the stage for me. This is the first person who recognized that there was something I was- I was about that was of interest to them. And I studied with her for a year or two, and when she- in her own history and career, she really did not get along with authority figures. And when she heard that my family had a business, she encouraged me to return to that business, but to continue photographing ; and the way she constructed that was that commercial photography would sap the creative juice from you, and if you could prevent that from happening, by working elsewhere and not depending on working as a photographer, but photographing life as a photographer -- we would call that being an artist today -- that was the better trip. And she didn't know my family, she didn't know what she was telling me to do, and I followed her advice, much to my own chagrin at various times. So by around about 1978 or '79, I believe I began working for my family in an office they had in New York City, came back to Allentown really over my objections, but now as part of the family, so I did what the business in the end did. I came back, worked in the factory in Allentown, understood what was going on. And I did understand that I was a creative and I don't- and I always thought that my family was creative, which- we had a reputation in the business, which I didn't understand, but it sounded to me like we were creative. And so that's what I saw. And in 1981, we expanded a collection facility that we had in South Carolina to become a full production facility, and I went to South Carolina to make that happen. The man who had been there was reaching retirement age, and I went from Allentown, left my cousin's father, uncle here and began to operate this South Carolina factory and did that until -- that was 1980 or '81 -- I did that until sometime at the end of the- beginning of the '90s. SC: And from there? BS: I worked in the business until my father and his nephews -- his partner, his brother died in 1990 and my father, at that point, was probably in his 60s or 70s and really had no interest in retiring, really wasn't able to. We went through a series of consultations with outside people who were familiar with transitions and family businesses. I became actually quite interested in that. And I was accepted sometime in around 1987 or '88 into a program at Harvard University's Business School and actually had become interested in consulting to businesses. So we are an example of a family who took no advice from any of these people. And at the same time I was at Harvard, I was encouraged to go and get my undergraduate degree, which I had not done, because, as I said, in the '70s there was an idea that experiential education was far more enriching than sitting in a classroom. So I ironically went back and graduated in the last graduating class of Antioch University, continuing my-- well, whatever it is, I closed three high schools and now a college, so I suppose I thought I was progressing. And Harvard, Business School at Harvard, which brought quite a different perspective to operating family business in an industry that was, as my professor called it, an immigrant business. No, no barriers to entry and run basically on rat-like cunning. That continued until my father sold his half of the business to my cousins in around 2005. And since that time I continued as a photographer, mostly an art photographer, portrait photographer. And the industry of wiping clothes, textile waste really left the United States ; our manufacturing, which was the source of the material, left the United States. Papermaking that used that kind of process had already dwindled to almost only two factories. And they became- they came under pressure to bring some of the security elements that they were already selling in other countries to the American currency. So those things all kind of came together in about 2005. My cousins operated the- parts of the business individually, and I believe the trading of fiber pretty much came to an end in 2012. There is still a portion of the business that my cousin conducts, but ironically, there's no American presence. He has employees in Honduras and sells from Honduras to- whether it's Italy or Spain or- and- I'm not quite sure at this point how that all has migrated, but we really don't have that industry here any longer. SC: Is that because some European countries want better quality paper, value ink? Rag-based? BS: No. When we call paper "rag-based paper", they're really talking about cellulose fibers, so whether it comes from- our understanding of what cotton was went something along the lines that if you grow cotton, the best of it goes to the manufacture of thread and yarn, and what's left, the thrums and the portion of the cotton plant that has seeds and little pieces of dirt motes, that's what they were called, they were second grade and third grade fibers. And the paper companies used to buy this, clean it, and then process it as cotton- cotton rag paper. Our -- I don't think it was Sheftel & ; Sons particularly -- but the concept that we came to was- for many years, people used used clothing to make paper because all clothing was made from cotton. But as that became more complex, there were buttons which was great, you snip them off and you had a rag that was all cotton, put it in a big vat of caustic and it would come apart and the fibers would float and there you had the beginning of your paper. But as clothing became more complicated, the zippers replaced simple buttons, and sometime in the '60s and '70s -- I mean, already we had moved away from using used clothes -- but the company that made cotton-based social papers and our currency was Crane & ; Company, and Elias Crane went to the Congress and said no- no confederation can be a true country without their own control of currency, and sold them the idea that they should make paper. The Crane and- Crane & ; Comapny has made the currency for the United States ever since -- since 1873. They made it with used clothing, until I would think sometime in the '30s, I'm not really quite sure. I'm talking about, not historians, but people who made their living selling rags and many of them had no real interest in answering questions of a curious child who was under foot. I'm talking about myself in my 30s. I was sort of, you know, "what are you asking, why do you care?" So I don't know specifically, but at some point, my father began to understand that there was an edge, as they would say at Harvard, in selling the waste of the manufacturing process of underwear, which was all cotton, undershirts, which were all cotton, and that he could eliminate the difficulty that the paper companies would have with the plastic refuse or scraps of just unidentified waste in the process of making paper- you know, vatting the old rags and having, you know, a vat of fiber. If there was a button in there- or later on synthetic became quite a complex problem again and scared the paper makers, because you put what appeared to be a piece of cotton rag into the vat but the polyester would melt and float to the surface and ruin ten thousand pounds of what was perfectly good cotton fiber. So in this- in the early '70s, there was a great deal of fear that Sheftel Company would actually go out of business, and I think we got to about 11 days of cash, and miraculously there was some understanding that you could control the buying, you could identify where you were buying the waste from, you could separate out. They began to understand what was causing the problem, they didn't realize that they had been commingling cotton rag from nineteen different suppliers with one supplier who had started using this new wonderful wrinkle-free underwear, which was in fact polycotton and supposed to make your butt look nice. While doing that, it contaminated the after process that no one really cared about. So that, you know, that- and ironically, the company became very strong after that and sort of found its footing in the early '70s after what was, really, they were very close to bankruptcy after 30 years of my father's involvement. So it shifted around and they- as I say, we operated until about 2005. And your question was, why did it shut down? In part, as I understand, they were forty seven mills making paper with rags, when my father came out of the army in 1946. Today was maybe one, depending on how you count. There is a company that will make, from rags, the fiber- the fiber product that the paper company can then put back into a vat. So if you say there's two, you know, you're sort of- they only work for the one, for Crane & ; Company. So most of the paper companies have moved on to using cellulose fiber from trees, where we get Weyerhaeuser and they kind of consider that a hundred percent cellulose product. And you will see cotton rag used for art papers and social papers, which was part of Crane & ; Company, but the appreciation of the tooth of the paper, how it feels, has been replaced by convenience. So the idea of something feeling wonderful in your hand, that you give to people on the anniversary or the invitation to a wedding, has changed dramatically. And it's not quite what it was in 1947, or 1950, or 1960. So on one hand, as Harvard taught, find a need and fill it. Paper companies had a need for this product, cotton, and our family was one of maybe a dozen companies in the United States that filled that need -- that need had been filled since 1787, but I believe Elias Crane asked the population of Massachusetts to contribute their used clothing to that need in the beginning. And by the time we, you know, were- were ramped up in the '70s and '80s, '80s and '90s, we were supplying rags to Spain, Italy, and they were using various kinds of rags as raw material and re-spinning yarn. So you'd have a factory with a two-million dollar machine and a father and a son, and they would make sock yarn in yellow from rags that we had separated into cotton or polycotton rags of one color. And- But as labor costs rose after the Second World War, and that probably tracked from '46 to the '80s, those companies began moving towards cheaper labor. So Spain and Italy, which have been centers for textile manufacturing, began to find that they could operate their factories cheaper in Guatemala or Honduras, and capital, not labor, became the organizing fundamental in the companies that we were selling to. So where we provided a supply- a supply of raw material in the '40s, '50s, '60s, and '70s ; we also provided a service of removing the waste from the manufacturing companies that ran along the New York State Thruway up to Massachusetts, where they were producing underwear. We- Allentown was a center of underwear production and probably in the history, you'll see the Royale and a number of other manufacturers who made a living here in Allentown, quite a good living, that migrated into J.C. Penney and other companies. There were large underwear companies here and we received a great deal of- our company in particular tended to move out of Allentown and collect waste from upstate New York all the way down to South Carolina, and then we moved our main collection to South Carolina as the manufacturing companies moved out of the Hudson Valley and moved to South Carolina and North Carolina. We moved along with them. Our headquarters remained here, but we transferred merchandise into the Lehigh Valley for separating and sorting and preparation for use as a raw material and then shipped it north to Massachusetts, which is where most of the paper was being made. And when those textile factories closed in South Carolina and moved to Guatemala in the '80s and '90s, we tried to follow them. And of course, you know the story of the immigrant grandfather who would take a hip bottle of whiskey to some guy in Hamburg, and spend the afternoon drinking that bottle with him, and he came home and the contract --" what contract? Did you get the contract? Contract? He's selling us the rags. Well, yeah I'll go back with another bottle." That process, which I am old enough to have watched, probably moved to Guatemala, moved to Honduras, and it's very difficult to fly to Honduras to meet a guy. My father used to receive a phone call- my father used to get into his car at five o'clock in the morning and leave on a two-day business trip and drive to as many of those forty-seven paper mills as he possibly could. Later on, he began to fly in a single engine airplane in weather that really terrorized his son, who he thought it would be nice to take along on these trips. All I can say is I never threw up. I'm not sure what kind of accomplishment that was. I did get my pilot's license eventually, probably because I was scared to death and thought, "I should be able to fly myself out of this." But nothing really stopped him, and if he got a phone call at nine o'clock in the morning- I think today people could understand what I'm saying. The call came from school and it was a teacher. No matter what the mother or father did, they'd be at the school within a half an hour. If you can understand that construct, but simply apply it to your business -- if my father got a call from the school, he'd call my mom. If he got a call from a paper-making company in Massachusetts, he rented the airplane and was there by two o'clock to take the guy to lunch. And eventually, you know, he had his own airplane and used it almost not at all for personal use, used it to go and visit these clients that he could be [with] two or three clients in a day and then be home for- well he didn't come home for dinner, but he was home by seven o'clock. And when the mills began to move away, there was no longer a need to process their waste, and the basis of the company, the basis of the business changed. And I think that by the time my father sold the business, the- the- the company would have had to have morphed into some new business and recognize- I mean, the company would have had to change into a new business and would have had to have recognized that the cycle of business had come and called, and however long we had managed to extend and be the last standing provider, we did a good job at that. But, as the ashtray on my father's desk said, from "rags to riches to rags" -- in three generations, which used to scare the crap out of me, turned out to be quite prescient. And that- the answer to your question is that business changes, as does life, and companies that change and use the advantage of some business that they were in, continue. And people who identify, also from Harvard, you know, the bus companies never thought of themselves as transportation companies, they thought of themselves as bus companies. So when the airplane came, they found themselves quite empty when they could have been the ones to buy all the airlines. And in our business, that- that to some degree happened as well. I'm not sure that there is a-- a business that followed the use of the waste from the manufacturer of clothing and then went to something like- believe it or not, I mean, some of the products that we went to was not only paper, we sold and continue today to sell- the remnants of the company sells rags for making flock wallpaper, so every prostitute in America who works or worked in a- an office space or boudoir with the red flop wallpaper, you know, those are rags. If you look in the back of your car, there was a time when there'd be a pad, and if you look closely, you could see, you know, Uncle James' old t-shirt or John's shirt in there because those were rags pulled apart and made into a product that- I can't think of right now, but it's basically glue on top of rag fiber that soundproofed the inside of your car. So our rags- high quality is [how] we thought of it. Cotton products was not the only thing that rags were used for. Many of these other companies as- in a sense, they were falloffs from the most expensive use of the rag. And as the fiber companies left, as the rag- I mean, there are no rag companies, there are no fiber- I mean, there are fiber companies, but nobody makes rags, you know. When we used to, not joke, but lament that when you found a good use for a rag, you better be looking for the next use for the rag, because when the manufacturer- you can't call them up and say, "Continue making that waste!" And it was a very interesting business that you didn't really control the manufacturer of your raw material and you didn't control the person that you were selling it to. You are always working the angles to see- and I could share with you this little story quickly about- to conceptualize what this meant. A railroad truck- track- a railroad car had sixty-thousand pounds that you could load into it. That's quite a- thousand pound bales, if you imagine those pictures from South Carolina [of] people shipping cotton, those were eight hundred pound bales. So we made a thousand pounds. Eventually we used a compressor so, so tight that we could put twelve hundred pounds in a-- in a fifty-four by twenty-four inch bale. And one of the companies that we bought waste from made athletic shirts, this nylon. We were a company that you wipe things up with cotton. Who knew anything about wiping rags made out of polyester? This was not possible. So what did all good rag dealers do was they piled it up. And I remember looking at a row and- you know, you're paying to take up space. I mean, it would be like somebody bringing plates into your kitchen, three, four plates a day, and keeping them there. I mean, after six or seven months, you know, you couldn't find anybody in the kitchen, though they were right next to you. I mean, they'd be behind all the plates, you're trying to deal with it. And that's what was fairly routine. You know, you wouldn't know what to do with it. And I had been a furniture builder, and I got a call one day, the guy wanted cotton rags. And I had this idea and I said, "I've got something that you might find useful. You're just spreading stain on wood, right?" "Yeah." "So I got an idea for you. Let me send you something and you tell me what you think." He called me back and said, "Wow, that's great! How much is it?" And now, we sold rags for maybe thirty-five cents, I mean there were lots of prices, thirty-five to a dollar thirty-five, and I said, "Well, I'd be happy to sell that to you for sixty-four cents." Now everybody had been trying to give this away, because the alternative was paying six cents to put it- and he said, "Well I can buy this other stuff for thirty-five cents, why would I pay sixty-five for this?" And I said, "Well do you have it in front of you?" He says, "Yeah." I said, "Well okay, cut off 12 inches and what- you know, by 6. Cut that in half, now you got like a six by six piece." "Yeah." "So I'll sell you small pieces." He says, "Why? Why is that better?" I said, "Well if you look at your garbage can, you're going to pull out a rag that one of the guys in your factory used, and one corner is going to be used and the rest you paid for but is perfectly good. So I'm going to limit your loss to that six inch piece." He goes, "But why sixty-five cents? That's twice as much." I said, "Yeah. Well, you know, all those holes? You're not paying for those." So I wound up selling all sixty-five thousand pounds of that for twice the price of white cotton wiping rags. All was well. It's a family business, so no one thought I was a genius. And then the day came when he said, "I need more." And we said, "Well, we don't buy from that- That company doesn't make athletic shirts anymore, Russell, Lee or for Nike, they lost the contract, so I can't order you that waste." And he goes, "But that was great!" I said, "Well then, the show closed and it was a great show, but book another play because I don't have anymore." And that was really typical. And I remember my father telling me at one point -- because we did some very, very large contracts for people -- that, you know, as soon as you find something that you can make a living on, start looking because it's not going to last. And that was really true. SC: Great. Thank you. BS: You're welcome. SC: Do you want some water? BS: Are you thirsty? GE: In the right there -- yeah, yeah. SC: I think you're doing a great job. GE: So, let's just go to the beginning, the origins of the business as far back as you know. And I don't know if that starts with your father- grandfather, but if you just want to tell us a little bit the origins of the business and how that progressed, and then we'll talk more about the business as it was, the later incarnation of the business. BS: You know in our family, we did not really speak about my grandfather's family, where he came from -- the interest in our historical origins is probably typical of other families? But what I understood was that my grandfather, who was born on the Russian border or Polish border, never quite clear, as a 16-17 year old was pursued by the Red or the White Army and essentially was a draft dodger who had some brothers and sisters who had come to the United States. And as I understood it, he had some relatives in upstate New York around where the Concord Hotel used to be, and they were in the egg business. I don't know what the family business was, I am told that it may have been beef, but I- whether they had 10 cows or two steers in the front yard, I have never been able to clarify. But my grandfather came to this country in probably 1914 or 1917, and went to Chicago and worked as a butcher, and had some relatives who had a restaurant in New York called the Black Angus and somehow settled back in Allentown. And when he settled back in Allentown, he met a- or he was set up with a young woman, my grandmother and- who was born in the United States and- on 2nd Street. They met, and I'm not sure of how their engagement went, but they became married in Allentown. And the father-in-law, Mr. Malenovsky had a son, and as probably is typical, my grandfather and his brother-in-law formed a company with a horse and a buggy, and began peddling anything that they could find -- metal, fiber from textile mills, who knows. They were junkmen, from what I understand, and somewhere along the line, this is on 2nd Street in Allentown, somewhere- and there were other places on that street, scrap dealers, it was a fairly common Jewish occupation. What I've always thought was ironic was my grandfather didn't speak English. I don't know, at this point, how much English he had learned. But when I think about what made the family successful, it's ironic that, because my grandfather couldn't find work or there was a prejudice against Jews or whatever the circumstance was that caused him to start his own business, that was the magic key in America to being eventually financially successful or independent, I should say. And so it's always been fascinating to me that all of the negative- I mean, if you were in a WASP family with your great-aunt having come across the channel, you know, three generations before you were established and you were looking down at the rest of the people coming to America at the end of the 1800s, the irony is that the next generation would replace you because of all the things that these people looked at and thought, "Oh, how horrible!" And it's quite a lesson, I think that- wondered always about how brave my grandfather was. There was no talk of this in our family. But to come to a country where you didn't speak English -- now, he did have some relatives -- but it's really fascinating to me. And he- he began with- the family story and, you know, there's two sides to it. I only know the one, and I'm quite sure the other is interesting. But the side is- that I came from said that the Malenovsky side of the family, that Jake Malenovsky was not as adventurous as my grandfather, and he- he didn't want a horse. I don't know how that makes any sense, but that's the story. But my grandfather insisted on the horse. I think it's the same story, I'm not sure, they just replaced the horse with the Hahn Truck -- H-A-H-N, I think it was. So the story of the family is that 1919 -- that dollar bill that's on the wall in the frame in the office with the title, that was for a Hahn Truck that Abraham insisted he was going to buy. And somewhere in all of this, they began to concentrate on taking the textile waste from the many, many, many mills that existed in Allentown, the textile mills that ran up and down that little Lehigh up through Shamokin, Hamburg. And these were- there were hundreds, if not tens of thousands of employees making all kinds of garments. There's another side of the story which I'm very curious about and don't know the answer to, which is why the New York Jews came to the Lehigh Valley to establish the underwear companies, for instance, that the Lesavoys or other families did. Whether it was the labor pool or what, but my father was in a cycle of business that they created waste, he took the waste away, and there was a use for that waste -- it [was] truly recycling. Ironically, when people spoke about recycling in the '50s, '60s, '70s, my father had very little respect for the conversation because we're talking about a hundred million dollar companies where they were recycling scrap or steel, and rags were never mentioned -- fiber recycling, I don't think was ever mentioned in the- in the fiber industry news and some of these other publications. It was recycling of steel mostly. So it's kind of ironic that my father was truly in a recycling business that had a product, the client, purpose. But really no- no- no presence, even during a national recognition of this as being something valuable. So my grandfather simply found a need -- people needed to have this waste taken away and, on the other side, people had a raw material requirement, fiber, that was the waste of these other people. So, you know, it always was interesting when we filled out tax returns, were we manufacturers or were we distributors? And of course we answered the question in a way that was advantageous to us. If there was more tax to be paid for a manufacturer, we were distributors. If there were less taxes to be paid for manufacturer, then we manufactured. But the actual process was visualizing how the product that was waste from one industry could be used as the raw material in another. And there are several stories that float through the family about fabric that we just had no idea what to do with, and many of these ideas precede me, although I did in my own time make use of this story. But a- it's a story of during the Second World War, when nylon was first produced, and my family had 30 truckloads of this material that no one knew what to do with, and they began taking it to the dump, which my grandfather started in 1917. This- we're talking about 1946. He already had a Cadillac. He had a- a building that he bought in 1931 during the Depression on 15th and Sumner Avenue. I suppose my grandfather thought of himself as quite a success, and the idea of taking something to the dump and paying to have it take- taken away was just antithetical. And the story goes that he began to delay and delay and delay, and my- my uncle who came into the business in 1946 -- this probably was around '47 or '48 -- said, "You know, I don't have any room here. I need to throw some of this into the dump." Finally after several months, he won the permission to do that, and after taking two or three truckloads to the dump, a man with a funny accent came to the business, saw this material, magic material, and offered- he asked how much we had. And in the typical peddler's way, you know, my father said, "I have three, maybe two, two and a half loads of this." And in actuality they probably had 40, but you don't say that, do you? So the man buys it and then comes again two weeks later and puts another order and they keep escalating the price. When they tell my grandfather, the story I heard is that he literally pulled hair out of his head. So who knows what- it was that it was a business that you ran by the seat of your pants. And as I say, my grandfather got his truck probably in 1919. They had a building, I believe it was on Front Street in Allentown, by 1940- by 1931, they bought out of bankruptcy the Bear Manufacturing, which was a furniture company, at 15th and Sumner Avenue, and operated that until they bought a- a ribbon mill, which I think was operated by Haines, in Catasauqua --they bought that I think in 1951 or- they may have bought in Catasauqua before that, I'm not really quite sure, but in 1951 or '52, my father -- already seeing that the textile industry was leaving the Northeast -- traveled to South Carolina. He had been traveling to the South since he got out of the army in '46. And by '51 he hired a young man who was traveling in the South and he hired him to go to the mills and make an introduction into- now this was a pretty established business in the South because they were doing this with cotton waste, not clothing rags, but cotton waste, it was a very developed business -- people had minters and motes, a whole language and a whole process, and much of that went to papermaking or to other kinds of stuffing for pillows. So in a certain way they were Jewish and they were Yankees and they were coming into the South, and it wasn't a friendly time. It was difficult. And my father saw that there was a young Jewish man from Chattanooga who was living in Greenville, South Carolina, and he would give him cash, three thousand dollars, and he'd go out and buy rags. And eventually that man opened the facility with my dad there. After a year, that man said, "I can't take the pressure, buy me out." And that man worked for my father for another 40 years, and I think he resented that choice that he made there, but that was the southern operation that in 1981 I went down and expanded and replaced what we had built here in the East, essentially by move- we were twenty-five years late, but we moved our actual processing of the rags to the site of the waste. So we moved from Allentown. We still maintained a facility here, but we enlarged- I had at one point almost four-hundred people in that facility in South Carolina. We probably never had more than one hundred, one hundred twenty-five here. GE: Okay. You want to tell us a little bit about the family in terms that it sounds like it started with your grandfather and the Malenovsky, his brother-in-law, then at some point it became just your grandfather and his sons. Right? And what kinds of roles did the different family members have in these businesses, you know, then your uncles, and you and your cousins and whatever? BS: So my grandfather married Sarah Malenovsky. Her brother went to work with her husband. And I don't know if there ever was a peaceful time. Stories don't- family stories don't speak of a peaceful time. They speak of Abraham wanting to get ahead, he was more aggressive than Jacob. Jacob had two brothers in the business that I didn't know about until I was in my twenties. And another strange, ironic twist is that in 2012- 2012, I came to Allentown to sit with my parents who were looking for a new home and-- Next door neighbor who I had gone to elementary school with, showed them a house just catty-corner from their home on Main Street, which they had been in 50 years. So I was 12 when they bought that house. While we were in this house just across the street, I kept hearing something about "Uncle Jake, Uncle Jake." And I said, "What is- what's Uncle Jake got to do with the house?" And they said, "Well Uncle Jake lived here." And I'm not sure if I'm putting this together for you, but my father and his uncle, Jake, separated in business in probably 1960- No. My father came into the business in '46 and I believe they separated from Malenovsky in '51 or '52. So the uncle that they were speaking about was my father's uncle. I mean, the strange part of the story for me is that my relative, who I never got to know, didn't get to know that side of the family, lived one house away from me and I never knew it. And I mean, this is Allentown. It's not Manhattan. Just- So there's a flair in that story- tale of how these families united and then separated and what the ramifications in the community were. You know, in the synagogue that my grandfather helped to build at 17th and Hamilton, he had a row of seats with his name on it and his business partner had a row of seats with his name on it just across the aisle. Every holiday we would walk up that aisle and my father would graciously smile at the people on the other side. The people on the other side were my relatives who I never got to know because in the family, the business had separated. I was sure- I tried to find various stories from that side of the family, but they- they started the business, I believe, in 1914, in 1917, bought the truck in 1919, bought the big building on Sumner Avenue in 1931. And my father and his brother, came out of the army in '46 and during that whole period there apparently were two other Malenovskys in the business -- uncles to my father and his brother who I really heard very little about, Uncle Abe and-- would have been Jake's brother and the other man, I'm not sure I know his name. So in 1946, when my father and his brother came into the company, the stories are that my grandfather and his brother-in-law routinely -- that would be daily -- would have yelling and screaming matches with each other. And my father would tell stories about how uncomfortable it was to take sides with his mother because his mother's brother was the partner and he was working in the company with his father and his father's partner. And how could he not take sides with his father? But then he was taking sides against his uncle, who he said he loved. So I'm sure it was very complicated for them. I'm sure this was an immigrant story repeated over and over and over again. But it did happen in our family. And by 1951, I believe, and I heard the story in several ways, Uncle Jake was sick in the hospital and my father went in and gave him a letter and sounds like it wasn't all that touchy feely. I don't know. I really don't. But there was a separation, and I know that it was obviously not amicable because we- they never spoke to us again. Now, my father would graciously introduce me to my uncle and aunt in the synagogue aisle. Turn to me and always say this is my Aunt Rose, but they never really acknowledge that. And, you know, funny thing about my father was that it took me until I was in my forties to realize that, of course they didn't talk to him. You know, he stole their livelihood from them. Now, did he steal it? I don't know. But my father was pretty good at this representation that, until I was in my forties, I really never even questioned why they weren't speaking to him. Now, I went back and looked at the papers, and they paid them the equivalent of a million, one-hundred and forty-thousand or a million, one-hundred and sixty-thousand dollars from 1917 to 1951. What is that, you know, twenty to thirty, forty... little over twenty-five years to walk away with a paycheck in 1940- '51 of a million, one-hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Doesn't sound like it was really a rip off so I don't really know. But there is the tale. GE: How- how about now, if you want to share with us a little bit about the Sheftel, that it was your father and his brother. What did each do in the business? How did that progress with the next generation? BS: My father and his father were in business after '46. You know, my grandfather, according to my father, would regale him with stories of how unfair the other side of the family was and, you know, how he had been alone and had been fighting this battle. It almost sounds like my grandfather confused the- the battles of the First and Second World War with his business history, but now- now my grandfather had his son and his brother, and now it was a fair fight. My father led on one time that he thought it wasn't so very fair and that he was selfish and that he had not only been used as a tool with his father, but that he was happy to have been the blade. We never got back to that conversation. And when I defended him and said, "Well, Dad, you know, I mean, it was-" he really cut me off and, you know, it was a part of the history I wasn't really going to ever really get to. And what I did learn from the Malenovskys is that Jake's son was eight years old, went into a new business, really didn't know anything about the business, and probably my understanding was more emotionally laden than his. I don't know about the sister of Jake, who maybe -- I guess that was Rose -- who thought it was unfair. But when they separated in '51, my father was they- appear to be the rainmaker and he came in as a salesman primarily. They at that point, as I understood it, already had the facility in- on 15th and Sumner Avenue, and they bought a building in Catasauqua, and they were- my father had obviously aspirations of a much greater size. He would tell me that his father would constantly say to him, you know, if you hear- something about if you reach for the clouds, you'll wind up sleeping with the roaches. And I don't think that they got along so very well either. And I do remember my coming into the Catasauqua offices, which were really established, you know, you come up the steps, there's the woman sitting at the- at the switchboard with the cords and hallway of offices and bar. Looked pretty business-like, these guys were working hard. And my grandfather's office was at the very end of the hall. I do remember it had a little safe in it, but I also felt as a very young boy that there was some tragedy, some- something here that was unclear to me. And I think it was my father's probably unrelenting drive to succeed that I was experiencing. So he took the helm of the business as a salesman, and I don't know if we really have a name for what he did. At Harvard, a salesman is not a very important role. They, you know, think that accountants are smarter and all of... But in my father's world, the salesman was the driving wheel. What my father didn't appreciate probably was that he was more than just the salesman, most salesmen he couldn't really- when we would hire people, he really didn't seem to understand that they didn't think like he did. They didn't really know how to make a dollar from- from 40 cents. He did, and I don't know whether he figured out that he had something else, and that's what built the business, that side of him. And I don't really- he wasn't an entrepreneur because he didn't start one business after another. But he kept, you know, this is a relatively small industry. I mean, the entire industry was probably less than- I mean, I remember used to looking was under a billion dollars when McDonald's was six billion, so that was the entire industry. Anything you could pull in that was regarded as recycling textiles. So he thought of himself as the man who provided white cotton rags to the papermakers in America- in America, and specifically, to Crane & ; Company for currency. And if you went into a factory that sold white underwear rags, you were going to have to deal with him. If he didn't own or if he didn't buy those rags, he was going to, and you were going to sell them to him. He always smiled, but that was his basic- that was the edge, as Harvard would have described it, that he- he carried. And he carried it in a way that, you know, I don't really see very often unless it's someone's own business, that the certain feeling that people have. And it's not a feeling about fairness, it's a feeling about-- you're divinely chosen to buy these rags and how dare anybody else not know that? So that was my father's role. And in the beginning, the story was that he came home from a very successful selling trip and separated a pile of twenty thousand dollars between his brother and himself. And that was the story in the business, that they were equal, even though clearly my uncle was not a driving wheel. When in 1968 they moved out of Catasauqua and built their first- built their own facility, they built seventy two thousand square feet on 24th and Lehigh Street, and then a year or two later added a hundred- It had eventually a hundred and two thousand square feet there behind the Giant. My uncle enjoyed driving truck and working in the factory, and didn't really seem to- he wanted to be an architect, and really didn't see himself, as I understood it from him, as a manager. And yet that's what the business needed. And so my uncle became the manager, the "inside guy", just the way it was terminology- the terminology that people in those days used. "Who's the inside guy?" Was a guy who knew how the sewing machines worked and where to buy thread. Then there was the guy who went to the department stores and sold the bras or underwear or whatever it was. The inside guy and the outside guy -- and Harold was the inside guy, everybody loved him, he- and Milton was the outside guy. And that those roles persisted until 1991. My- there were already signs that there were issues, but my uncle seemed to have accepted his role and the difficulty came when the- the sons, now the third generation, came into the business and were approaching their 40s and looked at their father and said, "Well why does he have to take this crap from our uncle?" And there was a very interesting dynamic because the uncles didn't really necessarily want to question it. It was in balance for them. And what tended to throw that out of balance was the family side of business and became quite, quite interesting, and in a funny way, probably was retelling a story that had existed before any of these children were in the business -- because, remember, the uncle was bought out! So how that got transferred into the next generation for me has been a- has been- has been very interesting to me. But I could see it happening, and I wrote in my journal what I thought would 10 years, 20 years down the line occur. I was quite accurate, much to my own disappointment and chagrin, because it was not what I would have wanted to happen. But the irony is that my father, in addition to not knowing exactly what to call him -- a salesman isn't really enough, entrepreneur is not really accurate ; owner operator, well, he was a partner also -- and, you know, he was a bit of- I think he had a bit of a Napoleonic complex, which I think to some degree was necessary. But I don't know what the word was for all that and it was- it was, it was fascinating to watch it when it worked, it was. And the irony is that as my father, I looked at this man and was amazed at his sense of timing, which he never spoke with me about, no matter how many times I tried to create a conversation ; he seemed not to be aware of it, but I found that to be really quite impossible to believe. And ironically, here we are at the end of an industry. Perfect timing. And he seemed to be one of these entrepreneurs, and again, there must have been many of them who just found themselves- this is not what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to be a raconteur -- I'm not sure he knew what that word meant, but what he thought it meant was he wanted to stay in Hollywood and produce talent. This is a guy who I never saw read a book or really go out to the movies unless he was asked to. And yet this is what he claimed that he- he really wanted to have done. And had he done it, he would have probably made hundreds of millions of dollars because of residuals that we didn't have in the rag business, you know? But he left the business in 2005, and there was really no business left. He- he really rode the horse... I mean, you know, he didn't know what business cycles were, didn't really care. But the irony is that he- his timing in life was perfect. There were no rag dealers in Allentown, there were no places to sell rags in Allentown, there were no places to sell rags in the United States -- except the one that he kept closer to himself and his children. The irony of that is fascinating. And- GE: And now, when you described him as a "salesman", are you saying that at both ends that he was the one who really had the relationship with the textile factories as well as the relationship with Crane or whoever else was buying the product? BS: Yeah. He purchased and sold. GE: And he had both relationships? BS: Both relationships. So maybe, more accurately, he was the relationship man and the other guy was the packing guy. I don't know. But it requires relationships on both sides. GE: Right. And he did- And he was the person who really maintained and developed those relationships on both sides. BS: Yeah. And as the business grew those relationships- you know, I remember that he came and said, "I took my first million dollar order." That was like a huge thing. GE: Sure. So, Bruce, in terms of the industries that they sold to, we certainly have heard about Crane and paper -- who were some of the other major industries that they sold to? And then if you could explain a little bit, you were beginning- you did hit it somewhat, I'm not sure if I have it fully crystallized. In Europe, it sounded like it was a little bit different there ; there they were separating the fibers. So if you wanted to just share with us, are there any other industries that use this as their raw material? And then also to just tell us a little bit about the difference with the European... BS: So in the United States, we- there was, there was a- In the United States, we manufactured at a scale that the Europeans didn't recognize was much grander, and the advantage to that was if you were purchasing something that was waste, the volume of that waste was on a scale that Europe didn't operate at. In Europe, if somebody bought twenty-six bales of something, twenty six thousand pounds of something, [it] would be a big order. Their trucks were smaller. And, you know, in this period of time, we went from trucks that were thirty-six feet up to fifty -- fifty feet. Fifty-two feet. But in Europe, you found that there were many more manufacturers, users of textile, and after the war my speculation is that capital was less important than labor. So you had cities- towns- Prato, which was just north of Florence. You had Bella, which was just south of Lake Como in the north. And these cities- towns became specialty centers. So in Biella, they use cotton thread, cotton fiber. And they made a finer denier yarn. In... in Prato they used- made yarn that was heavier, like- and what would be the difference? So, for instance, the Germans were using this respun textile for making athletic socks or sweatshirts, where the refined nature of the yarn was not as important as the bulk, and you can hide in the bulk the impurities or inconsistencies that you might not have in a first quality yarn, which would be three times the price. So they're developed an industry. And I remember going to Prato, which was outside of Florence, north of Florence, and I would see a little two passenger truck with a flatbed and big potato sack on the back, like two-hundred pound sack. And they pull into a driveway of a residential area, the door would slide open, and what looked like the front of the house was, in fact, a concrete industrial space about the size of two or three garages. And I had the occasion to be invited, and what you saw was a family sitting on the floor, and what had happened was they had gone to the local rag dealer, bought a wholesale bag of rags, which was mixed t-shirt material, and then they would separate those colors into different colors and they would get different prices for it. And when we saw them doing that in 1960, we had the idea of doing that on a much larger scale and began separating to color -- and not only separating to color, but separating to fiber. So we would- and then, they got- if that wasn't complicated enough, they got the idea that if they sold it to the paper company and the color was bleachable, instead of paying a premium -- thirty five cents for a piece of cotton that was all white -- they could pay twenty-two cents, put six cents of bleaching into it, and have a two cent discount. But that meant that Sheftel & ; Sons would have to be able to identify and sell bleachable colors in a packet- in a pack, packing. And then what would happen with the non-bleachable? Well, there's the beginning of the story of sorting to color for Europe. They didn't care about bleachability. They were looking to make yarn. So the dark blue that didn't bleach went to a blue that was not bleachable and was then sold by a salesman of ours who traveled to Europe twice a year to Bella, to Prato, called on these factories with a card of colors, with different shades. Why? Because different manufacturers had different shades of color and we were known for blending them. And we would make bales of one color, but we would pack them all into the same number. And these people were really quite genius and this is an opportunity to tell a story that won't get lost to history. Many years into this process, towards the end, we had a salesman, a German, a man who had come from Germany and was- would never ask a question of a- a client. And I couldn't understand, you know, how do you learn what your client does? How do you know? I'm sure- I'm sure he had his ways, but you certainly didn't ask them. And I was naive and I would ask anybody anything, basically. So I asked one day about this. And this is now in Spain, in a company of maybe four people, maybe two and a half million dollars of borrowed money to buy- maybe not borrowed money, but they had a machine. And if you imagine walking into a- into an industrial facility that was so clean that you could have had lunch on the- on the concrete, they had a fork truck driver, five silos, and an area that had these cards that we would ship to them with different colors on them, and other people too. And I wanted to know how he made color- colored yarn. He'd get an order from Spain- he was in Spain. He'd get an order from Germany for blue socks and it would have a color swatch. And we went in, he asked me, I still remember, I said purple and he said, "Oh, purple's difficult." And he has this, you know, it looked like they took this out of his first I don't know what- factory or maybe he put this together when he was six years old. I don't know. It was cubby holes -- and the whole factory is absolutely modern, with no people in it. This is 1980s, so there's no robots yet, but-- spotless. And here's this old wooden thing nailed together, I don't know what, with a place for a set of hammers, and in this cloth stuck in each of these cubby holes -- yellows, reds, oranges -- he begins picking it out and putting it down on the table in front of him. I'm standing right there. And then he grabs two- I don't have the name for them, but everybody in America has probably seen this as a demonstration for how they shear sheep. It's these two kind of things that would- and it pulls open- it opens up the yarn, and he pulls it open, he's got now four piles of thread and he's talking in Italian. I don't understand a word he's telling me, but he thinks I understand him perfectly and he is pulling the support, and I'm thinking, "This is Picasso. I'm standing with Picasso." And then he starts picking it up and rolling it into it like a ball and twisting it. And right there in front of me, more miraculous than a perfect egg, he was [like], "Is that the right shade of purple?" Yoo! And I had actually come to ask him if he thought that we could do this with a computer. And you know, he said, "No, it would never happen." Now, he might have been right that it never would happen, because the industry vanished. But he wasn't right that a computer couldn't have taken the readings of all the different colors, blended them and told you what it was. I was right about that. But he couldn't even imagine this because this man was an artist. I mean, there's no real other question about his skills. And, you know, fascinatingly, I want to add one other story. I say that he stood in front of this wall of color that he had received from- it was only at this point two or three other providers like us. And we would be in America, someone would send us a truck of waste, we'd open the truck, take out a bag, thirty five pounds, and we put it on a pallet, put it on- the next one was yellow, we put that on a pallet. But there may be three or four shades of t-shirts being made. How did you know where it went? Now, I don't think anybody really cared about this, but I said that I was a photographer living in New York and I was a color photographer. And that was- my teacher said to me, "Sweetheart, I'm not-" I'm sorry. She said, "Darling, nobody ever makes serious pictures in color." And well, that was that. I nevertheless had this passion for color. And when I came to work in the company, I simply looked at the rags and thought about it through my curiosity. And I wondered how my uncle, who separated the colors and organized them on the charts, how he did that, because when I'd go to Europe, they'd say of all the four people that we get color cards from, yours are the best. Really? It's a commodity item, what are we doing? It couldn't possibly be because my uncle is colorblind. I mean, that doesn't make any sense. And I thought about this for a long time, and I took a Kodak Rattin 12 filter, which allows you to see color the way black and white film sees it. So if you see something red, it's much lighter than something that's blue because the film sees it that way. And I began looking at the colors in the factory that we would store in bins like they would have in the post office or in a commercial laundry. Two hundred pounds at a time until we got a thousand pounds and then we put it together. Now sometimes my uncle would call me out into the factory and say, do these two colors go together? Now there's four people around them and everybody's keeping their mouth shut because he's looking at a yellow bin of two hundred pounds with green. But to him, in his color blindness, they look the same. And he'd look at me and smile and I'd sort of smile and he'd say, "Okay, well, we don't want to put these together." But there was something going on that I sort of was touching on that he couldn't have cared less about. And what I realized was that what my uncle was seeing was color without hue. He was seeing the structure underneath. So when the textile guys in Europe would blend the colors that- they didn't see the color yellow or red or green, they saw the value. They wanted it to be consistent. Without knowing it, my uncle had become a star because he was colorblind and couldn't see the distraction of the color. He actually saw the hue. And I tried to congratulate him to no avail, but I found it fascinating and hope sometime someone else will. GE: Okay. All right, so let me turn this- BS: And the employees who work for that guy are in the factory that's producing the t-shirts, but they're now assigned to just the waist part, and it's as big an operation, I think, as we had over in our hundred and two thousand square feet. But it's- GE: And he still sells it to Crane or whoever? BS: Well, he doesn't sell to Crane anymore. Crane is no longer buying- GE: It's hardly a paper business. BS: Right. So it's not going for paper. It's going, ironically, I think for the fiber content for yarn manufacture. GE: So it's going back to thread. BS: To what we were talking about this, yes. SC: I turned it on and I got a little nervous about that. Okay, so we're going to talk a little bit about your family's [history], as far back as you know. BS: Did we get the products? Did I- we didn't talk about wiping rags and all that sort of stuff. I may have missed that. GE: Tell me what you mean about the products. BS: You were asking about where did this stuff go and... you know. So I told some anecdotes about one portion of the business, but when that truck would arrive and the door would open and we began to separate out what the cloth was, some went for fiber recycling that we just described ; but the larger pieces, they went for wiping cloths, and that was an entirely different industry in America. You know, there was- there's a wiping rag association called I Whack 'Em [?]. We never were quite sure who they whacked, but... GE: And so that would be the rags that you'd buy at Home Depot? BS: Yes. Now they- now they're buying basically cloth made in Pakistan, but- you still can see a bag of rags, especially at the paint stores, is where you'll see them. Yeah. And so that's- that's a business that's probably seventy to a hundred million dollars, probably dominated by one or two guys. So that's where that would come from. So in other words, you're separating by- by color, by fiber content, by size. And, you know, you're doing this with people who didn't graduate junior high school -- and weren't appreciated, I don't think, except that they came to work. SC: Yeah, okay. Should we start with the history? BS: Ah, you wanna- Are we going back to the history? SC: Yeah, let's go back, just go back to your- you've talked about your father's history to a certain extent, so we should start with him and then go to your mother's family. So what do you know about your father's family as far back- You talked a little bit about that, but as far back as you know? BS: As I said that my father did not dwell in the land of reminiscence, I didn't- I was young when my grandfather died, I was about eight or ten, so I didn't have that opportunity to question them ; and when I did question them, my father wasn't especially interested. What I learned was that they came from Vilna, I believe, or in a town near Vilna. And my grandfather had left to follow his older cousin- older sister and maybe her husband. And he did that because he was avoiding inscription in the- either the White or the Red Army. So that would have been around, I'm assuming, 1917 [or] 1914 during the revolution. I heard that they were in the cattle business, but as I said, I don't know whether that meant they had a cow in the front yard of the shtetl or whether they had ten cows. I have a side of my family that went to Rhodesia and then eventually back to the United States, and they were in the cattle business. They were cousins in New York who owned the Black Angus Restaurant in the '40s and '50s, and is that an accident or did they know something about beef? I know he didn't know much about women because he gave one prospective date a piece of beef, couldn't understand why she wouldn't answer his calls. He said, "It was a nice piece of meat!" Yeah, so I don't know. My uncles or whoever they were on the West Coast were really kind of interesting, wild kind of guys. They owned a lot of cattle, they had large herds, and they were just sort of fun guys. I don't know. I didn't know them very well. My father had gone during the war to California and then Seattle to train to become a mechanic on B-29s. And he had not finished college, he'd gone to Temple for a year, and then they conscripted him in some kind of military program where he did mechanics, learned how to become a- an engine mechanic, and then he was selected for B-29 training. So he didn't see action which was very, very okay with him. I wouldn't say he was unpatriotic, but I don't think he was a man who wanted to die in the war. He wanted to live. And he became very close to- I don't know if she was his cousin or whatever, but a- to- to a relative on the West Coast, and they remained lifelong friends. So she was- her maiden name was Sheftel, and these were her two brothers, and I believe that they came to the United States from South Africa, obviously before the war, because she was married and a little older than my dad. So he came back to the- to the East Coast to go to work with his father --I think he wanted to stay in Hollywood -- and met my mother. And he met my mother on a blind date, I believe that a local Allentownian- Max Stettner had a date with my mother, but somehow or another Max Stettner and the real estate developer, good- Goodman, I can't remember Mr. Goodman's first name, but I know his father was quite successful during the Prohibition with the Bermans. And so Bernie Berman and Max Stettner and- that's not Jerry- Murray Goodman! Were all kind of buddies and they met someone in New York and one thing led to another, my mother was invited to a date and Max Stettner- he didn't stand her up, but he couldn't make the date. And, somehow or another, my father's name was injected in there and she was sick and couldn't make the date. And I don't know, I think it was- the Kobrovskys She met somebody who invited her to come back to Allentown, that there were a lot of single men, and somehow or another in the story my father came up and one thing led to the next, and they did go on this date. I think they were in- in New York. My father told my mother he was going to marry her, and six months later they got engaged and were married very soon after that. So, you know, it's kind of another one of these mythical tales that actually are not mythical. And they lived together for their entire adult life. My mother is 89, still alive. My father... it's 2017, is 93. He has dementia, but lives in the same facility as my mother and doesn't- it's peculiar to speak with him because he- he- he's not- he doesn't- he doesn't remember. Anybody who's lived with someone with dementia, you know, it's a jumbled up, mess of scraps. And it's odd to look at him -- but he continues to talk. My mother says it's gibberish, but he chats away, he's in good health. He had a hip replaced just as he slipped into a deeper dementia -- in that would have been four years ago, May 22nd, 2013. And he's still alive and has no clue why you want to ask him about his leg and he's still fascinating. You know he- he is some kind of weird charmer. And that's- I think that was part of his business success, is that he- he had a temper, he had a personality and a temperament, I know that he wanted to succeed, and whatever else you might say about how he lived his life, there was a magic to how he ran his business. You know, right now we're living through a- administration with Donald Trump as our president, and there are certain traits which Donald Trump seems to have on exhibition. And my mother and I often talk about my father maybe having similar traits, magic thinking or whatever. In my father's case, they were linked to- you may have had some magic thoughts, but more of his thoughts were actually completed and created. And how he got there, maybe it shared a certain resemblance, but seems universally to have been thought of as "charming". But now I find that a lot of people think he was something other than that. But you could still compress it under the title, you know, "determined". So my mother lived in Allentown, participated in Hadassah, she was president of Hadassah. And I think if we look at the city today, which will not resemble the city I grew up in, all the West End and what appeared to be very modest homes are the homes of people who ran businesses, employed a hundred people or two hundred people, and I think the modesty belies some kind of- these people operated their businesses, they- they weren't looking to sell out and be bought out, they- they operated them. And the complexion of the city is quite different, unrecognizable really, to the days that I grew up when the sign said, " Allentown, 1960, All American City." You know, it was a city of people making things, doing- having people working for them. And we- what did we do? We made rags. I mean- it's very- it's a peculiar transition for someone like- like myself who's thoughtful about it because we- we don't seem to be making anything. And it's ironic how the industry that I caught the tail end of would really- well, you know, what was it? And yet it was really quite fascinating, all the different things that people made from fiber. SC: How about your mother's past? Do you have anything to add about your mother's background? Not really? BS: My mother, you know, grew up in- my mother grew up in Brooklyn. She was the daughter and sister of Jack Lobell, who was also a merchant. He had his own business, he sold Pearl buttons and apparently was quite a character, you know -- he had- his first wife and two children died in the 1914, 1917 flu epidemic. And then he began dating my mother's mother and she died in 1945, leaving Gene and Ronnie, who was 17 -- my mother was 17. And then he remarried about six weeks later-- my mother's mother's brother's wife, so her aunt. And my mother resented that for a good part of her life and not quite sure why, but he- you know she- she loved him very much, and he apparently was quite a character. He was a salesman on the road, but a businessman, independent. And he- there's a story that they called him in Chicago and told him that Hilda was quite ill and he should come as quickly as he could. And he was home that evening and no one seemed to notice because, you know, she recovered from whatever it was and- It was a long- apparently, it was a long and not very nice illness. She was in the house for quite a few years with some caretakers, and he tried to have a- as my mother says, a "quack doctor" take care of her in a rented hotel room. So when the end came, my grandfather took my mother and her sisters to Atlantic City the day that her mother died. And he said, "Look, you know, I want to live." Now, remember, it was after the war, 1945, and- and so him marrying this woman -- who he knew, her husband had died -- probably is not so awful, but for some reason it was devastating for my mother. And I think my mother set her sights on a man who would provide security for her. And when she met my father in 1950 he loaned her or left his car with her the first night. And the story that she tells is that her brother leaned out the window in Brooklyn, saw the Cadillac or Buick convertible and said, "What did you do for that?" And that sort of started their relationship. I mean, looking at the pictures, they had a great time. So I think that she brought with her a certain sense of tenacity, of you know," I'm going to do what I need to do to get this done." And I think she provided a balance to him that maybe looking back, we could miss, but that during the time I think they thought they were doing quite well. In the pictures of where they went, you know 1954 they took a 17 hour trip -- for my father it was business, but my mother was excitement. They went to Italy, to Spain. When I went back in 1980- something, I met with a man who, when he recognized the name and put my father together with my name, began patting me on the back and laughing and remembering a trip they took through the Alpine- Alpine Mountains between Bella and Florence. That apparently was a bit of a rip roaring trip. Apparently a lot of grappa was drunk on that trip, and I don't mean on the side of the road. So, you know, it was- they did business, but they also seem to be living a life that was really quite exciting. I hear they were in Europe and I don't know how many people travel to Europe. I remember my father and mother taking me to- in- in Milan, to the opera house, to the- I remember the opera house, I don't have to remember the name. But yeah, it was pretty- I think quite an interesting life for a man who was selling rags, you know. That's kind of the inside joke. SC: So- BS: Textile Reclamation Engineer, I think, was the title. SC: That's perfect. So I have two questions for you. The first one is, what do you value most in life? BS: Me personally? I think probably honesty. Trustfulness. Telling- Telling what's honest, but in the context that it was- I can understand that your- your truth may be different, but tell me it, unadorned, and you'll have my respect. SC: And secondly, what has made you feel the most creative in life? BS: It's an interesting question because I've been in situations where I didn't understand that I was creative -- which really is kind of silly when you look back over- I was a drummer in a band here in Allentown, photographer -- I photographed Queen Elizabeth, I think I was twelve, I was the youngest photographer to commercially do that. But I never thought of myself, per se, as creative ; I never been given that permission. I thought that was a- an exalted role that I wasn't worthy of. So it's interesting that you would ask me that. And I- I must say that having worked with photographers in New York and not working as a photographer in the- at the local level, but, you know, with a connection to Richard Avedon and Lisette Model, people who are in museums at this point, the story of understanding how my uncle saw color is very gratifying for me, to understand that creativity is in the person and we bring it to anything and everywhere that people go, and that creative people are not necessarily creative no matter what they do -- or the opposite, that they are in fact creative no matter what they're doing. And I've lived pretty much without this idea that if you- you know what, you remind me of a story. When I was in South Carolina running the factory in the '80s, I met a young woman who was working for the television station and she explained to me that she was working in a very creative field. And I said to her, "What field is that?" She said, "Television!" I looked at her and I said, "You know, you sort of surprised me." She goes, "Why? Everybody knows television's creative." I said, "Really? I don't know a lot about electronics. I'm fascinated by how we found brass and copper in the mountains. I mean, some men have a vision of a big cooking pot. I don't know how that happened, but I always thought of television as electrons running through a wire and that- not really seeming too creative." And she said, "What, are you kidding?" I said, "Actually, I'm not kidding at all. I don't think what- television by itself is creative. It's- It's who's using it and how they're doing it." And she said, "Well, that's just silly." I said, "Really?" And then I think I told her the story of my uncle. So, yeah, I think creativity and what made me feel accomplished was recognizing the creativity that my uncle brought to his work without any- And you know, I have a hard time with the artists of New York with describing pictures. It seems to me that the picture should be able to speak for itself, and that's why we use the camera to communicate that way. We seem now to be explaining why the photographer's picture is interesting. My uncle had no consciousness about what he was doing as creative, but it was. And my uncle was celebrated in that he could sit at a piano and play a tune by ear. So clearly the man had a creative consciousness. He didn't get the encouragement in his life. He didn't live what we would call a creative life. But clearly he was, and I think recognizing that was a really big deal for me. SC: Yes. And this is the history that speaks for itself, what we're doing. Yes. Thank you so much. BS: All the questions answered? SC: Yes. GE: Thank you. It's a good story, and that's what it's all about. SC: So I'm just going to wait for about 10 seconds. GE: First did you stop recording. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:52:28
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Bruce Sheftel, May 31st, 2017
Description
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Bruce Sheftel talks about how his grandfather (Abe), a young immigrant, started as a junkman with his brother-in-law. Later, when Abe’s sons (Milt and Harold) were in the business, they bought textile waste from the many mills that existed up and down the Lehigh river. Harold focused inside the factory/warehouse and Milt (Bruce’s father) focused outside the factory selling the processed textile waste to customers. Their main customer was Crane & Company who used cotton rags to make US currency. The final generation in this business (sons of Milt and Harold) witnessed the disappearance of the U.S. textile waste industry as the textile and needle trade industry moved overseas.
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LVTNT-15
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2017-05-31
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://textile.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/2a2c42e3451ae42b62fa7d27819d2c87.png
90cff8079fc53c047f22c031ee8aa158
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Title
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
Oral History
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
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Marshall Silverstein
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-09.xml
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5.4 July 30, 2013 Marshall Silverstein, July 30, 2013 LVTNT-09 1:35:47 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Marshall Silverstein Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 SilversteinMarshall_20130730.mp4 1.0:|11(7)|26(15)|37(13)|56(2)|67(11)|82(3)|95(9)|108(11)|123(3)|138(19)|151(3)|166(12)|181(3)|196(14)|211(12)|226(12)|245(4)|264(2)|279(4)|290(7)|303(17)|318(2)|341(7)|358(2)|367(10)|380(4)|391(9)|406(2)|413(15)|432(3)|449(14)|460(12)|465(10)|478(16)|491(15)|502(8)|519(16)|532(6)|549(11)|562(14)|575(15)|584(5)|593(13)|614(3)|627(14)|650(9)|669(2)|680(6)|691(11)|700(12)|715(5)|728(2)|741(11)|756(13)|775(12)|804(10)|827(5)|840(5)|863(9)|882(10)|897(14)|916(2)|935(7)|946(6)|959(10)|974(2)|989(4)|1000(14)|1009(8)|1024(7)|1045(5)|1058(12)|1071(13)|1084(9)|1101(5)|1118(8)|1139(13)|1158(15)|1181(8)|1192(3)|1203(2)|1218(7)|1237(4)|1252(5)|1269(11)|1286(12)|1309(15)|1328(8)|1343(2)|1354(11)|1367(13)|1384(6)|1397(4)|1412(12)|1427(5)|1442(5) 0 https://youtu.be/9qeV-YaV90s YouTube video 0 Introduction—Marshall Silverstein's Childhood in Brooklyn, NY SC: What is your full name? 
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 ; MS: The name is Marshall Silverstein. I have a question. You talk about family, and you’re here about business. My family was not in business, but my wife’s family was in business. So we’ll have to differentiate. 
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 ; SC: We’ll talk about both. But, still, to see the family histories, this is a “life history” type of oral history also.
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 ; MS: I was born in Brooklyn on August 18, 1931. Lived in Brooklyn with my parents and my sister and many family members. Whoever didn’t have a home or didn’t know what to do with their lives came to my mother, and she solved all their problems. At one time we had thirteen people living there and one bathroom! 
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 ; SC: Do you remember the address in Brooklyn? 0 156 Education and Work Experience MS: I studied at the Hebrew Institute of Boro Park - which was a Modern Orthodox school. From there I went to Brooklyn Technical High School, which was one of the three most premier schools in the whole five boroughs. Unfortunately, I got sick during the second year and couldn’t travel downtown any longer. So I went to New Utrecht High School. I finished up in the New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn. You want to know about jobs? During the time I went to New Utrecht High School, I delivered orders for the local vegetable man, during the week -- on a bicycle with a basket.
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 ; GE: During high school?
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 ; MS: Yes, and also worked in New York City, my junior year in high school, delivering laces throughout NYC by hand-truck. At the end of my senior year, I worked at the Pioneer Country Club in the Catskills as a busboy and a waiter. 0 461 North American Aviation Industrial MS: After graduating from school, I got a job in Los Angeles with North American Aviation in industrial engineering, which I had studied at Columbia. I was there a year when once again, my ego was pumped up by the leader of the department said he was leaving, and he asked me to come with him. We both went to Atomics International, where we manufactured atomic reactors for school and experimental purposes. An interesting thing was that I had to get a clearance for atomic energy, which is even higher than top secret. They invaded my block in Brooklyn, knocking on every door to find out, “Who was this guy? What has he done?” 0 538 The Pennsburg Handbag Factory MS: I was there for about a year, and I got a letter from my father-in-law, who manufactured handbags, saying his brother was retiring, and he would very much like for me to work with him. I had told him years before that I would. But after I was out on my own. I knew that I could make a living for my family without any help from anyone else. I would consider it - if he would. He said if you want to do it, this is the time to do it. I need the help now. 0 630 Transitioning from Manufacturer to Consultant MS: When I was 50, my partner and I had a disagreement – we were the best partners there could be, but he wanted to expand, and I just didn’t feel it was worthwhile. We had two factories and six contractors – and enough is enough. So we said, “Let’s ask our kids if they have any interest.” He had four kids, and four kids were interested. I had three kids and no kids were interested. I did the fair thing and said that he should be able to buy it from me, and he did. We closed the deal on a Friday afternoon, and I said, “I’m free now, I could be semi-retired. I could read books now“. At two o’clock on Thursday afternoon, the next week, I was lying on that couch over there – reading my book, and I got a call from First Valley Bank in Bethlehem. “Marshall, since you have nothing to do with your time, would you like to do some consulting for us?” I said, “Jim, I don’t know what you are talking about.” So he said, “Come on over, “ and we talked. They had some small business loans that weren’t performing. All they had were numbers to look at. They wanted to know why they weren’t performing. I agreed with them, and I took my first assignment. From there on, I was a consultant – no more lying on the couch, reading books. 0 794 Handbags & ; Luggage MS: While we were in the manufacturing business, we started an outlet store and then multiplied those outlet stores by thirteen. It was a very successful business.
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 ; SC: What was the name of the outlet store and the pocketbook business?
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 ; MS: The name of the outlet stores was “Handbags and Luggage.” We had a store here in Allentown. The major store was in Reading in the outlet stores. And, you’re looking at the guy who talked them into opening that big outlet. They had that store there, and I tried to get into that store. It was all their own merchandise, and they wouldn’t let me in. The CEO there was a very nice guy, Manfred O. Lee (nothing to do with the jeans that they produced.) I met him for breakfast once every couple of weeks, they had a cafeteria there. I tried to outline to him why it would be profitable with all the empty buildings that he had there because they sent their work down South to manufacture. He turned me down all the time. I got a call, he said, “Marshall, we will have a handbag store here before Christmas. Do you want to come in?” Sure, and that evolved from a handbag store to-- not mine, the handbag store was mine – to furniture, everything you could think of, tools, whatever . . . very successful. 0 988 Connections with Samsung, Macy's, Gimbels, Korvette, and Marshalls MS: The handbag business - we were bought out by Samsung. I had never heard the word before. They called me up ; they wanted me to sell the handbags. I said we were manufacturers, not salespeople. I would introduce them to whatever salespeople he wanted. When I first met him, I said, “Hello, Mr. Sung.” He looked at me and said, “My name is not Sung. I represent Samsung.” “Who is Samsung?” We all know who Samsung is today. 
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 ; GE: Although I didn’t know about that type of product.
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 ; MS: They were manufacturing handbags, but were unable to produce – sell them where they wanted. They had heard about my sales ability – not the mom and pop stores, but the shoe chains and major department stores – that’s where they wanted to go.
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 ; SC: What major department stores?
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 ; MS: Macy’s, Gimbels, Korvette, everyone that you know of, we sold to. 0 1126 Silverstein Family History MS: My father was born in Austria and came here when he was a kid. My mother was born in NYC. I’ll give you a little background. My grandfather, my father’s father, must have been wealthy in Europe. They sent him to the United States to study, back in the early 1900s. After he finished studying, he went back to Europe. They financed him in a candy store. He ate the store broke! He ate up all the products! They came here – my father was about ten years old, or something like that. My grandfather was in the piece goods business, selling remnants.
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 ; GE: Material?
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 ; MS: Yes. My father eventually did the same thing. He would go into one factory and see what they had leftover and go to another factory and tell them this is what I got? Do you want it? This is the price. So he’d go from one factory to another. My father’s name was Herman, and my mother’s name was Anna. His parents were Sam and Goldie. 0 1572 Bruch Family History SC: Can you talk about your wife’s family, her background now, her family – what you know about the family business?
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 ; MS: Let’s take her father, his name was William. He had a brother - they both worked in the handbag factory. Nina’s mother – her [last] name was Agaschevitz, shortened to Agus. A whole bunch of extremely intelligent people – book-wise. [Nina’s mother’s family] One of them wasn’t so smart on the streets. One was a doctor in Brooklyn. He was the smartest one of all. He studied the Tanakh and everything, all the books. He was a brilliant man. Another brother was a professor at Yeshiva University.
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 ; GE: I’m sorry. These are Nina’s siblings or Nina’s parents’ siblings? 
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 ; MS: Nina’s mother’s siblings. 0 1794 Marshall Silverstein's Wife—Nina (Pauline) Silverstein nee Bruch SC: What’s your wife’s full name? What is Nina’s full name? 
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 ; MS: Her birth name or current? 
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 ; SC: Birth name.
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 ; MS: Nina Silverstein.
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 ; GE: Her name now is Silverstein, what was her birth name? 
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 ; MS: Bruch. But it wasn’t Nina. It was Pauline.
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 ; GE: So Nina is a nickname.
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 ; MS: Yes, when she was born, one of her uncles – the one afflicted with Agent Orange – started calling her Nina or Ninya. Nina went to Shulamith School in Brooklyn. That’s the same kind of school that I went to, only it was for girls, mine was for boys. Then she went to Ramaz in NYC for High School, and also college was City College of the City of New York, etc, etc. 0 2196 Involvement in the Allentown and Jewish Communities SC: [Y]ou talked a little bit about the Jewish community and her work in it, a little bit about your work in it, was there anything else that the two of you did within the community of Allentown and in the Jewish community?
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 ; MS: Yes, most of our work, but not all of it, was in the Jewish community, as we were a minority, a very low percentage of the population, so any help you could do, you did. I, myself, was involved in many organizations, including B'nai B'rith, the Jewish War Veterans and most of all, the Jewish Day School. In fact, I was President of the Jewish Day School in the late 70’s – I don’t remember the exact year. We were members of Temple Beth El. At Temple Beth El they asked me to be the President of the Cemetery Association, which I did for twenty-five to thirty years. It was a thankless job, everyone said, but for me, it gave me great pleasure because I didn’t have to go to meetings or anything like that. I did the work, raised a lot of money. We had lot sales [burial plots]. 0 2451 Development of the Lehigh Valley SC: [H]ow do you think the Lehigh Valley has changed in these years?
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 ; MS: When I came to Allentown, it was a sleepy little town. You could virtually cross Tilghman Street with your eyes closed. There were no cars coming from either way. Today, it ain’t so baby! At one time, I would say that I knew every Jewish person in town. We were members of three Synagogues. Ultimately, we broke it down to one. It was a wonderful, wonderful community. Everybody was for each other. Now I don’t know, maybe it’s because of our age. I know very few people as compared to that time. But Nina and I were involved in all the Crosses: the Blue Cross, the Green Cross, the Red Cross, whatever. 0 2578 Affiliations with Community Synagogues SC: What were the names of the Synagogues that you belonged to? Which Synagogue did you join?
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 ; MS: The main one was Temple Beth El, also Sons of Israel and Knesseth Israel (KI as it’s currently known.) We were very much involved with the Jewish community. We had a daughter, and when she graduated from college, she toured Europe and went to Israel and liked it there and settled there. We have been to Israel numerous times before. Between my daughter and whatever we were, we have been to Israel about thirty times. 0 2628 Diminishing Opportunities in Allentown, PA SC: Do you think there is a reason that the next generation isn’t staying in Allentown? At least that's what we've been hearing over and over again, that people have moved away, your children’s generation.
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 ; MS: Let’s take a look, what was the leading industry? When we moved here, one of the leading industries - I’m not talking about Air Products, Bethlehem Steel, or whatever. The industries that I knew were the garment trade industry. All those people that you talked about at the meeting at the JCC I know or knew all of them intimately…it’s not so anymore. When the kids grew up, like my kids, this one is a mathematician, this one is a business person. I guess they don’t have the opportunity in Allentown like they have in Washington, DC – where one of them is. 0 2711 Marshall Silverstein's Children SC: What is that child’s name in Washington?
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 ; MS: Elissa Drucker. Another one in Palo Alto, California, in the midst of – what do you call that industry?
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 ; GE: High Tech?
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 ; MS: High Tech Industry. You walk down the street, and there is the head of Microsoft - shopping in the same store and drugstores. You don’t have that anymore. The last one of them was Bell Labs, part of Western Electric. It’s a different kind of town.
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 ; SC: Is that a son or daughter in California?
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 ; MS: That’s a daughter.
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 ; SC: What’s her name?
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 ; MS: Lori Blum. And then I have a son, Ronald, who is with Amtrak for about twenty-five years. 0 2985 Origins of the Family Business MS: My father-in-law, I can’t tell you why he started the business, but I can imagine. These garment trades – it didn’t take too much money. You bought a couple of sewing machines and put them in the basement and got your wife to sew. He was manufacturing in Connecticut. He had a problem with the Union there. He had a contractor who was making handbags for him in Pennsburg. He was manufacturing in Connecticut, and he might have had one of two other contractors. The plant in Pennsburg – the company- went bankrupt. He got permission from the Referee in Bankruptcy to go into the [Pennsburg] factory and finish off all the bags that they had there.
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 ; GE: So they were in Chapter 11? 
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 ; MS: Yeah the ones in Pennsburg….no maybe Chapter 7 or 13 -Going out of business. He went in there and finished off the bags, and he liked the setup – the life in Pennsburg very much. Between that and the Union in Connecticut, he decided to close in Connecticut and made a deal with the Referee in Bankruptcy and bought all the machines and equipment in Pennsburg, and rented the building in Pennsburg, where he manufactured handbags. 0 3363 Charisma la Sac GE: So you made pocketbooks. Were they under store labels?
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 ; MS: It was under the name we named them, which was “Charisma la Sac.”
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 ; GE: Is that two words?
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 ; MS: Three words.
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 ; GE: Charisma la Sac. When I see the name today, I see the name La Sac.
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 ; MS: In that industry, everybody copied from everybody else. It wasn’t patented or copyrighted.
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 ; GE: So it was under your own brand name, not a store brand.
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 ; MS: No, No, No.
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 ; GE: You made pocketbooks. Were there other related products that you made? 0 3454 Employees MS: We had a line of bags and umbrellas where we personalized it with your name.
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 ; GE: Was it personalized by an embroiderer? Or some sort of marker?
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 ; MS: Yes. A girl with beautiful handwriting.
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 ; GE: Like a calligrapher. You were a manufacturer, so did you have your own sales force?
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 ; MS: Absolutely! When you say a sales force, we had a couple salesmen on our payroll, but most of the salespeople were on commission. 
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 ; GE: They were reps, sales reps?
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 ; MS: Yes, all over the country.
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 ; GE: And they represented your merchandise as well as others.
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 ; MS: Correct.
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 ; GE: How large were you? How many people worked there?
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 ; MS: In the factory in Red Hill?
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 ; GE: About?
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 ; MS: I’m just trying to picture it….70. For a while, we had another factory in Wilkes-Barre. But we really depended on contractors to fill what we couldn’t produce. 0 3734 Make Well Leather Goods Company GE: So, therefore, what you're telling me is that you didn’t just do fashion bags. You also did bags that would be used by companies? Businesses.
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 ; MS: No, they were fashion bags. They chose them out of a line. For instance, Mack Trucks, we didn’t make anything special for them other than fasten the bulldog on. They had to let us know beforehand because when we manufactured it, you didn’t want to put it through the lining on the inside, so we would put it through and then fill in the lining. So, it was just for them.
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 ; GE: But they were fashion bags? The materials that you were using, was it leather?
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 ; MS: Initially, we used the highest grade of vinyl, but expanded vinyl. I would defy anyone – without smelling – to tell if it’s leather or vinyl. The only way they can tell is if there happens to have a scratch on it then, it’s an animal. 0 3914 Silverstein's Partner—Izzy Bruch GE: So Marshall, you’re saying that the part of the business that you oversaw more was the financial and also the sales side. How about your brother-in-law?
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 ; MS: My brother-in-law took care of the manufacturing, and also he designed some bags, and he cut samples to make the bags. We had a high-class designer in New York, called Magda McKay. We had a line of Magda McKay bags.
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 ; SC: Is that Magda McKay?
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 ; MS: The name just came out. Do you know what they asked me, “What address was I born at.” And you know, I named it just like that.
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 ; GE: When your brother-in-law bought you out, did they stay in business for a long time?
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 ; MS: Not very long. They went bankrupt. 0 4050 Transitioning from Manufacturing to Sales/The End of the Business GE: When did you stop manufacturing, and why did you stop manufacturing?
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 ; MS: About thirty-five years ago – 1975/1980 – somewhere in that vicinity is when we stopped manufacturing. We were of the belief – we wanted to be “made in USA.” We went to that for years and found competition very, very strong because they [overseas] had it made for half price. Then one year JCPenney – these kinds of stores order six months in advance – not like Macy’s who wants it next week. JCPenney would ordinarily buy from me two, maximum three styles, because they couldn’t put all their eggs in one basket because they bought from many people. So if somebody failed to deliver, they are not out of business. This particular year, JCPenney walked in and loved everything we had and bought thirteen styles. Thirteen styles to us was overwhelming if we are going to continue to produce for Macy’s and Gimbels – so we had to go overseas. We went overseas, and we had these thirteen bags made by a factory, and the next year is when Samsung came to us. Why? Because they have company spies. They knew every style we made there, how many of each color, and they felt if I could sell ours then I could sell theirs. 0 4488 Handbags & ; Luggage (cont'd) GE: Tell us a little bit about the Outlet Stores? When did you start that? I know you said that actually became the largest part.
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 ; MS: Yes, and by the way, in the contract that I had with Samsung, it said that I would devote my prime hours to Samsung, and I’m the one who decides what the prime hours are. I devote my attention to it, but I could run this outlet store business. And the contract was drawn up legally, so the verbiage was good. Now, what was your question?
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 ; GE: With the outlet stores, I was wondering when that started, what did that trajectory look like?
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 ; MS: I would say it started about 1965/1970.
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 ; GE: Did there seem to be any conflict? In other words, did the other stores have a problem?
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 ; MS: No. I didn’t sell my merchandise or very little of my merchandise. I went into New York and just like Marshall’s did – buying excess inventory. I bought their inventory. 0 4804 End of the VF Anchor Store MS: I will tell you the story of the demise of our business. My partner wanted to expand and expand. I told him we don't have the wherewithal to do it and it's a wrong move. I told him that I would sell off the twelve stores other than VF and work VF, what do they call it today, 24-7. And, well that didn't happen, and so when I left, he started paying attention to new stores to open and he forgot about and didn't pay much attention to VF. And like I said before, VF was the bread and butter and the other ones were little cookies. VF was very proud of what they had. I remember walking in there with Nina about five months later, and I stood in the middle of the store, and I cried. And Nina said what's wrong. I said they are going to kick him out of here any day, and that's what happened. And that's what really triggered the demise of losing that anchor store. 0 4928 Impact of the Disappearance of the Textile Industry on the Lehigh Valley's Communities GE: Yeah, how do you think the broader community, not just the Lehigh Valley, has been affected by, but even maybe the broader area has been affected by the disappearance of this industry?
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 ; MS: I think it's been affected tremendously and when I say tremendously, I am thinking tremendously. There are no more businesses like we knew back then. Mom and pop factories. There were dozens of contractors around here. They weren't handbag contractors around here, but there were blouse contractors and blouse manufacturers and bathing suit manufacturers. There was a company called Neat-Knits who manufactured women's blouses. I forget the name of the other one, the bathing suits, and Mark Stutz's father was in that business and It's a whole different atmosphere now. There we counted on our fingers, we wrote numbers on a piece of paper and we added them up. Now, if you don't have an iPad and a computer, you can't do anything. 0 5181 Jewish Involvement in the Textile & ; Needle-Trade Industries GE: Why do you think the Jews tended to be overrepresented in this industry? Why do you think they were maybe overrepresented in this industry as opposed to any other industry? What do you think?
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 ; MS: I mentioned something before, and I'll say it again. To get into the garment trade you didn't have to have a lot of money comparatively to start a business. You couldn't start a steel mill if you didn't have money and you couldn't start a department store like Hudson's, if you didn't have money. But you could buy a table, and a pair of shears, and six sewing machines, and some thread and sew up. . . sew up blouses, sew up pocketbooks, sew up anything. And Jews tend to be entrepreneurs, and not many of them had money when they came out from the other country or whatever. And this gave them an opportunity to start their own business. 0 5268 Silverstein's Values and Creative Inspirations SC: I have a couple other questions, and one of them is, what has your family valued in life most and what do you value in life most?
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 ; MS: In one word it is FAMILY. I came from Los Angeles because I told you about my father-in-law asking me, but also our first child was born, and I felt children deserve grandparents and grandparents deserve grandchildren. And to this day, my family is everything. Oh, certainly, friends are very important, but family is primary.
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 ; SC: And what has made you feel the most creative, artistic in a metaphoric sense, but creative in life?
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 ; MS: Slightly focused, not slightly . . . I'm very focused on numbers. I can manipulate numbers. For my benefit, meaning, for instance, having thirteen stores. These thirteen stores, when you go in stores, people used to pay cash. Yeah, some credit card, some check, most paid cash. Now, there's a store in Texas, there's a store in Florida. You're not there, and I could tell you, I believe, every dollar that hit a cash register went into our till. 0 MovingImage Marshall Silverstein talks about how he and his brother-in-law joined Marshall’s father-in-law’s business making handbags in Pennsburg, PA. Marshall stayed in that business for 22 years. While running the factory, Marshall and his partner started an outlet handbag and luggage business in Reading, PA. They expanded to thirteen outlet stores. It was a very successful business. After retiring at age fifty, Marshall began doing financial consulting, first with First Valley Bank in Bethlehem, then with other customers. He did financial consulting for another twenty years. Interview with Marshall Silverstein, July 30, 2013 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: What is your full name? MARSHALL SILVERSTEIN: The name is Marshall Silverstein. I have a question. You talk about family, and you're here about business. My family was not in business, but my wife's family was in business. So we'll have to differentiate. SC: We'll talk about both. But, still, to see the family histories, this is a "life history" type of oral history also. MS: I was born in Brooklyn on August 18, 1931. Lived in Brooklyn with my parents and my sister and many family members. Whoever didn't have a home or didn't know what to do with their lives came to my mother, and she solved all their problems. At one time we had thirteen people living there and one bathroom! SC: Do you remember the address in Brooklyn? MS: The first one was 1256 56th Street -- amazing! Yes-- In Brooklyn Borough. Then we moved to 57th Street, 14th and 15th Avenue, I don't remember the address. Then we moved to 55th Street ; that address was 1341 55th Street. SC: Could you talk a little bit about your education and background-- going through until you came to Allentown and beyond? MS: I studied at the Hebrew Institute of Boro Park - which was a Modern Orthodox school. From there I went to Brooklyn Technical High School, which was one of the three most premier schools in the whole five boroughs. Unfortunately, I got sick during the second year and couldn't travel downtown any longer. So I went to New Utrecht High School. I finished up in the New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn. You want to know about jobs? During the time I went to New Utrecht High School, I delivered orders for the local vegetable man, during the week -- on a bicycle with a basket. GAIL EISENBERG: During high school? MS: Yes, and also worked in New York City, my junior year in high school, delivering laces throughout NYC by hand-truck. At the end of my senior year, I worked at the Pioneer Country Club in the Catskills as a busboy and a waiter. I worked there for about five years during the holidays and summers. From there -- the New Utrecht High School - I went to the Fashion Institute of Technology, which was located on one floor of a Central Needle Trade H.S. in NYC, and now occupies a whole square block in New York and is well known. When I graduated from there, I studied management for the needle trades. When I was in my senior term, it was a two year school, I got a call from the Dean of the engineering of the school, who had left the term before and went to York, PA to manage a women's clothing manufacturing facility, and he asked me if I would join him out there, and I did. I was there for six months and was drafted into the service. Notice I said drafted, not volunteered. That was the time of the Korean War. While I was over in Korea, I thought about my future life and thought a four-year degree might be helpful in the future, and I got a long life to live. So, I wrote a letter to Columbia University and told them I would like to study engineering, and they got back to me and said you have to send your files, grades, whatever information. I asked my mother to send them. Lo and behold they wrote back that I was accepted. This was for the February 1954 semester, because I left the service in December of 1953. Speaking of working, I wanted to make some money while I had off -- a month or so - I taught at a driving school -- automobile driving for a month -- it was very hazardous. I studied engineering, and after two years, Nina and I married, and we lived in Manhattan -- -within walking distance to the school. After graduating from school, I got a job in Los Angeles with North American Aviation in industrial engineering, which I had studied at Columbia. I was there a year when once again, my ego was pumped up by the leader of the department said he was leaving, and he asked me to come with him. We both went to Atomics International, where we manufactured atomic reactors for school and experimental purposes. An interesting thing was that I had to get a clearance for atomic energy, which is even higher than top secret. They invaded my block in Brooklyn, knocking on every door to find out, "Who was this guy? What has he done?" I was there for about a year, and I got a letter from my father-in-law, who manufactured handbags, saying his brother was retiring, and he would very much like for me to work with him. I had told him years before that I would. But after I was out on my own. I knew that I could make a living for my family without any help from anyone else. I would consider it - if he would. He said if you want to do it, this is the time to do it. I need the help now. GE: What year is this about? MS: The end of 1958. So, at the end of 1958, Nina and I had our first child. We packed up and moved to Allentown. My father-in-law had a handbag factory in Pennsburg. That is through my first 50 years of life -- working. When I was 50, my partner and I had a disagreement -- we were the best partners there could be, but he wanted to expand, and I just didn't feel it was worthwhile. We had two factories and six contractors -- and enough is enough. So we said, "Let's ask our kids if they have any interest." He had four kids, and four kids were interested. I had three kids and no kids were interested. I did the fair thing and said that he should be able to buy it from me, and he did. We closed the deal on a Friday afternoon, and I said, "I'm free now, I could be semi-retired. I could read books now". At two o'clock on Thursday afternoon, the next week, I was lying on that couch over there -- reading my book, and I got a call from First Valley Bank in Bethlehem. "Marshall, since you have nothing to do with your time, would you like to do some consulting for us?" I said, "Jim, I don't know what you are talking about." So he said, "Come on over, " and we talked. They had some small business loans that weren't performing. All they had were numbers to look at. They wanted to know why they weren't performing. I agreed with them, and I took my first assignment. From there on, I was a consultant -- no more lying on the couch, reading books. Then I met someone who was also a consultant. We became partners in a consulting business. I did that until the age of 70 --- it was good. There is something I left out -- from the manufacturing business. While we were in the manufacturing business, we started an outlet store and then multiplied those outlet stores by thirteen. It was a very successful business. SC: What was the name of the outlet store and the pocketbook business? MS: The name of the outlet stores was "Handbags and Luggage." We had a store here in Allentown. The major store was in Reading in the outlet stores. And, you're looking at the guy who talked them into opening that big outlet. They had that store there, and I tried to get into that store. It was all their own merchandise, and they wouldn't let me in. The CEO there was a very nice guy, Manfred O. Lee (nothing to do with the jeans that they produced.) I met him for breakfast once every couple of weeks, they had a cafeteria there. I tried to outline to him why it would be profitable with all the empty buildings that he had there because they sent their work down South to manufacture. He turned me down all the time. I got a call, he said, "Marshall, we will have a handbag store here before Christmas. Do you want to come in?" Sure, and that evolved from a handbag store to-- not mine, the handbag store was mine -- to furniture, everything you could think of, tools, whatever . . . very successful. One of the first outlet stores in the country, and I think it might have been the biggest at the time. As I said, consulting was my last hurrah. During all this that I told you about, I had my hands in about fifteen other businesses. When people needed money or advice, they asked me to become a partner. I became a partner-- not a working partner-- but with capital or input. It was very, very enjoyable getting along with all the people. SC: Could you also talk about your family background? And we'll go back to business then. Gail will go back to business. MS: Let me just finish off the business. The handbag business - we were bought out by Samsung. I had never heard the word before. They called me up ; they wanted me to sell the handbags. I said we were manufacturers, not salespeople. I would introduce them to whatever salespeople he wanted. When I first met him, I said, "Hello, Mr. Sung." He looked at me and said, "My name is not Sung. I represent Samsung." "Who is Samsung?" We all know who Samsung is today. GE: Although I didn't know about that type of product. MS: They were manufacturing handbags, but were unable to produce -- sell them where they wanted. They had heard about my sales ability -- not the mom and pop stores, but the shoe chains and major department stores -- that's where they wanted to go. SC: What major department stores? MS: Macy's, Gimbels, Korvette, everyone that you know of, we sold to. The best one was Marshalls. They made an agreement with me. They would buy all my leftovers when the season was over. This enabled me to produce to inventory for people like Macy's who placed an order and wanted the stuff the next week. SC: Could you talk a little about your family background? Your parents, grandparents, and names back as far as you know--and what they did and how they were educated. MS: My father was born in Austria and came here when he was a kid. My mother was born in NYC. I'll give you a little background. My grandfather, my father's father, must have been wealthy in Europe. They sent him to the United States to study, back in the early 1900s. After he finished studying, he went back to Europe. They financed him in a candy store. He ate the store broke! He ate up all the products! They came here -- my father was about ten years old, or something like that. My grandfather was in the piece goods business, selling remnants. GE: Material? MS: Yes. My father eventually did the same thing. He would go into one factory and see what they had leftover and go to another factory and tell them this is what I got? Do you want it? This is the price. So he'd go from one factory to another. My father's name was Herman, and my mother's name was Anna. His parents were Sam and Goldie. My mother's parents -- I do not know where they were born. My grandmother's name was Rifka Rachel. My grandfather's name -- I don't remember. I did not know what he did for a living. I know the first I knew of them, my grandmother was living in my house with us. SC: Were they from Austria? MS: I don't know. I have one sister named Doris. You don't want me to go into aunts and uncles? SC: So this was your mother's family? MS: Which? SC: That you've just been talking about. SC: How about your dad's side? MS: I told you about him, his name was Sam. SC: Do you know anything about your father's side? So, you don't know as much about your mother's side. MS: I do know something. They had a restaurant in lower NYC. That's the only thing I know. SC: So all that was your father's side of the family? MS: At first, I talked about my father's parents, who were Sam and Goldie. He was a piece goods guy. SC: So it's in your blood? Textiles and garment industry. MS: Not really, it was a means to make a living. I had no love for it or anything like that. Sure I liked it, but no love, nothing like that. SC: So, as far as any of the jobs, do you know any businesses or employment that any of your aunts and uncles worked in? Is there any connection with what we are looking at in the rest of the family? MS: In my father's family -- one of his brothers sold zippers. Another brother sold insurance, and.. he had two sisters. One sister was a housewife. The other sister had infantile paralysis when she was a kid, and she couldn't get around too much. She had to move to Arizona because of the weather. She remained single. My mother, on the other hand, had a sister. She was a housewife. She had a brother who was a customer peddler who sold house to house -- underwear and whatever have you. I'm trying to think of anybody else in my mother's family. My mother had a brother who was in the garment trade and made blouses. Another brother, who moved out to California, had a completely different life than we have here. I forget the relationship. One was a professor, another one was an attorney for all the stars out in Hollywood. He was a very handsome man. He was the youngest Colonel in the Air Force during WWII. He led one of Doolittle's wings over Tokyo. Really, that's about all I can think of. SC: It seems like a very high achieving family -- both sides. Can you talk about your wife's family, her background now, her family -- what you know about the family business? MS: Let's take her father, his name was William. He had a brother - they both worked in the handbag factory. Nina's mother -- her [last] name was Agaschevitz, shortened to Agus. A whole bunch of extremely intelligent people -- book-wise. [Nina's mother's family] One of them wasn't so smart on the streets. One was a doctor in Brooklyn. He was the smartest one of all. He studied the Tanakh and everything, all the books. He was a brilliant man. Another brother was a professor at Yeshiva University. GE: I'm sorry. These are Nina's siblings or Nina's parents' siblings? MS: Nina's mother's siblings. Another one was Jacob, who was a very well known and respected Rabbi in Baltimore. Another one was Paul. Unfortunately, he contracted Agent Orange in the service. He was an accountant, but he got affected by Agent Orange. She had another sister who was a housewife. Her name was Jean Bruch. Father's name was William Bruch. SC: Can you spell that? For the future, it's good to have names spelled. MS: Are you recording this whole thing? SC: Yes. MS: This is not to be shown to everybody for anything? It's for reference? SC: It's for our reference. It wouldn't be for many years that it will be used. To have it archived. These are histories that need to be preserved. What's your wife's full name? What is Nina's full name? MS: Her birth name or current? SC: Birth name. MS: Nina Silverstein. GE: Her name now is Silverstein, what was her birth name? MS: Bruch. But it wasn't Nina. It was Pauline. GE: So Nina is a nickname. MS: Yes, when she was born, one of her uncles -- the one afflicted with Agent Orange -- started calling her Nina or Ninya. Nina went to Shulamith School in Brooklyn. That's the same kind of school that I went to, only it was for girls, mine was for boys. Then she went to Ramaz in NYC for High School, and also college was City College of the City of New York, etc, etc. Nina did bookkeeping when she graduated school and while we were in California. She was a housewife until my youngest daughter was around eight years old. She was a leader of many organizations around town. She was going to lead a group of [Jewish] Federation people to Israel, but the plans fell through, much to her disliking. She came home and was crying. She had all these plans. SC: Can we talk about Nina and her background or what she did, and your children? MS: As I said, Nina was the leader of many organizations. In fact, she won the George Feldman Award. The George Feldman Award is for a leader under forty. She was supposed to win the first one, but they asked her to take the second one because Arnie Rapapport was turning forty, and he was second in line, and they wanted to get him in. With this trip that I told you about, she came home crying because this agency was not agreeing with her -- trying to think of his name-- head of the Federation at that time. GE: Ivan Schonfeld. MS: No, I'm talking about a volunteer. A lawyer, CPA, and a tax attorney -- I forget. They went into New York City to talk about it, and there was no cooperation. He told her to forget about the trip. He told the travel bureau (it was a wholesale travel bureau.) She came home and was crying because of all the work she had done. I said, "Do you still want to do it?" She said certainly. I said I'll fix it up for you. I called some man in New York -- he was the head of a wholesale travel agency. I sent her in, and she went in, and they had a wonderful trip. She wanted to go into the travel business. She went to school to study travel. She opened a travel agency with Sandy Zales. This goes back almost forty years. She was in business until ten years ago. SC: What was the name of the business? MS: Travel Team. We all had imaginations for naming. I named it Handbags and Luggage. She named it Travel Team. She did this for a long time. A lot of people were very happy with her service, and it was a successful agency. SC: A couple of questions - you talked a little bit about the Jewish community and her work in it, a little bit about your work in it, was there anything else that the two of you did within the community of Allentown and in the Jewish community? MS: Yes, most of our work, but not all of it, was in the Jewish community, as we were a minority, a very low percentage of the population, so any help you could do, you did. I, myself, was involved in many organizations, including B'nai B'rith, the Jewish War Veterans and most of all, the Jewish Day School. In fact, I was President of the Jewish Day School in the late 70's -- I don't remember the exact year. We were members of Temple Beth El. At Temple Beth El they asked me to be the President of the Cemetery Association, which I did for twenty-five to thirty years. It was a thankless job, everyone said, but for me, it gave me great pleasure because I didn't have to go to meetings or anything like that. I did the work, raised a lot of money. We had lot sales [burial plots]. Were you around at that time? GE: No -- or I don't know--.. MS: Lot Sales -- I had a map of the cemetery in my office, downstairs. People came in and picked a cemetery lot. Do you want a funny story? This girl comes in -- we won't mention names -- she looks at the map, and she says, "Let me get my father." Her father was out in the car. So, she shows dad a cemetery lot and says, "What about over here for you and mom." He says, "I think I'd like it over there." This went back and forth. "Pop. What goes here? A pinochle player, a cigar smoker, whatever, I think this would be good for you." He finally said okay.. . but I have to show it to mom. Mom was out in the car. Mom came down and agreed with him and everything. "It's fine--.but she would rather be where the daughter said." After a while mom died, he called me up, "remember the side that I wanted? Let's put her over there." And I'm telling you, if I knew what was going to happen with all these stories down there, I'd have had a tape recorder. We would never have a problem with the budget in Temple Beth El because it would be a hit Broadway show! SC: Since you've come to Allentown, and of course you were married when you came to Allentown, how do you think the Lehigh Valley has changed in these years? MS: When I came to Allentown, it was a sleepy little town. You could virtually cross Tilghman Street with your eyes closed. There were no cars coming from either way. Today, it ain't so baby! At one time, I would say that I knew every Jewish person in town. We were members of three Synagogues. Ultimately, we broke it down to one. It was a wonderful, wonderful community. Everybody was for each other. Now I don't know, maybe it's because of our age. I know very few people as compared to that time. But Nina and I were involved in all the Crosses: the Blue Cross, the Green Cross, the Red Cross, whatever. SC: What were the names of the Synagogues that you belonged to? Which Synagogue did you join? MS: The main one was Temple Beth El, also Sons of Israel and Knesseth Israel (KI as it's currently known.) We were very much involved with the Jewish community. We had a daughter, and when she graduated from college, she toured Europe and went to Israel and liked it there and settled there. We have been to Israel numerous times before. Between my daughter and whatever we were, we have been to Israel about thirty times. SC: Do you think there is a reason that the next generation isn't staying in Allentown? At least that's what we've been hearing over and over again, that people have moved away, your children's generation. MS: Let's take a look, what was the leading industry? When we moved here, one of the leading industries - I'm not talking about Air Products, Bethlehem Steel, or whatever. The industries that I knew were the garment trade industry. All those people that you talked about at the meeting at the JCC I know or knew all of them intimately--it's not so anymore. When the kids grew up, like my kids, this one is a mathematician, this one is a business person. I guess they don't have the opportunity in Allentown like they have in Washington, DC -- where one of them is. SC: What is that child's name in Washington? MS: Elissa Drucker. Another one in Palo Alto, California, in the midst of -- what do you call that industry? GE: High Tech? MS: High Tech Industry. You walk down the street, and there is the head of Microsoft - shopping in the same store and drugstores. You don't have that anymore. The last one of them was Bell Labs, part of Western Electric. It's a different kind of town. SC: Is that a son or daughter in California? MS: That's a daughter. SC: What's her name? MS: Lori Blum. And then I have a son, Ronald, who is with Amtrak for about twenty-five years. Each one of them has been in their job and never changed. GE: Which one lives in Israel? MS: Lori. About ten years ago, she and her family moved to Palo Alto because her husband felt, and rightfully so, that the education was better here -- more opportunities. GE: So they originally lived in Israel and then moved to California? MS: Yes. Take a look at Hamilton Street. You used to go down to Hess's and go shopping there. They had sales--you stood at the door at 4:00 am. You ran to the refrigerator and wrapped your arms around it until the clerk came. There's no such thing anymore. There's no strawberry pie like we had at Hess's downstairs. The other stores were Zollinger and Leh's. Now we go out to the concrete malls with the fountains--no more chandeliers. To me, it's just a different atmosphere. Look where I live. I live at 22nd and Highland. I've lived here almost fifty years now. We had neighbors, they all picked up and (I won't say it) moved to the other side of Cedar Crest Boulevard. Instead of a 2,000 foot house, they have a 4,000-foot house. Instead of a Ford, they have a Lexus and whatever have you. This didn't interest me or Nina. And it's different. GE: I just want to ask some more questions about the business. You said this was your father-in-law - do you want to tell me about the origins of the business? MS: My father-in-law, I can't tell you why he started the business, but I can imagine. These garment trades -- it didn't take too much money. You bought a couple of sewing machines and put them in the basement and got your wife to sew. He was manufacturing in Connecticut. He had a problem with the Union there. He had a contractor who was making handbags for him in Pennsburg. He was manufacturing in Connecticut, and he might have had one of two other contractors. The plant in Pennsburg -- the company- went bankrupt. He got permission from the Referee in Bankruptcy to go into the [Pennsburg] factory and finish off all the bags that they had there. GE: So they were in Chapter 11? MS: Yeah the ones in Pennsburg--.no maybe Chapter 7 or 13 -Going out of business. He went in there and finished off the bags, and he liked the setup -- the life in Pennsburg very much. Between that and the Union in Connecticut, he decided to close in Connecticut and made a deal with the Referee in Bankruptcy and bought all the machines and equipment in Pennsburg, and rented the building in Pennsburg, where he manufactured handbags. What happened in 1958, he wrote me a letter--. GE: Right, that's when you entered. MS: I was in Pennsburg, we were there five or ten years of my time. There became a building available in Red Hill. We bought it at auction, and we owned our own building in Red Hill. That's where we manufactured most of our years of the business. Unfortunately, while we were there, my older daughter (who was about ten years old) was in a Hanukkah play at the Jewish Day School. My father-in-law went to see it, then he left for Brooklyn where his wife lived. I didn't mention, his wife lived in Brooklyn all the time. He stayed in Pennsburg during the week, and she came out for the summertime. So he would go home for the weekends. Hanukkah (is in December), so this is the winter, and unfortunately, he was killed in a car accident on the way home. So we kept the plant going --in Red Hill -- until we sold out to Samsung. GE: I've heard the name Pennsburg, but where is that? MS: Route 29 towards the end. There was a big difference between the two people. One was an entrepreneur, and one was a worker. My father-in-law was an entrepreneur and a very hard worker. GE: And his brother worked for him? MS: Yes. GE: Did you mention that you had a partner? MS: Yes, that is Nina's brother. He was at the factory when I got there. He had been working several years before I got there. GE: Your father-in-law was the originator, and then his brother worked for him. Did you become a partner or owner? MS: Not while my father-in-law was alive. We were workers there, and after he died, obviously, we became the owners. GE: That was you and Nina's brother. MS: Yes, Izzy Bruch. GE: Were there any other family members in the business? MS: No. GE: Did your brother-in-law also live in the area? MS: Yes. GE: Does he still live here in the area? MS: No, he moved to Florida a few years ago. GE: But up until that time, he lived here. So you made pocketbooks. Were they under store labels? MS: It was under the name we named them, which was "Charisma la Sac." GE: Is that two words? MS: Three words. GE: Charisma la Sac. When I see the name today, I see the name La Sac. MS: In that industry, everybody copied from everybody else. It wasn't patented or copyrighted. GE: So it was under your own brand name, not a store brand. MS: No, No, No. GE: You made pocketbooks. Were there other related products that you made? MS: Amy, can you show her the double umbrella? Do we have it hanging there? We had these things made for us, not that we made it. This is the first one. GE: Oh my goodness, I have never seen one. It's interesting. MS: We had a line of bags and umbrellas where we personalized it with your name. GE: Was it personalized by an embroiderer? Or some sort of marker? MS: Yes. A girl with beautiful handwriting. GE: Like a calligrapher. You were a manufacturer, so did you have your own sales force? MS: Absolutely! When you say a sales force, we had a couple salesmen on our payroll, but most of the salespeople were on commission. GE: They were reps, sales reps? MS: Yes, all over the country. GE: And they represented your merchandise as well as others. MS: Correct. GE: How large were you? How many people worked there? MS: In the factory in Red Hill? GE: About? MS: I'm just trying to picture it--.70. For a while, we had another factory in Wilkes-Barre. But we really depended on contractors to fill what we couldn't produce. GE: Like load-leveling? I guess it's called. MS: Right. GE: About how many contractors did you use? MS: We had six. GE: What part of the business did you oversee? MS: I oversaw the business end of the business. GE: Are you saying the financials? MS: Yes, the financials. The sales to large companies, for instance. I had an entry into Macy's warehouse. At Macy's warehouse I would see the inventories they had, and I would write up orders to six to eight stores. At that time they were all over the country. I sold to bigger accounts. GE: Was that you and a couple of salespeople? Did you do the bigger accounts, and the salespeople do the smaller ones? MS: And they did bigger accounts, too. The ones in New York -- I did most of them. They had their cronies that they sold to ..and all over. They did good jobs. You know these golf tournaments that they have? We made bags for Bob Hope Golf Tournaments and things like that. GE: Do you mean golf bags? MS: No, I mean pocketbooks. They have volunteers at the tournament -- so if you are a volunteer, they might give you a t-shirt and a handbag as thanks. We did a lot of bags for Mack Trucks -- we put Bulldogs all over the place. We had Mr. Hanson drive out to Red Hill in his limousine and pick up bags because they were hurting at that moment. GE: And who is Mr. Hanson? MS: The Chairman of Mack Trucks. It was very strange to see a limousine pull up to a shipping dock. GE: So, therefore, what you're telling me is that you didn't just do fashion bags. You also did bags that would be used by companies? Businesses. MS: No, they were fashion bags. They chose them out of a line. For instance, Mack Trucks, we didn't make anything special for them other than fasten the bulldog on. They had to let us know beforehand because when we manufactured it, you didn't want to put it through the lining on the inside, so we would put it through and then fill in the lining. So, it was just for them. GE: But they were fashion bags? The materials that you were using, was it leather? MS: Initially, we used the highest grade of vinyl, but expanded vinyl. I would defy anyone -- without smelling -- to tell if it's leather or vinyl. The only way they can tell is if there happens to have a scratch on it then, it's an animal. And we also made bags of leather. We made both. We also made bags that sold for three dollars a long time ago. Fabric and cheaper vinyl. GE: And all with the same name? MS: Initially, before we got fancy. It was Make Well Leather Goods Company. And then when we got fancy, we changed it to Charisma La Sac. We even had some designers. GE: But, whether it was the three-dollar bag or fifty dollar bag -- it all was the same brand name? MS: The three dollar bag went out of the business. We stuck to the higher priced ones. GE: So Marshall, you're saying that the part of the business that you oversaw more was the financial and also the sales side. How about your brother-in-law? MS: My brother-in-law took care of the manufacturing, and also he designed some bags, and he cut samples to make the bags. We had a high-class designer in New York, called Magda McKay. We had a line of Magda McKay bags. SC: Is that Magda McKay? MS: The name just came out. Do you know what they asked me, "What address was I born at." And you know, I named it just like that. GE: When your brother-in-law bought you out, did they stay in business for a long time? MS: Not very long. They went bankrupt. GE: About how many years later? MS: About three quarters of a year. It was our difference in philosophy that he wanted, and I said we couldn't do it. He wanted to be the King -- at this point, we were not manufacturing any longer. We had the retail stores -- the discount stores. He wanted to be "King of the Discount Stores." We didn't have the foundation to support it. GE: When did you stop manufacturing, and why did you stop manufacturing? MS: About thirty-five years ago -- 1975/1980 -- somewhere in that vicinity is when we stopped manufacturing. We were of the belief -- we wanted to be "made in USA." We went to that for years and found competition very, very strong because they [overseas] had it made for half price. Then one year JCPenney -- these kinds of stores order six months in advance -- not like Macy's who wants it next week. JCPenney would ordinarily buy from me two, maximum three styles, because they couldn't put all their eggs in one basket because they bought from many people. So if somebody failed to deliver, they are not out of business. This particular year, JCPenney walked in and loved everything we had and bought thirteen styles. Thirteen styles to us was overwhelming if we are going to continue to produce for Macy's and Gimbels -- so we had to go overseas. We went overseas, and we had these thirteen bags made by a factory, and the next year is when Samsung came to us. Why? Because they have company spies. They knew every style we made there, how many of each color, and they felt if I could sell ours then I could sell theirs. GE: So If I understand correctly, Samsung then became the manufacturer, and you really became the distribution channel for them? MS: No, No, No, Samsung was a manufacturer. They couldn't sell anything. They had this idle production, they made bags for us. We still sold it on the "Charisma la Sac" -- that was it. GE: After that, you basically gave them entry into those stores. And, they provided the merchandise for you. MS: What they did was they bought our factory so we couldn't produce anymore. They bought our name, and they bought me. They wouldn't even buy my partner. But I said I wouldn't go without my partner. They said, "You sign a contract with us, and we have to send it to Korea, and if approved, you can do anything you want here -- you can hire your partner." So I had a three-year contract. After about a year and a half, I was called to their office in New Jersey -- located right before the George Washington Bridge. The President of Samsung America and his wife and family attended one of our Seder's here -- that's how close we were. But, an outfit like that is all business. Not necessarily smart. They called me in, and I got there maybe ten o'clock in the morning. The secretary said your partner is on the phone. He said, "Guess what? We got security here with canine dogs. Samsung has taken over the warehouse." I said, " yeah?" "What should I do?" he says. I told him to go to our lawyer, who is around the corner. I told him to get a "Cease and desist." I went into the meeting, and they told me very politely, "Your services are no longer necessary." So I was literally fired. Why? Well, you got us into Irving Shoes, got us into Sears, we're in J.C. Penney's, we're here, we're there, we're everywhere. Why do we need you? And they were right, providing they had inventory. But, I was dealing now with six months in advance orders. What they found out was they weren't buying Samsung, they were buying me -- on my word. In other words, they had explicit faith [in me], that over all these years, I delivered what and when I said I would deliver! They couldn't take the chance to find out about these guys, and they were out of business in the handbag business. The rest of the business should be mine - the sugar mines, the salt mines, they manufacture trains, everything! They were out of business. They couldn't get the business. GE: Tell us a little bit about the Outlet Stores? When did you start that? I know you said that actually became the largest part. MS: Yes, and by the way, in the contract that I had with Samsung, it said that I would devote my prime hours to Samsung, and I'm the one who decides what the prime hours are. I devote my attention to it, but I could run this outlet store business. And the contract was drawn up legally, so the verbiage was good. Now, what was your question? GE: With the outlet stores, I was wondering when that started, what did that trajectory look like? MS: I would say it started about 1965/1970. GE: Did there seem to be any conflict? In other words, did the other stores have a problem? MS: No. I didn't sell my merchandise or very little of my merchandise. I went into New York and just like Marshall's did -- buying excess inventory. I bought their inventory. GE: I thought it was for your product. It wasn't for your product? MS: Well we had some of our products there. GE: That wasn't the bulk. MS: We had a vast store in Reading, and we also sold luggage. We didn't manufacture the luggage, but we sold almost as much luggage as we did handbags. Better names. SC: Was that the hey-day of Reading as an outlet center? MS: When I started there, it was the one store. After I started there, they added stores - then it became their hey-day. And believe me - I got plenty of thanks from them. It was quite an accomplishment! GE: So you were there before Lee? MS: NO, NO, NO, Lee is VF. They had their store - a big, tremendous store. Then they put stores in all the buildings that they had. GE: This is in the other buildings. I know that there still is a luggage store. That's the store you started. MS: Right now, the President of VF there is also the President of Samsonite. GE: Basically, you're saying that the business model was that you bought inventory -- the leftover inventory from some of the different manufacturers at the end of their season. MS: Not necessarily at the end of their season. Whenever I walked in, they had plenty to sell. GE: But you were able to get them at a better price. MS: Oh, a much better price. Most of it was for cash. I used to go to Merchant's bank -- every Monday afternoon, I got $25,000.00 in cash. That's when a dollar was something. I went into New York and bought what I could. On Wednesday, I went back and deposited into the account what I didn't spend. GE: Are there any other stories? Interesting stories, whether it's about the outlets or the handbag manufacturer -- that you want to share with us? MS: Some stuff I don't want to talk about. I'll talk about... I told you the story of Samsung. I will tell you the story of the demise of our business. My partner wanted to expand and expand. I told him we don't have the wherewithal to do it and it's a wrong move. I told him that I would sell off the twelve stores other than VF and work VF, what do they call it today, 24-7. And, well that didn't happen, and so when I left, he started paying attention to new stores to open and he forgot about and didn't pay much attention to VF. And like I said before, VF was the bread and butter and the other ones were little cookies. VF was very proud of what they had. I remember walking in there with Nina about five months later, and I stood in the middle of the store, and I cried. And Nina said what's wrong. I said they are going to kick him out of here any day, and that's what happened. And that's what really triggered the demise of losing that anchor store. But the only thing I could think of . . . nothing from him-- I'm a very even person. GE: Yeah, how do you think the broader community, not just the Lehigh Valley, has been affected by, but even maybe the broader area has been affected by the disappearance of this industry? MS: I think it's been affected tremendously and when I say tremendously, I am thinking tremendously. There are no more businesses like we knew back then. Mom and pop factories. There were dozens of contractors around here. They weren't handbag contractors around here, but there were blouse contractors and blouse manufacturers and bathing suit manufacturers. There was a company called Neat-Knits who manufactured women's blouses. I forget the name of the other one, the bathing suits, and Mark Stutz's father was in that business and It's a whole different atmosphere now. There we counted on our fingers, we wrote numbers on a piece of paper and we added them up. Now, if you don't have an iPad and a computer, you can't do anything. Yeah. And I'll tell you, we will have one of the first manufacturers that had a computer. And I respect that. But you can't rely on that to do everything for you. GE: How about even just the economic well-being of this community? Do you think it's been altered or things move on. MS: It's hard for me to say because I'm on one side of town, and I'm not affected too much about the economy over here. Not too much affected, but I've seen the other side of town, the people starving. They're on welfare, they're on food stamps, they're on unemployment. And we didn't have that back then. We sure had some minor stuff, but not the overwhelming majority. Because I know some guy is now completing his third year of unemployment, not because there isn't a job available. He makes more money on unemployment than he would make working. The economy. Look what happened to downtown Allentown. When . . . it went to Hell. Starting with the Americus Hotel, which used to be a beautiful hotel. It gave me an opportunity. I did a lot of real estate, I bought buildings for a song downtown. When I say a song, I mean a song. Maybe it's going to pick up now with the new arena, the rebuilding of Allentown. But it's now which mall am I going to go to. GE: Are you still involved in the real estate down there? MS: No, I sold everything when Nina got dementia, severe dementia. I felt it's time to forget about that and pay attention to my wife. SC: So were you an investor in the Americus Hotel? MS: No, no, no, no, no. I had a building right across the street. SC: Oh, OK. MS: That's why that came to mind. GE: Why do you think the Jews tended to be overrepresented in this industry? GE: Why do you think they were maybe overrepresented in this industry as opposed to any other industry? What do you think? MS: I mentioned something before, and I'll say it again. To get into the garment trade you didn't have to have a lot of money comparatively to start a business. You couldn't start a steel mill if you didn't have money and you couldn't start a department store like Hudson's, if you didn't have money. But you could buy a table, and a pair of shears, and six sewing machines, and some thread and sew up. . . sew up blouses, sew up pocketbooks, sew up anything. And Jews tend to be entrepreneurs, and not many of them had money when they came out from the other country or whatever. And this gave them an opportunity to start their own business. GE: Good. Good. SC: I have a couple other questions, and one of them is, what has your family valued in life most and what do you value in life most? MS: In one word it is FAMILY. I came from Los Angeles because I told you about my father-in-law asking me, but also our first child was born, and I felt children deserve grandparents and grandparents deserve grandchildren. And to this day, my family is everything. Oh, certainly, friends are very important, but family is primary. SC: And what has made you feel the most creative, artistic in a metaphoric sense, but creative in life? MS: Slightly focused, not slightly . . . I'm very focused on numbers. I can manipulate numbers. For my benefit, meaning, for instance, having thirteen stores. These thirteen stores, when you go in stores, people used to pay cash. Yeah, some credit card, some check, most paid cash. Now, there's a store in Texas, there's a store in Florida. You're not there, and I could tell you, I believe, every dollar that hit a cash register went into our till. I don't know how many dollars didn't hit the cash register because you know employee theft is higher than customer theft. What I did was I had detectives come in to try and steal something and see how observant people were. I had-- what do they call it-- subliminal music in the stores, made and created for us. GE: Wait a minute, for what purpose was the music? MS: The subliminal part said stealing wins you a trip to jail. Are you by any chance chewing gum, and that's for the employees. Are there any bulbs out in the store? Anything I wanted to get to them that was important. GE: Interesting. MS: Just like when you go to the movie theater, they may blow the popcorn your way and don't they sell the Coke subliminally? Yes, they do. But I was able to maneuver money. When I need money, people wanted to invest. I wouldn't have any of it. I would go to the bank. Work with banks. I did very well with them. In fact, the Temple that we built, they asked me to get the money to build it. I got a deal for the Temple, the bankers didn't believe existed. One of our members owns part of a bank, he wouldn't believe the contract that we got. I said I'll show it to you in writing when I have it. And then the Temple asked me to monitor the spending of the money and keep track of it, etc. I said, only if you let me set up my system with the. . . I wouldn't do it without it. Oh, certainly,what's the big deal? The big deal is you have people working for you that are going to protest. Sure enough, they did, because the checks and balances that were in there were unbelievable, and it was after, just after, two outfits,a synagogue and a JCC, I think,in Philadelphia were hit by their executive director and where a lot of money was stolen. This money that we took in, it was virtually impossible for anybody to get away with it. They might get away with it for a month until you got your statement saying you owe one hundred dollars. Well, I gave you fifty last time. Well, we don't have the 50. That just couldn't happen. I'm very happy that we went through this over, what, a five year period or something. Nobody said, hey, you intermingled money, where's this hundred dollars from there? So I'm good with money. In fact, my consulting business was mainly getting money for businesses from banks-- not insurance companies, not loan sharks, from banks. And when I walked in, I said,they are good for the money. I'm not saying they didn't check, you know, but they felt confident. Other times I said the bank could beware, but you're on your own. You know, I'm just bringing them to you. GE: And so, in a sense, your comparative advantage or your strength that way is that you're really savvy and you really understand the inner-workings of the financial statements in a way and really understanding the money flows. SC: And that is artistic. Yeah. Oh, that is artistic. GE: Yeah, it is. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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Marshall Silverstein, July 30, 2013
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Marshall Silverstein talks about how he and his brother-in-law joined Marshall’s father-in-law’s business making handbags in Pennsburg, PA. Marshall stayed in that business for 22 years. While running the factory, Marshall and his partner started an outlet handbag and luggage business in Reading, PA. They expanded to thirteen outlet stores. It was a very successful business. After retiring at age fifty, Marshall began doing financial consulting, first with First Valley Bank in Bethlehem, then with other customers. He did financial consulting for another twenty years.
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2013-07-30
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archies
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
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Marty Spiro
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5.4 June 23, 2016 Marty Spiro, June 23, 2016 LVTNT-34 00:46:51 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Marty Spiro Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 SpiroMarty_20160623.mp4 1.0:|11(2)|30(2)|45(8)|64(12)|81(2)|96(9)|115(5)|134(2)|153(6)|172(2)|191(13)|212(8)|231(3)|252(5)|269(13)|286(7)|303(10)|322(10)|341(7)|360(5)|377(14)|398(11)|419(8)|438(17)|453(12)|470(14)|489(4)|506(6)|521(13)|540(3)|557(11)|576(8)|591(8)|612(5)|627(14)|642(8)|665(6)|690(15)|725(13)|746(12)|765(9)|804(2)|825(5)|848(8)|881(9)|896(5)|911(6) 0 https://youtu.be/bWPHZ8lGbjQ YouTube video 0 Introduction—Marty Spiro's Family History SC: Today is June 23, 2016. An interview with Marty Spiro. Could you tell me your full name, and when you were born and where you were born first.
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 ; MS: Martin Fred Spiro. Born in Brooklyn, New York, 1933.
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 ; SC: And could you talk about your early life as far back as you know, and in doing so then perhaps start with your parents, grandparents, as many as you know, where they were from, when they came to this country, and then anything that you know about them: their education, what they did in life.
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 ; MS: Okay. Well, in 1905, my paternal grandfather came to New York, couldn't speak English. Came from Lodz, Poland, and became a peddler. and I asked him years later, I said, ‘Grandpa, you couldn’t speak English. How could you be a peddler and sell clothing?’ And he smiled and said ‘I went to the new Italian district in New York where they couldn’t speak English, and they thought I was the American.’ So in a few years he started a business, a knitting mill business, with his two brothers-in-law and became very successful. My maternal grandfather came from Munkacs, Hungary, about the same time, as a kid, he was 10 years old and was going to visit his uncle for the summer in New York, decided he never wanted to go back. 0 285 The 60s: Early Business Ventures MS: And after college, I worked at Otis Elevator for years and decided it wasn't for me ; I was an industrial engineer but I saw that in a large corporation, I didn't have the personality or the social skills to advance in the huge corporation like that. So around 1960, the opportunity came in Allentown with my brother-in-law, and I started a T-shirt factory, a small T-shirt factory. My brother-in-law is Dave Sussman. And we started about 1960 and struggled because we really didn’t know too much about the business. Everything we made we lost in mistakes. But about two years later, we started making money and became very profitable, and we did very well. And about 17 years later, we decided to split. My brother-in-law wanted to go into more styled goods - higher risk, higher profit. I was more conservative. I was content to be in the basic, simple, sportswear business where it never went out of style, and you didn’t have as much risk, didn’t have as much profit - that’s fine with me. So we each went our separate ways, and then I bought one of our contractor’s factories, called Hy Litwak, so I bought his factory, and it turned out, we found out early, Dave and I, he was very good on the outside. He was good at selling ; I was worse than terrible at selling, awful. I was very good at running the factory, where that was his shortcoming. So it was a good partnership: he was on the outside, and I was on the inside. 0 456 A Lucky Break—Meeting and Forging a Friendship with Department Store Buyer, Candy Seward MS: And about a year later, after I went on my own, I got a call out of the blue. And this is relevant to the book The Outliers by...
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 ; SC: Malcolm Gladwell.
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 ; MS: That’s right, Malcolm Gladwell, where his thesis is that people who really have made it, all have gotten help of one kind or another, either from people, or from situations, or from just luck. Well I had luck. A year after I went on my own, I got a phone call. The lady said that ‘my name is Candy Seward. I’m the buyer for Tallhimers. I've been trying to find out where your new place was.’ So I said, I know who you are. I’ve seen your name on orders for many years. She said ‘I’d like to see you in New York next week. I'll be in New York for Market Week, and I have an office at the AMC building,’ the Associated Merchandise Corporation. They were New York buyers for major department stores around the country. The largest being Federated Department Stores. So she said ‘my office is on the 11th floor, and I'd like to see you at whatever time.’ And I said sure. So I went in and met her, and she showed me what she wanted and writes out an order for about 400 dozen, a very large order. And I said ‘do you want a sample before I make it?’ She said ‘no, just ship me the same thing you’ve been shipping for years, it’ll be fine.’ So I did, and I had no illusions that I had sold her, that I became a salesman. She bought from me, but I didn't sell to her. So I never went after the other Federated on the 7th ave, seventh floor or any of the other department stores. Because I still felt after 17 years, you know, I’m not going to fool myself, I don’t know how to sell, so I never went after anybody else. 0 1054 Selling to Donna Mateer SC: Okay, would you go back and talk about your anecdote about Philadelphia?
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 ; MS: In Philadelphia, Mike Miller, my Pennsylvania salesman, said ‘I’m going next week to see Donna Matier at Strawbridge and Clothier there. She's a very good buyer, she's never bought from me. I go every year, she's very polite, looks at the line and gives me time and never buys, but I never give up. So she never buys, I never give up, so someday I'll get it when she needs me.’ So I said ‘okay Mike. So if she turned you down again, go through this ritual: ask her if she's going next week to the Omni Hotel in Florida for the import show, and she will say yes because all the AMC buyers are going to Florida, and after she says yes, say do you know Candy? You don't need a last name. It's like Madonna or Cher, you know no last name needed, do you know Candy? And she will say yes. Then the third thing is, ask Candy about our company.’ And he came back, and I said what happened? She didn't buy, and I said, did you go through the questions? He said ‘yes’ I did. And I said why don’t we see what happens. Two weeks later I get a call: ‘My name is Donna Mateer, I’m the buyer from Strawbridge and Clothier. I'll be in New York at the AMC building. I forgot what floor she was on and I’d like to see you.’ So I go, and she gives me a large order, and then I went back, I show it to Mike, and I said it is your account, you get the commissions, but she said she'd rather deal with the owner of the factory than the salesman. So he said great. So as long as I stayed in business, she became a very large customer and got to know her and her husband. 0 1214 "Marty the Knockoff Man" MS: And then a few years later, I had what some people would call an epiphany. I was in New York, Candy wanted me to make some new styles for her. So I made it, I made a sample, I brought it in, and I'm showing it to her, and I said this garment that was knitted was on a thirty-six gauge interlock machine with thirty singles comb cotton. And she said, look, I know what you're saying, don't tell anybody else that. I said ‘why not? Aren’t they interested in what they’re buying?’ She said ‘no,’ she said ‘I’ll tell you what they’re interested in. They're interested in good reviews from the merchandise manager every six months, promotions, bonuses, and raises. They don't care what machine made this garment.’ I said ‘oh my God, this is, why didn’t I know this 20 years ago, I could have been a salesman.’ So she said ‘your job is not selling garments, your job is to make the buyer look like a star in her department store. If you do that, the business will come. You make her look good where she can get good reviews, promotions, raises, and bonuses and you'll do well.’ 0 1606 From Sportswear to Banking—Becoming the Director of the American Bank MS: It lasted for a long time, and 1982 I discovered I had a gift for analyzing bank stocks, financial statements. And I started investing in that. And without this one lady, leveraging Candy, I could analyze all I wanted, I wouldn’t have any money to buy. So I was able to buy bank stocks, and in the five years, I was doing better investing than I was in the factory, so I sold my factory in 1987, and got out of that business. And then went into bank investing and went on the boards of a couple of banks. Then about nineteen or twenty years ago, Mark Jaindl, who was doing the same thing as I, as well as being in the turkey business, he was investing in bank stocks-- Mort Levy had introduced us a few years ago. We hit it off. He would analyze a financial statement, I would make notes, and then we’d compare, and we worked together very well for five years. Then Mark left the family business. He went to work as an investment banker in New Jersey for a large firm and they bought other companies. And one of the companies they bought was a company in Texas that had a contract with the federal government to rationalize all these threats that they closed down and that meltdown when the thrifts were borrowing short and lending long and the interest rates rose, and they were losing money and some of them were seized by the government. 0 1807 Family History (cont'd) SC: Could we go back beginning to tell names of your parents, grandparents, etc. If you know actually when they came, you did say that, where they came from, if you didn't say it.
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 ; MS: Yeah, I told you that my paternal grandfather came from Lodz, Poland. My maternal grandfather came from Munkacs, Hungary.
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 ; SC: What were their names?
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 ; MS: My maternal grandfather was Max Weinberger, and my grandfather, my father's father, was Harry Spiro, and went by his Yiddish name, Yicheel, so my father and my Uncle Manny used to call him ‘Cheel.’
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 ; SC: Do you know their wives’ names?
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 ; MS: Yes.
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 ; SC: Their maiden names?
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 ; MS: My grandmother's, my mother's mother's maiden name was Goodfriend, and my father's, my grandmother, my father's mother was the Throap or Trop. 0 2212 Jack Spiro's Knitting Mill in Lowell, MA GE: So now this is actually about your, really more about your dad, I had a couple of questions. I thought that was really interesting that you mentioned that there were incentives that you went to Lowell, your family and do you know anything about the incentives-- was that from, who that was . . . how that was structured . . . how that worked that your dad set this knitting mill up in Lowell, Massachusetts because that's obviously the big textile area before Brooklyn. 
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 ; MS: There might have been tax incentives in Massachusetts for them to come up. I'm sure there must have been tax incentives. And I think the state paid to move the factory up there.
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 ; GE: Okay, okay, and so your family was there it sounded like for about 15 years?
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 ; MS: 1936 to 1950.
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 ; GE: Okay, so about 14 years, and then you said they came here and they opened a knitting mill, is that correct? T-shirt?
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 ; MS: Well they opened...my uncle opened a knitting mill as part of his business...
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 ; GE: Right, right.
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 ; MS: ...and my father worked for him.
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 ; GE: Okay, so it was a knitting mill, not a T-shirt company.
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 ; MS: No, it was part of the T-shirt company. 0 2321 1960: Starting the Business with Closeout Cloth GE: And what you and your brother-in-law started was that similar to that T-shirt business?
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 ; MS: No, no. What we did, we bought closeout cloth. Somebody made a mistake. The shade of blue was a slight different from what the buyer wanted, they wouldn’t take it, so we went to dealers who bought that, and there was a big one in Allentown, S. Levine and Sons. We did business with Levines and New York fabric companies that bought closeout cloth, so we had a big break on the cloth. The labor we had to pay the same as anybody else, but a big [cost] break was the cloth. And on the main floor, budget sportswear if the shade of blue was a little bit off, it didn’t matter. Blue was blue. So we just make sure that if there were 30 stores, one shade of blue would go to one store and another, so you wouldn’t have twenty different shades of blue in the same rack- - it looks awful. So that was our big edge on cloth. So when the lady brought me that skirt to make, it was like the cost was like 90% cloth was our big…
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 ; GE: Competitive advantage.
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 ; MS: ...advantage. And the sewing was practically nothing, so we had a tremendous profit item on that one. That was great. 0 2464 Business Timeline GE: Okay, and so just to get a little bit of a timetable then you were in business with your brother-in-law from 1960 to 1977.
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 ; MS: Yes.
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 ; GE: And then on your own from 1977 to 1987?
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 ; MS: Yes.
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 ; GE: And then at that point you sold your business, and I'm assuming that was early enough that your business was able to sell at a good price?
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 ; MS: Yes. And I had no idea, but it wasn't too long after that, three years after that, that all that business moved to the Orient… 0 2511 Marty Spiro's Contractors GE: Right, so some of the contractors that you worked with, some of the sewing contractors that you were giving them business in the area, who were some of those names?
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 ; MS: One was, let’s see, I know one was Reilly [?], but I know some went to Gerson Lazar, who needed some business, and then a fella named Mickey Stupak in Allentown. And there was a place in Egypt, Pennsylvania. I forgot the fella’s name, but we used him, and we used Hy Litwak before his factory and then Shirley Israelite had a factory, a contracting factory, we used her. And those are the ones that come to mind.
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 ; GE: Right, okay, okay, good so you kept, you became their customer for a while.
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 ; MS: Yes. 0 2686 Marty Spiro's Creative Inspirations and Values SC: So the last two questions, first of all, what has made you feel the most creative in your life? 
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 ; MS: Creative? Well I guess in the business you’re supposed to say I guess being financially successful, it gives you a sense of self-worth. It isn’t the money, it's just knowing that you’ve accomplished something with your life, been creative. If I had made less money, I would have had the same satisfaction. But knowing that I succeeded in what I did, that's what gives me some pleasure.
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 ; SC: And the last one is what you value most in life?
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 ; MS: I always say seeing that my children and my grandson have grown up to be wonderful people, and my daughter-in-law is a wonderful person. 0 MovingImage Marty Spiro talks about being a manufacturer in women’s popular priced sportswear. After about twenty years in business, Marty serendipitously developed a close business relationship with Candy Seward, top buyer at Thalhimers Department Store, based in Richmond, VA. Candy had a national reputation for being the number one buyer in the country. So when Candy endorsed Marty and his product line, buyers from other department stores listened. Marty’s business grew tremendously. Interview with Marty Spiro, June 23, 2016 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is June 23, 2016. An interview with Marty Spiro. Could you tell me your full name, and when you were born and where you were born first. MARTY SPIRO: Martin Fred Spiro. Born in Brooklyn, New York, 1933. SC: And could you talk about your early life as far back as you know, and in doing so then perhaps start with your parents, grandparents, as many as you know, where they were from, when they came to this country, and then anything that you know about them: their education, what they did in life. MS: Okay. Well, in 1905, my paternal grandfather came to New York, couldn't speak English. Came from Lodz, Poland, and became a peddler. and I asked him years later, I said, 'Grandpa, you couldn't speak English. How could you be a peddler and sell clothing?' And he smiled and said 'I went to the new Italian district in New York where they couldn't speak English, and they thought I was the American.' So in a few years he started a business, a knitting mill business, with his two brothers-in-law and became very successful. My maternal grandfather came from Munkacs, Hungary, about the same time, as a kid, he was 10 years old and was going to visit his uncle for the summer in New York, decided he never wanted to go back. So he stayed here, and my mother was born here. My father was born in Lodz. A year after my grandfather came here, my grandfather had enough money to send for my grandmother and my father, so they came over, and they had three more children born in this country. And the knitting mill was very successful. In 1936, they were given a lot of incentives to move to Massachusetts. So when I was three years old, we moved to Lowell, Massachusetts. And in New York, the name was Spiro {saying the "I" as a long E sound}, and in Lowell, everybody said Spiro saying the "I" as a long I sound }. So my father said okay sounds okay, but I have relatives who were Spiro {long E}, my sons went back to Spiro {long E}, and I have relatives in France who were Spira, S-P-I-R-A. What happened was three brothers left Lodz around the same time in the early 1900s. One went to France, one went to Canada, and my grandfather went to New York. So I have relations in Canada and in France who I've met. And I grew up in Lowell, went to Lowell High School, and around the time I was 17, the knitting business failed, and my father, his end was running the factory so he could get jobs running factories, which he did. And then a year later, my uncle had a T-shirt factory in Allentown where they bought cloth, cut it, and sewed it. And when my father became available, they asked him to come down. They bought knitting machines, and my father ran the knitting mill. And about that time, I went off to college. And after college, I worked at Otis Elevator for years and decided it wasn't for me ; I was an industrial engineer but I saw that in a large corporation, I didn't have the personality or the social skills to advance in the huge corporation like that. So around 1960, the opportunity came in Allentown with my brother-in-law, and I started a T-shirt factory, a small T-shirt factory. My brother-in-law is Dave Sussman. And we started about 1960 and struggled because we really didn't know too much about the business. Everything we made we lost in mistakes. But about two years later, we started making money and became very profitable, and we did very well. And about 17 years later, we decided to split. My brother-in-law wanted to go into more styled goods - higher risk, higher profit. I was more conservative. I was content to be in the basic, simple, sportswear business where it never went out of style, and you didn't have as much risk, didn't have as much profit - that's fine with me. So we each went our separate ways, and then I bought one of our contractor's factories, called Hy Litwak, so I bought his factory, and it turned out, we found out early, Dave and I, he was very good on the outside. He was good at selling ; I was worse than terrible at selling, awful. I was very good at running the factory, where that was his shortcoming. So it was a good partnership: he was on the outside, and I was on the inside. It worked very well. And when we decided to split, he found somebody to run the factory and I hired salesmen. And it was going along very well. He was probably doing better than we did before. I was doing as well as I did before. I was happy. And then I had enough business to keep the factory going. And about a year later, after I went on my own, I got a call out of the blue. And this is relevant to the book The Outliers by... SC: Malcolm Gladwell. MS: That's right, Malcolm Gladwell, where his thesis is that people who really have made it, all have gotten help of one kind or another, either from people, or from situations, or from just luck. Well I had luck. A year after I went on my own, I got a phone call. The lady said that 'my name is Candy Seward. I'm the buyer for Tallhimers. I've been trying to find out where your new place was.' So I said, I know who you are. I've seen your name on orders for many years. She said 'I'd like to see you in New York next week. I'll be in New York for Market Week, and I have an office at the AMC building,' the Associated Merchandise Corporation. They were New York buyers for major department stores around the country. The largest being Federated Department Stores. So she said 'my office is on the 11th floor, and I'd like to see you at whatever time.' And I said sure. So I went in and met her, and she showed me what she wanted and writes out an order for about 400 dozen, a very large order. And I said 'do you want a sample before I make it?' She said 'no, just ship me the same thing you've been shipping for years, it'll be fine.' So I did, and I had no illusions that I had sold her, that I became a salesman. She bought from me, but I didn't sell to her. So I never went after the other Federated on the 7th ave, seventh floor or any of the other department stores. Because I still felt after 17 years, you know, I'm not going to fool myself, I don't know how to sell, so I never went after anybody else. So I shipped her the goods, went very well, she gave me reorders, she gave me orders for other styles, and I had to put on a night shift. And that was fine. And then we're going along like that, maybe another year later, two years later, my Pennsylvania salesman, a fella named Mike Miller, was in the factory, and he said 'next week I'm going to Pittsburgh and there's a show, a knit goods show in an armory, and I'm taking a booth. It's very interesting, there are hundreds of vendors there and you might find it interesting.' So I said all right, so I flew out in the morning, came back in the evening. And I talked to Mike in his booth, and I walked up and down the aisle looking at the different competitors. Some of them were competitors, and I was very pleased to see that most of my competitors were higher-priced than I was, so I wasn't worried about them. And then I saw one company that had a very extensive line, larger than mine with very very competitive prices. So I said, I congratulated the salesman on his line. I said this is a terrific line. I said I'm very impressed, and he said 'my company does something different from other companies. Instead of our designer' - they had a designer - 'instead of our designer coming up with a line, we fly out the best buyer in the country once a year, and together, the two of them develop a line.' I said 'well that's interesting - who is this buyer?' And he said 'well I don't know her last name, but she's from Virginia and her name is Candy.' And I said oh that's nice. So I thought oh my God, I'm doing business with the best buyer in the country, and I don't know it because I had nobody to compare her with. So she was my only customer. So the next time Candy called to meet her in New York on the 11th floor, I said - and by this time I got familiar with the building, and I knew that Federated had an office, one of their offices on the seventh floor was somebody who arranged hotel accommodations at some hotel in New York where they had a deal with large a supply of tenants. And the 12th floor was a cafeteria, where the buyers came in the morning, got to meet each other from around the country and go over things and go out into the market. So I said 'Candy, can we meet on the 12th floor in a cafeteria at 8 o'clock?' And she said sure. So I said 'you know why I am asking, don't you?' And she said yes, but it's alright. So 8 o'clock in the morning, the two of us met. We were the only ones in the cafeteria. We took a long table for ten people. We sat at the end, I took out some shirts, and one by one the buyers are coming in, and they see Candy and me at this table. They come over [and say] 'hi Candy, what are you doing?' 'I'm looking at Marty's fall line.' 'Oh, do you have room for me at the table?' And in twenty minutes the table was full. So they're all watching and they're asking questions ; 'oh I do very well with him.' So these are ladies, they happen to all be lady buyers, and all of them were getting calls from vendors around Broadway and that area. 'Please come into my showroom. I want you to see the new things.' 'Well I don't have time this trip ; I'll try to do it next trip.' These people are coming to me. 'Well I have some time at 3 o'clock ; I'm on the eighth floor, can you meet me?' So I'm booking appointments, and I'm booking appointments for the next day. So I call my wife. I say 'I'm staying over' because I have appointments for both days. So I sold everyone who was at the table. So now I had, it was too much for my plant day and night. I had to give out work to contractors, so I bought a Ford Econoline Truck, hired a driver, we cut the goods and we sent them out to the various contractors, so it became a very large business. And all from this one person. I felt 'well I'm selling them, but I'm leveraging her' her reputation. And I asked her years later cause we're still friends, and I stay over, they retired in the West Coast of Florida, and coming back on the auto train, I stay overnight with Candy and her husband, and we have dinner and then go to the auto train in Sanford the next morning. So I asked a few years ago why she shared cause she was very generous with the other buyers telling who she bought from, what she bought, what she paid. And she still came out with the best numbers of any buyer in the whole AMC clientele, always, no matter, she could tell everybody everything, and she still came out with the best sales figures. So she was like the goddess of retailing, so I said maybe three years ago, I said 'did any other vendor leverage your reputation as much as I did?' She said, 'no, nobody did.' And I think the reason for that was everybody else who sold was a good salesman. They didn't need help, or they felt they didn't need help. I knew I stunk at that, so I was looking for help, so I leveraged her reputation and did very well with that. And then one time Mike was in the factory saying 'next week I'm going to Philadelphia and then I'm going to see the buyer there, Donna Mateer, I've been calling on it for years-- SC: Okay, would you go back and talk about your anecdote about Philadelphia? MS: In Philadelphia, Mike Miller, my Pennsylvania salesman, said 'I'm going next week to see Donna Matier at Strawbridge and Clothier there. She's a very good buyer, she's never bought from me. I go every year, she's very polite, looks at the line and gives me time and never buys, but I never give up. So she never buys, I never give up, so someday I'll get it when she needs me.' So I said 'okay Mike. So if she turned you down again, go through this ritual: ask her if she's going next week to the Omni Hotel in Florida for the import show, and she will say yes because all the AMC buyers are going to Florida, and after she says yes, say do you know Candy? You don't need a last name. It's like Madonna or Cher, you know no last name needed, do you know Candy? And she will say yes. Then the third thing is, ask Candy about our company.' And he came back, and I said what happened? She didn't buy, and I said, did you go through the questions? He said 'yes' I did. And I said why don't we see what happens. Two weeks later I get a call: 'My name is Donna Mateer, I'm the buyer from Strawbridge and Clothier. I'll be in New York at the AMC building. I forgot what floor she was on and I'd like to see you.' So I go, and she gives me a large order, and then I went back, I show it to Mike, and I said it is your account, you get the commissions, but she said she'd rather deal with the owner of the factory than the salesman. So he said great. So as long as I stayed in business, she became a very large customer and got to know her and her husband. Very nice people and did a big business with Strawbridge and only because she asked Candy, and Candy said yes, you can do very well with him. And my business probably doubled and became quite successful. And then a few years later, I had what some people would call an epiphany. I was in New York, Candy wanted me to make some new styles for her. So I made it, I made a sample, I brought it in, and I'm showing it to her, and I said this garment that was knitted was on a thirty-six gauge interlock machine with thirty singles comb cotton. And she said, look, I know what you're saying, don't tell anybody else that. I said 'why not? Aren't they interested in what they're buying?' She said 'no,' she said 'I'll tell you what they're interested in. They're interested in good reviews from the merchandise manager every six months, promotions, bonuses, and raises. They don't care what machine made this garment.' I said 'oh my God, this is, why didn't I know this 20 years ago, I could have been a salesman.' So she said 'your job is not selling garments, your job is to make the buyer look like a star in her department store. If you do that, the business will come. You make her look good where she can get good reviews, promotions, raises, and bonuses and you'll do well.' I said, oh my, it's so simple, why didn't I, I never had thought of it. So I said, 'how do you suggest how to go about doing this?' She said 'well, for instance, quite often a vendor will short ship.' He doesn't have the right, he doesn't have all of the colors, so the buyer orders red, white, navy, pink, blue, maze, and the factory is short on maze and it's going to be two weeks late. Meanwhile the buyer puts an ad in the paper with the six colors and the merchandise manager sees there is only five colors on the racks. Where's the other color? Aw the damn vendor, he's going to be two weeks later on that. Well lady, you're supposed to be in a rapport with the vendors. You're supposed to know this before it happens. And she's thinking there goes my bonus, there goes my review. So Candy said 'the minute you know you're going to be late on something, you call the buyer and say 'look I don't have the yellow, I've got lilac, I've got fuchsia, I've got mint. You can substitute or just cancel the color because I don't have it.'' So they do accordingly and that way the buyer can go to the merchandise manager and say the vendor is going to be late on the yellow, I substituted lilac. Now the merchandise [manager] knows this buyer is on top of the business, you know, good reviews and the other things will follow. So the buyer is connected to me now. This guy is making me look good, I better stick with them. And so that worked out, I remember one time the Shillito buyer. The Shillito is big, was big, I'm not sure whether they still are in business in Cincinnati, Ohio. And the buyer there called up one day: 'I'm coming to New York next week, I'm going to bring you a crystal pleated skirt I'd like you to make.' I'd never made skirts. I said 'what's a crystal pleated skirt?' 'I'll bring one in and I'll show you.' So it was a polyester skirt, and it was sent out to a contractor with an oven or an oast that they folded these things up into an accordion type thing, and they put it in the oven and the synthetic melted a little bit and put the permanent pleat in the garment. So you had to cut it and put a hem in it cause it wouldn't pleat right, you couldn't put a hem in it after it was pleated, so we hemmed it and I found a contractor in New York, we shipped and came back, and it was a simple garment to make. And it was just white and navy. She said that's the only colors that would sell. So I started making that for her and showed it to the other buyers, and they started buying also. And then one of the buyers came to me, they came to me with velour. Nobody will know what that is anymore, but it was a fabric. It was very hot for a few years, and they put me into that business. So the buyers were coming to me. And then one time I was meeting with a bunch of buyers, some bought from me, some hadn't. And I bought a style that I concocted. I design something, so I'm showing it to them. The Shillito buyer starts laughing and she says 'baldheaded designer,' she said 'we do not need you to tell us what to buy ; you're Marty the knockoff man.' That's what they call me. 'What's selling good on the second floor in Branded Goods, we're on the Main floor in budget sportswear. What's hot on the branded good upstairs, we want you to make for less money on the main floor. That's what you do. So don't bring us any designs.' So the buyers who hadn't bought from me see that she's on such good terms with me that she can laugh at me and call me 'baldheaded designer.' So they started buying. I developed a tremendous business. It lasted for a long time, and 1982 I discovered I had a gift for analyzing bank stocks, financial statements. And I started investing in that. And without this one lady, leveraging Candy, I could analyze all I wanted, I wouldn't have any money to buy. So I was able to buy bank stocks, and in the five years, I was doing better investing than I was in the factory, so I sold my factory in 1987, and got out of that business. And then went into bank investing and went on the boards of a couple of banks. Then about nineteen or twenty years ago, Mark Jaindl, who was doing the same thing as I, as well as being in the turkey business, he was investing in bank stocks-- Mort Levy had introduced us a few years ago. We hit it off. He would analyze a financial statement, I would make notes, and then we'd compare, and we worked together very well for five years. Then Mark left the family business. He went to work as an investment banker in New Jersey for a large firm and they bought other companies. And one of the companies they bought was a company in Texas that had a contract with the federal government to rationalize all these threats that they closed down and that meltdown when the thrifts were borrowing short and lending long and the interest rates rose, and they were losing money and some of them were seized by the government. And there were lots of loans that the government didn't know what to do with, loans and foreclosed property, and they hired this firm in Texas to sell it for what they could. Sell these bad loans and the property, get the most out of it on the commission basis. So Mark got to see every kind of loan imaginable. It was a four and a half billion-dollar virtual bank. And then his father came to him a few years later to try to get him back, and Mark said 'to start a bank, I'll come back.' And Mark and Fred - Fred was a terrific guy, I miss him - and they asked me to go on the board of American Bank, where I'm still a director. And that's where I am today. SC: Could we go back beginning to tell names of your parents, grandparents, etc. If you know actually when they came, you did say that, where they came from, if you didn't say it. MS: Yeah, I told you that my paternal grandfather came from Lodz, Poland. My maternal grandfather came from Munkacs, Hungary. SC: What were their names? MS: My maternal grandfather was Max Weinberger, and my grandfather, my father's father, was Harry Spiro, and went by his Yiddish name, Yicheel, so my father and my Uncle Manny used to call him 'Cheel.' SC: Do you know their wives' names? MS: Yes. SC: Their maiden names? MS: My grandmother's, my mother's mother's maiden name was Goodfriend, and my father's, my grandmother, my father's mother was the Throap or Trop. I've seen it spelled both ways. But in this country, it was Throap. In Europe--and some moved to Israel-- it was T-R-O-P, so her name was Chaya Rivka, or Anna. Oh, no, no, no, Ida was her name ; Ida Spiro. It was Harry and Ida. And Chaya Rivka was her Hebrew name. And she could speak Polish for the rest of her life. She told me my father, who came here at 3, spoke Polish but lost it all and was fluent in Yiddish and English. And that my parents, like a lot of parents, they didn't want the children to speak Yiddish - you're in America now, speak English. So Yiddish was their secret language, so I never learned, my sister never learned. SC: Did they come from the same regions as their husbands? Do you know anything? MS: No. I don't know how my parents met. I think it was probably at one of these social clubs. I'm not sure. My father lived in Brooklyn, and my mother lived in East Side, New York. My father had graduated, my grandfather he, after he started making money, he moved to Brooklyn. SC: And so the social clubs, were they promoted in the Jewish community? MS: Yes. By then it was, by that time they were insulated. They kept to themselves. It's not that way anymore. Thank Goodness. SC: Do you know anything about their education, the people back from their parents? MS: My mother did not go to college. When she graduated high school she went to work for, I think, the phone company. And my grandfather went to, my father went to Brooklyn Polytech and he loved machinery and wasn't a good businessman, but wonderful with machinery. And [he] taught me how to wire up factories. I did the electrical work in our factories and a lot of the mechanical work. I learned how to fix machines. So I was good at that. But that was it for their education. SC: And back, in where they came from, do you know anything about those people, where they were, their education? MS: Well the, no, the ones in Hungary were destroyed in the Holocaust, and the ones who didn't get out in Lodz are gone. So my cousin in Paris, who is an eye surgeon, his father, Jacques, what his name was Poland but it became Jacques in France-- he wrote a page for each of the seven relatives who were killed in Poland in the Holocaust, so there is a page for each of them in the Yad Vashem, which my cousin Kathy from Canada, who is the family researcher, she can find anything, including the manifests of the ship that brought my grandfather into the country. And it's all on the Internet, so I have the statements that my cousin's father had submitted to Yad Vashem. So anybody who didn't get out is gone, and as I say, the ones that we know about are on my father's side: the US, Canada, and France. And my French cousin comes over a couple times a year. He's going to retire eventually from surgery and bought a place in Miami Beach. He's got the penthouse of someplace near the ocean. But he comes over once a year, nice fella. GAIL EISENBERG: Okay so Marty, you did a really fine job, but there's just a few questions, I just wanted to go back.... MS: Go ahead. GE: ...and see if you could fill in a little bit. So now this is actually about your, really more about your dad, I had a couple of questions. I thought that was really interesting that you mentioned that there were incentives that you went to Lowell, your family and do you know anything about the incentives-- was that from, who that was . . . how that was structured . . . how that worked that your dad set this knitting mill up in Lowell, Massachusetts because that's obviously the big textile area before Brooklyn. MS: There might have been tax incentives in Massachusetts for them to come up. I'm sure there must have been tax incentives. And I think the state paid to move the factory up there. GE: Okay, okay, and so your family was there it sounded like for about 15 years? MS: 1936 to 1950. GE: Okay, so about 14 years, and then you said they came here and they opened a knitting mill, is that correct? T-shirt? MS: Well they opened...my uncle opened a knitting mill as part of his business... GE: Right, right. MS: ...and my father worked for him. GE: Okay, so it was a knitting mill, not a T-shirt company. MS: No, it was part of the T-shirt company. GE: Okay. MS: So they needed the cloth, instead of my uncle buying the cloth, they knitted it themselves. GE: Okay, and so how is that business . . . then did they close the business before you and your brother-in-law went into it or? MS: They moved it, they moved their business to Reading. GE: Okay, and that became a separate business from-- MS: It became a separate business. GE: Okay. MS: They moved to Reading, and my father retired, so it was a separate business. GE: Okay. And what you and your brother-in-law started was that similar to that T-shirt business? MS: No, no. What we did, we bought closeout cloth. Somebody made a mistake. The shade of blue was a slight different from what the buyer wanted, they wouldn't take it, so we went to dealers who bought that, and there was a big one in Allentown, S. Levine and Sons. We did business with Levines and New York fabric companies that bought closeout cloth, so we had a big break on the cloth. The labor we had to pay the same as anybody else, but a big [cost] break was the cloth. And on the main floor, budget sportswear if the shade of blue was a little bit off, it didn't matter. Blue was blue. So we just make sure that if there were 30 stores, one shade of blue would go to one store and another, so you wouldn't have twenty different shades of blue in the same rack- - it looks awful. So that was our big edge on cloth. So when the lady brought me that skirt to make, it was like the cost was like 90% cloth was our big-- GE: Competitive advantage. MS: ...advantage. And the sewing was practically nothing, so we had a tremendous profit item on that one. That was great. And then I saw Levines. I saw one of the brands had orlon, wool pleated skirts and some of the same patterns that Levine had. And so I thought I'll make up some of those, I'll show them to my skirt buyers. And we bought those and sold those garments also. That was also a big number for me. GE: And so your competitive advantage or what you felt was your advantage was really that you had much lower material cost-- MS: Yes. GE: ...in producing. MS: That is correct. GE: Okay, and so just to get a little bit of a timetable then you were in business with your brother-in-law from 1960 to 1977. MS: Yes. GE: And then on your own from 1977 to 1987? MS: Yes. GE: And then at that point you sold your business, and I'm assuming that was early enough that your business was able to sell at a good price? MS: Yes. And I had no idea, but it wasn't too long after that, three years after that, that all that business moved to the Orient-- GE: Right. MS: ...and there was no more knitting here so you couldn't buy off-price cloth because there was no cloth. It was all done overseas. GE: Right, exactly. MS: And I had no knowledge of that at the time. GE: Right, so some of the contractors that you worked with, some of the sewing contractors that you were giving them business in the area, who were some of those names? MS: One was, let's see, I know one was Reilly [?], but I know some went to Gerson Lazar, who needed some business, and then a fella named Mickey Stupak in Allentown. And there was a place in Egypt, Pennsylvania. I forgot the fella's name, but we used him, and we used Hy Litwak before his factory and then Shirley Israelite had a factory, a contracting factory, we used her. And those are the ones that come to mind. GE: Right, okay, okay, good so you kept, you became their customer for a while. MS: Yes. GE: Okay. And I guess the last thing is that I was told from actually from Ivan that you had an interesting story in terms of the velour. I don't remember, I'm trying to remember, he said to ask Marty, I don't remember, it was a mistake you made, like either you were short in a color and you did a black back, and he said that it ended up becoming a very successful product. MS: He remembers that, I don't. GE: Okay. MS: I don't remember that. GE: Oh, okay. MS: But I'm sure it happened. But that lasted for a few years. It was a very good item. GE: Right, I do remember. Okay, I don't think, so we'll just ask you the couple last questions. And I'll just ask you. So you didn't make the material-- MS: No. GE: Where it was your uncle's business too-- MS: My business was buying the cloth. GE: You bought the cloth, and it's just that you bought overruns which were damaged or whatever. MS: Well it wasn't damaged. GE: But overruns, or whatever. MS: Maybe it was finished too wide. It was supposed to be finished thirty one inches but they finished it thirty inches wide. GE: Right, right. SC: That's very appropriate today, it's recycling. MS: It's what? SC: It's environmental. It's recycling. Rather than if it were, it's perfect. So the last two questions, first of all, what has made you feel the most creative in your life? MS: Creative? Well I guess in the business you're supposed to say I guess being financially successful, it gives you a sense of self-worth. It isn't the money, it's just knowing that you've accomplished something with your life, been creative. If I had made less money, I would have had the same satisfaction. But knowing that I succeeded in what I did, that's what gives me some pleasure. SC: And the last one is what you value most in life? MS: I always say seeing that my children and my grandson have grown up to be wonderful people, and my daughter-in-law is a wonderful person. To see them grow up to be fine people gives me the most, well there's not too much satisfaction when you're 82, to see that, to see my two kids, my two boys and my grandson and my daughter-in-law. My younger son married a girl from Taiwan, so, she taught him Mandarin Chinese which he won't admit to, but he speaks Mandarin and is bilingual and is eight years old, and very bright, very nice kid, so he'll do well. So that gives me my most pleasure. SC: Thank you so much. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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00:46:51
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Marty Spiro, June 23, 2016
Description
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Marty Spiro talks about being a manufacturer in women’s popular priced sportswear. After about twenty years in business, Marty serendipitously developed a close business relationship with Candy Seward, top buyer at Thalhimers Department Store, based in Richmond, VA. Candy had a national reputation for being the number one buyer in the country. So when Candy endorsed Marty and his product line, buyers from other department stores listened. Marty’s business grew tremendously.
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LVTNT-34
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2016-06-23
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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68c47dbb9be687e50c4920012db66bbc
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
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Mark Stutz
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-22.xml
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5.4 June 27, 2016 Mark Stutz, June 27, 2016 LVTNT-22 1:09:15 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Mark Stutz Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 StutzMark_20160627 1.0:|23(11)|38(17)|55(12)|80(12)|99(14)|124(5)|143(10)|164(12)|185(13)|204(9)|233(5)|250(7)|275(14)|298(12)|323(7)|342(11)|367(3)|396(13)|437(7)|460(5)|465(2)|490(10)|517(20)|536(14)|557(15)|582(4)|607(5)|632(9)|651(12)|686(3)|707(6)|732(2)|757(11)|784(8)|803(13)|824(12)|849(14)|868(3)|887(10)|910(4)|935(6)|956(5)|975(9)|1000(2)|1019(12)|1044(11)|1065(16)|1086(13)|1103(17)|1130(14)|1155(2)|1178(5)|1201(14)|1218(9)|1239(9)|1264(13)|1295(8)|1326(5)|1351(2)|1372(5)|1393(10)|1416(11)|1439(11)|1468(6)|1491(14)|1518(11)|1549(2)|1580(9)|1601(8)|1604(5) 0 https://www.youtube.com/embed/jJpGWlsmyvk?autoplay=0& ; playsinline=0 YouTube video 0 Family History SC: Today is June 27, 2016 and would you give your full name Mark and when you were born and where you were born.
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 ; MS: My name is Mark Stutz, and I am 64 years old. I was born May 18,1952 here in Allentown, Pennsylvania. 
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 ; SC: Could we go back as far as you know with your mother’s and your father's family, any names that you know, where they came from and what they did, and how they made a living or whatever.
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 ; MS: Sure. I’ll start with my mother’s side because it’s a shorter story. I only knew my grandmother and my grandfather. Their last name was Bahoff.
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 ; SC: Would you spell that?
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 ; MS: B-A-H-O-F-F. 0 518 Education and Extra Curriculars SC: And could you, would you talk about, I know you can, would you talk about your education from the beginning all the way through?
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 ; MS: Okay, sure. I went to the Jewish day school. I don't think I ever went to the JCC, but maybe I did for nursery school, I probably did. I went from kindergarten through sixth grade at the Jewish day school. We were members of Sons of Israel back then. I was bar-mitzvahed there. Then went to Raub Junior High, 7th, 8th and 9th. And then William Allen from 10th, 11th and 12th. And was really involved in the JCC at that time. Then I went to University of Bridgeport for my undergraduate degree in liberal arts and as a theater major. And then started to act professionally. Oh, I’m sorry, I went back to grad school at Catholic University for directing. And then I went to, while I was there I got some professional gigs, so I stopped going to school, because I was working, acting in shows, and I had a layoff between shows. 0 723 Connection Between Theatre and Business SC: And this a question I haven’t asked anyone yet, do you see a connection between directing and your work in theatre with being a business person?
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 ; MS: Well, yeah, a lot. First of all, I think the fact that I always wanted to be a director more than an actor is because I like to be in charge of the result, not boss, although that comes with the territory, but I like to have an endgame plan and be responsible to make that happen. So it's a vision, the same way I had with the factory. I enjoyed the end game of it. I did not, there were things I didn't like about it, certainly the challenge of meeting deadlines and things like that and working with people. And in the factory, it was working with employees, and in the schools it is working with students and as a director it's working with people who you are their boss, they might not be getting paid, but they're acting and you're in charge of what happens so yeah there is a connection. 0 790 Family Moved to Allentown SC: Do you know when your family came to Allentown, what years they came? We can look that up, but it’s easier to ask.
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 ; MS: Well I know my brother was born here so that was 1950, so I would say around 1948/1949 they came to Allentown. First my parents came, and then my grandparents came. And then they, my grandparents lived, moved into a twin in South Mountain, and my parents were living in Valley View Apartments. And then my parents moved to the same cul-de-sac called Vine Street in South Mountain, near South Mountain Little League, where my grandparents lived. I grew up living two houses away from my grandparents. Then when we moved to the Westend, they had houses next to each other. So I grew up like Something About Raymond [Everybody Loves Raymond] that was what I grew up with. Okay but I was the kid, not the parents. My grandparents lived right next door. 0 849 Childhood Memories SC: Do you have any memories of when you were a child about the business when you weren’t a part of it?
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 ; MS: I do, I remember, I do, I remember being, going to the old factory, the original original factory because we moved three times before we ended up at the place where I was working. And the old factory that was creaky elevators, I remember, and just the very, the smells and you know it was hot or cold and was dusty. My grandfather's office was like a mess, you know. I think I inherited that from him. But I do remember that. I don't remember any conversation about it. My father wasn't working [there], it was too small of a business. My father was with Surefit and he was not working with the business at that time. 0 1030 Details About Family Names GE: Just a quick question, you had mentioned your parents, grandparents, but I don’t have anybody’s names, so could you tell me some of their names?
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 ; MS: So my grandfather on my mother's side, so my maternal grandfather was Jack Bahoff, Jacob Bahoff. Jack Bahoff, I guess it was Jacob.
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 ; GE: It probably was. And Bahoff is…
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 ; MS: B-A-H-O-F-F. And…
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 ; GE: And his wife?
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 ; MS: Oh, my gosh, my maternal grandmother, what was her name? That’s everyone I think I know. 
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 ; GE: What about your Bubbie? 0 1269 History of the Business GE: So Mark, I want to now go back and just give us the history with the business. How your grandfather got started, when your father came in, and eventually when you came in.
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 ; MS: Sure. So, as I said in the earlier conversation, my grandfather was sort of a ‘Journeyman,’ going around to factories and helping people be more efficient in what they were doing. That industry didn't exist then as consulting, although my grandfather would have been very wealthy having created a consulting business. They never went through any agencies. People would just, he would work for someone long enough and he just couldn’t take it, and they would fight, and he would leave. He had a big-time temper, not violent, just loud. He didn’t mean anything. 
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 ; So then they opened up the little place in Allentown. He got one client which was a company that made little girls’ bathing suits for what we now call boutiques but then it was just children's stores because there weren't any Walmarts and K-marts in those days. So it was a specialty item and it was little kids’ bathing suits. And they were high-end, and he always felt that if you made for high-end, you could always do a better living because no one was going to nickel or dime you because they could afford it on the other end. 0 3478 What Has Made You Feel Most Creative in Life? SC: Okay, so my crazy questions are first of all, what has made you feel the most creative in life?
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 ; MS: Well, certainly nothing in the garment industry made me, and just so you have this on record, I will say it, I hated the last 12-15 years of the career. Hated it. Hated every . . . I felt like there were so many important things happening in the world, and I was wondering whether or not Macy’s got their bathing suits a day late. And stressing about it and fighting with buyers about it and having real issues about . . . and there were people out in wars and doctors, and people. I understand the reality that it’s not just that bathing suit because that bathing suit then means that the person who sells the bathing suit on the floor of the store loses their job if we don’t make it. And, you know, I understand that there is a certain amount of . . . but it just didn’t seem that important to me to make everyone go crazy about it. So it was very unsatisfying. Now understand I never . . . until I got divorced with my two boys that lived with me, I did theatre all the time. I worked at Civic, I directed before Bill came in as a full time director, I directed at Civic, Pennsylvania Playhouse, Guthsville Playhouse, I directed all the time. I was always doing something theatrically because it’s part of who I am, and I couldn’t get away from that. 0 3710 What Do You Value Most in Life? SC: And what do you value most in life?
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 ; MS: My family. It’s not even a question. They come, they’re, they come before anything. And not just my mother and my wife and my kids, but my step-kids, and their significant others, their boyfriends and girlfriends. Family, I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn't grown up with a family that had great strong family values. My kids have strong family values. And I think that that is, and that’s a challenge for a lot of people who don’t. I raised my kids as a single dad for a while. Their mom was in town, but they wanted to be with me. They were boys, and they wanted to be with their dad. You know, I lived, I never moved out of the house, and that’s where they grew up . . . and that is, that house, that sofa that I tried to get rid of and now I have to put in the living room because the kids say ‘where are we all going to sit when we all come?’ Well you all are going to come? I got two in Denver, one in Baltimore, one in Philly, one in Bethlehem. How are you..well they do, they all show up. And on Father's day, they were either with me or with their dads or one was with my mom down in Florida. So they value family. So that answer is simple, my family. Other than that it is my integrity. My family and my integrity. That’s it. 0 3884 Advantages of Small Factory SC: Do you think there is an advantage to having a smaller factory where it’s easier in and easier out in some ways?
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 ; MS: Well it’s the same way with a cast of a show, like a big cast show or a small cast show. Each one has its own problems. Each one has its own advantages. When I directed Our Town with 35 or 36 people, my director directs Titanic last year and he had 60 people in the cast. Thirty people in the pit, and thirty people on crew, it’s great but there is a lot of people to manage. It is a lot of ins and outs. But there is a big value to it because a lot of people get [some] benefit from it. I’m doing a show this fall with six kids in it, so the advantage is that I can get really close with six kids, bring out something that they’ve never had the opportunity to do. And it’s good for them. So, there is advantages to both. I think the answer quite frankly is, it sounds like a cop-out, but midsize. Family run, 50, 60, 70 operators was when we were ideal because we could control everything, and everyone knew our name, we knew their name, and we knew their kids. It was different. 0 MovingImage Mark Stutz talks about how his grandfather started in the children’s bathing suit sewing business with one customer. That relationship held for a few decades while that company remained in business. Later, Mark’s father and he ran the business. Over time, they got into producing high end women’s bathing suits. During the years Mark worked in the business, he stayed active in local theatre both as an actor and director. Later he was able to pivot and became the Director of Fine Arts at Parkland High School . 
 ; Interview with Mark Stutz, June 27, 2016 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is June 27, 2016 and would you give your full name Mark and when you were born and where you were born. MARK STUTZ: My name is Mark Stutz, and I am 64 years old. I was born May 18,1952 here in Allentown, Pennsylvania. SC: Could we go back as far as you know with your mother's and your father's family, any names that you know, where they came from and what they did, and how they made a living or whatever. MS: Sure. I'll start with my mother's side because it's a shorter story. I only knew my grandmother and my grandfather. Their last name was Bahoff. SC: Would you spell that? MS: B-A-H-O-F-F. And I have, um, they had three kids. My mother is the last surviving child of that family, and I have four cousins from the other brother and sister. I knew my great-grandmother on that side, but very briefly. And then on my father's side I knew my grandmother's mother and my grandfather's father and mother. My great-grandfather was very orthodox. I'm not quite sure whether he was one of the people who wrote the Torahs or if he just studied all day, I'm not sure, but I know he had the long beard and the hat. It was always a little scary to see him the first time when we were little kids. I only met my great-grandmother on that side a couple times before she died. And my grandmother, I only met her mother. I never met her father. Let's see, my grandmother's maiden name was-- hm, it will come to me. I knew it, I just can't think of it right now. My grandfather originally was Stutsky, but my great grandfather got rid of the '-ky' so. I don't know why they did that. Was it because of immigration or he did it himself and it could have been another longer name that was gotten rid of. But my grandfather was a Stutz, and he had, and my grandmother's name, I only knew her as Tilly, I can't tell you what her real name was. I knew her as Nanna. So she had a son, two sons and a daughter. My father passed away seventeen years ago, and my uncle and my aunt are still alive. SC: Where did they come from? MS: Poland. SC: Do you know where? MS: No, I don't. My mother's grandparents were already Americans. My great-grandparents moved here, so my grandfather was first-generation American. He wasn't born in America - my grandfather - he was born in Europe, so I guess really my father's generation is the first generation that was born American. SC: So did they all come from Poland? MS: I know my grandfather and my grandmother did. I don't know about the others. SC: What kind of work did any of the generations do that you know? MS: I know that my grandfather on my mother's side was involved with some weekly newspapers as far as delivery or, he wasn't involved as a writer or anything. They were hand-to-mouth living ; they didn't really have a lot. My grandmother on my mother's side never worked, that I knew of. And they were not extremely religious as far as Judaism was concerned. That's where I first tasted bacon was in my grandmother's apartment from my mother's side. If you walk up the steps to their apartment, you could smell it cooking. But on my father's side, like I said, my great grandfather had something to do with religion, I don't know exactly what. My grandfather entered the garment industry as his very first job. He worked for my grandmother's brother, Dave. And he ended up, the story goes that it was the height of the Depression and there was an argument going on in the office, and my grandfather's brother-in-law, my grandmother's brother, said something about her. And my grandfather slugged him and walked out. And there he was without a job in the Depression. And he wouldn't go home without a job, so he went to a, he saw an ad that they were looking for a foreman at a garment factory. He had never been a foreman at a factory. He had done packing or whatever. He walked in and the guy said, 'what experience do you have?' My grandfather said 'don't worry about it,' he said, 'look, try me out, if I'm as good as the other person who was here [before] then you keep me hired, and if I'm not any good, get rid of me.' And that was how he started in the garment industry. He didn't know he was getting paid, he had no idea. Then when he got his first paycheck or cash in those days, it was pretty good. And then he became what today would be called a consultant. He used to go around to other people's factories and help them do better at their factory. He was, they didn't have a name for it back then. He just got hired. Then my grandparents lived in Cuba for a while when it was, you know, friendly to Americans, and he helped build factories there. He was doing it all over the place. And my father worked for Surefit. Ok, so I don't know if you spoke with anyone from Surefit, but he worked for Surefit. That was Krasnov. He said that he was settling here, and he said to my grandparents, to my grandfather, 'you know you're making money for a lot of other people, why don't you do this yourself?' He said my grandfather had a small factory, down by where the Good Shepherd Home is right now, down there somewhere. They had a small factory on the second floor. And that's what starts. Now that had to be after I was born, because the company is called BruMar. Bruce for my brother, Mark for me. So I would say 1952/53 it was started. SC: As far as any other names or in your family or any business names that you know of? MS: Well, my mother's, my mother's sister-in-law, they were the Nowaks out of Philadelphia, N-O-W-A-K. I know they owned a camp, a summer camp at one time, up in the Poconos. I think Lieberman was my grandmother's family, something like that. And they lived in Coney Island. I used to spend time at their apartment, and that's how I kind of knew them. We didn't have a very large family that, you know, it didn't seem to be extremely large. Because there was only two and three kids from each group. Also, the company that we worked for, that my grandfather contracted for was Little Kids Bathing Suits, and we'll talk about that when we talk about the business. But that owner's name was Paul Yellin. He was from New York, from the Scarsdale area in New York. SC: And could you, would you talk about, I know you can, would you talk about your education from the beginning all the way through? MS: Okay, sure. I went to the Jewish day school. I don't think I ever went to the JCC, but maybe I did for nursery school, I probably did. I went from kindergarten through sixth grade at the Jewish day school. We were members of Sons of Israel back then. I was bar-mitzvahed there. Then went to Raub Junior High, 7th, 8th and 9th. And then William Allen from 10th, 11th and 12th. And was really involved in the JCC at that time. Then I went to University of Bridgeport for my undergraduate degree in liberal arts and as a theater major. And then started to act professionally. Oh, I'm sorry, I went back to grad school at Catholic University for directing. And then I went to, while I was there I got some professional gigs, so I stopped going to school, because I was working, acting in shows, and I had a layoff between shows. I knew I had another show to go to, then I had a layoff of about six/seven in the weeks. I was living in DC and it was needed income. So my mother suggested that I come for a while and help my father out in the factory. At that point my father was involved, because it was the busy season, and he needed any help that he could get even if it was minor help, it would be something. I said, okay, and I never left. Well I didn't leave for 25 years anyway. Because, I thought, 'wow this is interesting' and I can use my people skills with the people and there was income, and I sort of got sucked into having a steady income, so I stayed there. And this says athletics on it, it should say the arts, cause I'm now the arts director for Parkland School District but this shirt matched my outfit today, so. SC: And will you do some of the shows that you were in? MS: That I was in? SC: Yeah, or that you worked with. MS: Yeah, okay, so in acting I played Tevye a bunch of times for The Fiddler on the Roof. I've done Fagin in Oliver. I've been in Neil Simon plays like the Chapter Two, and, what's the one with the two men that fight all of the time, not the Odd Couple. I was in that also. I'm talking about the golden, oh gosh, it was with Art Carney and Walter Matthau, and they fought the whole time. I was in that show. I've done a lot of interesting different shows. Directing wise, I directed 20 or 30 musicals easily and just as many straight shows. So anything from American classics like Our Town and Tennessee Williams plays to Shakespeare to anything that comes around because in a school environment you have to give them all sorts of opportunities. SC: And this a question I haven't asked anyone yet, do you see a connection between directing and your work in theatre with being a business person? MS: Well, yeah, a lot. First of all, I think the fact that I always wanted to be a director more than an actor is because I like to be in charge of the result, not boss, although that comes with the territory, but I like to have an endgame plan and be responsible to make that happen. So it's a vision, the same way I had with the factory. I enjoyed the end game of it. I did not, there were things I didn't like about it, certainly the challenge of meeting deadlines and things like that and working with people. And in the factory, it was working with employees, and in the schools it is working with students and as a director it's working with people who you are their boss, they might not be getting paid, but they're acting and you're in charge of what happens so yeah there is a connection. SC: Do you know when your family came to Allentown, what years they came? We can look that up, but it's easier to ask. MS: Well I know my brother was born here so that was 1950, so I would say around 1948/1949 they came to Allentown. First my parents came, and then my grandparents came. And then they, my grandparents lived, moved into a twin in South Mountain, and my parents were living in Valley View Apartments. And then my parents moved to the same cul-de-sac called Vine Street in South Mountain, near South Mountain Little League, where my grandparents lived. I grew up living two houses away from my grandparents. Then when we moved to the Westend, they had houses next to each other. So I grew up like Something About Raymond [Everybody Loves Raymond] that was what I grew up with. Okay but I was the kid, not the parents. My grandparents lived right next door. SC: Do you have any memories of when you were a child about the business when you weren't a part of it? MS: I do, I remember, I do, I remember being, going to the old factory, the original original factory because we moved three times before we ended up at the place where I was working. And the old factory that was creaky elevators, I remember, and just the very, the smells and you know it was hot or cold and was dusty. My grandfather's office was like a mess, you know. I think I inherited that from him. But I do remember that. I don't remember any conversation about it. My father wasn't working [there], it was too small of a business. My father was with Surefit and he was not working with the business at that time. SC: Any other anecdotes about your youth that you think sort of fit in? MS: Um, well my grandfather, my father was also then in a dry cleaning business. So he was working part-time, he was working for Surefit, and then he wanted to be his own boss, so he and Edward Kahan, Ronald Kahan's father, who's still my best friend, they entered into a business partnership. My father did [Martinizing], the dry cleaning business. So it's sort of garment related. And I remember there is the thing that moved the clothes around. My brother and I hanging on it and pushing the buttons, we would get rides. And then that partnership ended, not in the best way. Partnerships like marriages don't always end great. But so I remember that. I don't really, might we, I do remember when the factory was on North Fourth Street. I remember on Saturday mornings, my grandfather would take my brother and I first to breakfast, then to shul to synagogue on Sixth Street, and then we would go to the factory for an hour, and we would turn garments from inside out to outside in. And we would get paid for that, like two dollars and five dollars or breakfast whatever he had the mood to pay. So that was fun. It was a good memory. GAIL EISENBERG: And that Fourth Street, was that the original? MS: No, the original was the one that I can't remember the name of the street. I want to say Lehigh Street but it wasn't Lehigh Street. It was down right across from, I know exactly where it is because there is a Melner [?] trash/hauling thing right there across the street from it, like the third floor. I remember I used to fight with the landlord all the time, we couldn't have heat, whatever, you know, it was one of those old buildings. GE: Just a quick question, you had mentioned your parents, grandparents, but I don't have anybody's names, so could you tell me some of their names? MS: So my grandfather on my mother's side, so my maternal grandfather was Jack Bahoff, Jacob Bahoff. Jack Bahoff, I guess it was Jacob. GE: It probably was. And Bahoff is-- MS: B-A-H-O-F-F. And-- GE: And his wife? MS: Oh, my gosh, my maternal grandmother, what was her name? That's everyone I think I know. GE: What about your Bubbie? MS: Actually, her name was Nana Honey. My other grandmother's name was Nana because when my brother learned to talk, he would call them both Nana, but my grandmother, my maternal grandmother would always call him honey, so he started to say Nana Honey when he was referring to her. So she became Nana Honey, and I don't, I don't, it's terrible, but I am going to find out for you, I'm going to call. SC: Thank you! MS: Yeah, I'll just call my cousins. GE: And on your father's side, what are their names? MS: So Lou, Louis Stutz was the patriarch. GE: That was your grandfather? MS: Yeah, and Tillie, T-I-L-L-I-E, and again, it is the last name that I am struggling with. GE: And what was your parent's names? MS: Leatrice. My mom's name is L-E-A-T-R-I-C-E. And her name was originally Bahoff. And my father's name is Alan, A-L-A-N. SC: And was Louis L-E-W-I-S? MS: L-O-U-I-S. SC: I was just taking a guess. MS: Yeah, L-O-U-I-S. SC: Cause we've tried both. MS: Yeah, I'm sure. SC: So I think that's it for the early years. GE: So the only other one quick question I have from the early years is what about your father's education? MS: My father went to Temple University, got a degree in math. My mother was a high school graduate. They were married young. They were married in, if I get this wrong I'll be in trouble, March and my brother was born in January. Everyone was counting the months, but it wasn't. It was okay. They were cleared on that. None of my grandparents ever went to college. GE: Do you think they went to high school? MS: My paternal grandfather did. I don't know about anybody else. I just happen to know that he did. SC: And dry cleaning did have some connection for people that they might have started in dry cleaning and then on-- [unintelligible] MS: Saul Kivert. Actually it was my father who started that business and then he ended up at the factory. GE: So Mark, I want to now go back and just give us the history with the business. How your grandfather got started, when your father came in, and eventually when you came in. MS: Sure. So, as I said in the earlier conversation, my grandfather was sort of a 'Journeyman,' going around to factories and helping people be more efficient in what they were doing. That industry didn't exist then as consulting, although my grandfather would have been very wealthy having created a consulting business. They never went through any agencies. People would just, he would work for someone long enough and he just couldn't take it, and they would fight, and he would leave. He had a big-time temper, not violent, just loud. He didn't mean anything. So then they opened up the little place in Allentown. He got one client which was a company that made little girls' bathing suits for what we now call boutiques but then it was just children's stores because there weren't any Walmarts and K-marts in those days. So it was a specialty item and it was little kids' bathing suits. And they were high-end, and he always felt that if you made for high-end, you could always do a better living because no one was going to nickel or dime you because they could afford it on the other end. And he was the, this man, Mr. Paul Yellen, started this business and my grandfather was his contractor. They started together, so he never had another factory [contractor] and my grandfather never had another customer. Later on we did, but not at the beginning. And they did it all with a handshake, no contracts, nothing, it was all done with a handshake. GE: And where was Paul Yellen? MS: He was in New York. He had a small office on 34th St., I want to say 34th St., which got bigger later on in years, but at that point, it was small. And he did, his business was a very good business. They had good designs, they had good marketing, and they had quality production. My grandfather always believed in quality production. So they were outgrowing that space and they found the place at 4th and Green, like Washington, I'm sorry, Greenleaf and Washington, down on 4th St. And it was a low, long, flat building. And what they did was they moved, my grandfather only did Bru-Mar, the company's name, only did assembly and finishing. We didn't do cutting, we didn't do marker making, and we didn't do packing. Dive-ettes owned their own, they were always connected to us, as far as physically, but the spreading of the fabric and the making of the markers and the cutting-- all that was done in the same space, but that space was rented by, or they shared the lease, with Dive-ettes, that was Paul Yellin's company. And he had his own shipping area. So at one time, it wasn't even in the same building and that got very nonproductive. So they were in 4th Street for a while, until they built it bigger, and I would say in those days, my father maybe, my grandfather maybe had 35 to 40 or 50 operators. Then my father started to, my grandfather had a number of heart attacks, and my father started to do both--work at the factory and work at his 'Martinizing'-- his dry cleaning place. But it was mostly, he would mostly do the dry-cleaning place. It sort of ran on its own. But he was there like Thursday nights and Monday nights. Oh, by the way, to go back in history, one time my father was working for Surefit, he also worked at Hess' in the woman's shoe department. I think that's interesting to note because in those days he only worked Thursday nights cause that was the only night Town was open. For those of you who don't know what Town is, its where Hess' was, it was Town, and it was Thursday nights and Saturdays cause they weren't open any of the other nights anyways. So then his part time job, he split his time between the factory and the dry cleaning. The business became, it got to grow and the building at Seventh and Allen Street, which is still there, the building. The Levine's-- Jack Levine and Ben Levine, and another brother, who I never met-- were looking to and that's Ira and Robert and that generation, their fathers and my dad, they were all looking to expand this old building, which has been a Sears building. The building that was on Seventh and Allen that was a Sears building. They were trying to sell it. And it had four floors. And we wanted to have a floor for the cutting and the shipping, I'm sorry, for the shipping upstairs, cutting and sewing on our floor, and then the Levines were going to have the first floor for their fabric store, and the basement for their outlet. They used to do, I don't know if you have spoken to the Levines yet, but Robert would be a great source for you. I'll, and I tell Ira, and I'll mention it to them. So that was a big move because it was a major building. GE: And that was what time period? MS: I'm going to say that was in the, I'm going to say, I graduated high school and we were still at 4th Street. I'm going to say early '70s, '70/'71, I would think. Yeah, I think so. And there were a lot of renovations that happened. There were escalators in the middle of the building that needed to be taken out, closed off, things like that. And Dive-ettes was then signed to do big work for JCPenney and stuff like that but that was before JCPenny started to get really tight. It was, you know, we could do a, we did the Girl Scout bathing suits, you know, I remember that. So then we moved to the new building, and it started to grow again, still only one customer, they still had no other customers. Do you want me to continue on the history of it? GE: No, no, that's fine, that's great, yes. MS: Ok, so around 19--, actually I think we probably had the factory, the new building in the late 60s because I graduated, I finished college in '73, and by 1975 I was very back here, so yeah so I was here on that break and was starting to work it, and my grandfather was spending less and less time up here and more and more time in Florida for his health, and for my father's health, I think. My father was spending less time at the dry-cleaning stores, and more time at the factory, which was a larger income provider than the dry cleaners stores because it used to be very good but then there was more competition and things like that. And as fabrics changed, as synthetics came in, people could wash their own stuff, it changed the dry cleaning business tremendously. Plus fashions changed, people don't wear jackets all the time, so things changed. So I was now pretty much in a year and a half or so, pretty much a part of this business. I knew I was there for the long haul. GE: And at this point, it was you and your dad and-- MS: And my grandfather, and we all shared one big office. It was a real treat. GE: Okay, and now your grandfather, at this point, is not in the business too much. MS: No, but he's a full partner in it. GE: Okay. MS: And my father and him are equal partners, and I'm an employee. GE: Okay, okay. MS: It was smart on their part because I wasn't worth being a partner at that point. I didn't know anything. GE: Okay, and already your father for a while wasn't associated with Surefit. MS: Oh, yeah, he had, once he opened up his dry cleaning store.. GE: That was the end? MS: ...he was done with Surefit. Yeah. And Mr. Krasnov, he really liked Mr. Krasnov. He liked working at Surefit. Surefit taught him a lot. It was good. And anyway, after I realized that I was going to be there and I also realized, in my opinion, you couldn't have one customer. My feeling was if you only had one customer and that customer went out of business, you have no business or if that customer wanted to get it made cheaper, then you had no choice. By the same token my grandfather's line was, well, where is he going to go with all this production. He doesn't know anything about that, and he's never going to know anything about that. So they never did leave us. They eventually went out of business, that was a few years later. It was, I went, I was reading in the Ladies . . . , in the Women's Wear Daily, which was the trade paper for our trade, that this company called Bobby Brooks which you may have heard of but most of the generation doesn't know what it is, was looking for contractors for bathing suits. And that was our specialty and it was a different size area. It was Juniors. So I said to my father, let me look at this, because I said we have to have more customers here. And he was like, okay, we had someone else there, so it was fine. So I contacted them. They sent me, a man came out, Sam, I don't remember his last name, but he was funny. He came out, he checked out the factory, and he brought some garments in, garments that they weren't going to do. I went to the office and I priced them out, my father and I did. And by the way, we were very fancy with pricing. We took out a piece of paper, we said that must cost about, that would cost about and no engineer, no nothing. When it was all done, we made money. And my grandfather said, if I make for a dollar and sell it for two, as long as I make 1%. And I said okay. So we were doing very well, labor was the only thing that we sold, besides thread. And it was before unions, and while we paid a fair wage, you didn't have all of the union stuff to worry about. We never became, I'm getting ona different rant here, we never became a part of the ILGWU. Our operators didn't want it. They had a vote and they still, and they had their own, and my grandfather was smart enough back in the day to offer them the chance to unionize within their own place. So they had a charter, and he paid for it. They hired a lawyer, and they put it together. It was their own charter, and it made them a union house so ILGWU couldn't strike them or picket by us because we were a union house. We just weren't their union. And it worked out well for everybody. We never really had any problems. And we sometimes worked for union shops, we just didn't put a union label on it, it was against the law. And they would know that. They would come up and they would marshall it. Anyway, this Bobby Brooks thing came through, and we started to do work for them. And it was a big education for me and my father now because we had a big company with people in charge of shipping, and people in charge of. . . not us, I mean, Bobby Brooks' a big company that we are working for. They had people in charge of specs., people in charge of quality, so you had a million. . . And we weren't even used to that. We were used to us doing it all and just getting paid. Now we had to bill and get paid and it was different. But it was what saved our business because eventually Dive-ettes went out of business. And then we went from Juniors, to starting to work in Misses, then started to work for Rosemary Reed, Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta. They were all part of the same buying group. We became one of their top contractors so now we had gone from little kids bathing suits, no longer doing that, to women's one or two pieces with full blown bras and, you know, stays and the whole bit, which you know, was a whole new world. At this point we were averaging about 85-100 operators all the time and in the busy season we'd have a second shift that would run from like, if our first shift was 7:30 to 3:00, I remember, then at the 4:00 to 9:00 we would have a second shift. Sometimes up to 50 operators, and we, myself, my father, and my foreman would run those. So each of us would take one night a week or two nights a week. I was the young guy so I got two nights a week. And that was a very busy busy time. Those years were really busy and very good for us. GE: And those were what time period? MS: You're talking about mid to late '70s into '96/'97. Around '98 we had already peaked and it had already started to, you could see the writing on the wall. By that point, we had looked at possibly moving our production to Puerto Rico, moved to Virginia. I had traveled to different places looking at places where the labor was more inexpensive. But it all, all said and done, we liked staying where we were. So the business grew, my grandfather was out of it, out of the business years ago before that, and he passed, I don't remember when exactly. And then we finally rebuilt the offices. and I actually have my own office after a while. It was, they were good years. They were tough years-- hard, hard, hard work. Lots of hours. But my whole world was revolved around it. My social events were based around it. And my friends that I went to conventions [with]. We did something very . . . and so did Tama Manufacturing, we invested in technology way before most people in the garment industry did. So one of the first things I wanted was we went from, we were hourly, and I felt that we needed to go piece-rate, and I'm sure you've heard someone talk about piece-rate here. GE: Right, right. But if you want to tell us about it. MS: Yeah, so the difference was you worked at our factory, and you would get an increase every year, let's say it was 25 cents an hour, whatever it was. So at that point, you're making $7 an hour, which may sound like a little bit now, well I shouldn't say that because there are some kids that make that now. But if you are making $7 an hour, it didn't matter if you made one of your operation that day or a thousand, you still got the same money per hour. So we felt that it was unfair to the productive operators, number one. Number two, it was a way, it was getting very costly for us not to go into some sort of a piece-rate system. So we brought on an engineer, I can't think of his name anymore, a young guy who had been at another factory. He was actually from, I don't remember where he was from, up by Pottstown somewhere. And good at what he did, very good. And then along with that computers are just starting to come out. I was very fascinated by them, and IBM was looking to get a foothold in the garment industry. So I had a meeting with some people at IBM, and we decided that we were going to invest in the technology. They were going to give us a programmer to basically live with us, learn what we did, and transfer that somehow to a computer, which would not fit in this room. Literally, well probably it would just fit in this room. And the consols are this big, and they did nothing but payroll. I mean a calculator does more now. So, but it was, at the time, quite a step, and we had this young man, Vince La Salle-- wow, how did I remember that name-- who was really into what we were doing. And we were able to create a piece rate system that didn't have to be hand put in. We actually used a wand, like you use in the grocery store now, we were talking, oh my gosh, I'm out 17 years, if you're talking 35 years ago when this stuff was really not happening. And we were setting up in the same time the Army-Navy store. I don't remember that last name, it'll come to me. They were also putting one in for their purposes, and that was right before they made their move out to Grape Street. They still had a place next to us, or two doors away. So we had an IBM34, which then became a 36, and two terminals, and it worked. It did a good job. It worked well enough that we, Vince and I, went as a dog and pony show to other factories who IBM was trying to sell the machinery. We have proprietary, we owned the program, and we actually sold it half a dozen times to other companies for the purpose of them to do piece-rate on IMB's new equipment. GE: By doing piece rate, did it bring down your operating costs? MS: Very much so. We were very productive. And it brought down, better than it brought down our, it brought up their earnings [the operators], there and more. The operators earned more. I made that a rule: if we are going to go piece-rate, if you worked hard, it was only going to fly, if the operators who worked hard made more than they are making now. So if there was, I wasn't going to-- GE: Some operators made more and some operators didn't I assume. MS: Right. And there was also the, they also couldn't make less than the minimum. That was written into our contract, which was fine. But some tried to make some operators, we called them girls, that's terrible, that's a throwback, what a sexist way the world we lived in. Operators were called girls, anyway. Yeah, so one of the things I was insistent on with my engineer was to make the rate, I'm worried that if they told me that an operation was going to cost 25 cents a garment, that's what I used to make my price. I don't care if it came out to 27 cents, that's not good. If it came to 20 cents or 21 cents, I don't care. Leave it at 25 cents, that's how I'm pricing that, let them make their money. I was happier that way and so were they for a long time. Then things got really interesting because I was not happy with the way the industry ran. The industry was cutting stacks of things this high and then there would be people who would run around and tie them into bundles which had the piece-rate ticket on it. So let's say that you're just making a bikini bottom, make it simple, a front and a back and a crotch piece. So you put a bundle of 24 or 36 together fronts and backs and the crotch pieces, and you tie them up with a little ticket. The operator would then reach into a bin, put it up to a table, have to untie it, put everything in an order, and then start to sew. So all the extraneous time, she wasn't producing for herself or for us. Well at one of the Bobbin Shows, that was the garment world's convention down in Atlanta, I was introduced to unit production. Unit of production meant that instead of an operator working on thirty six garments at a time in one bundle, she worked on one or two garments at a time on just her operation. And to make this easy, they had a system that used a hanger with a little clip on it that the people would feed into one end and would come to me as an operator, and I would just pick it up, line it up, do my operation, put it back on, push a button and it would go. Very revolutionary for the time, but also very smart because now all I had in production was cut work and finished work and a few hundred garments that were on the system. Where before, I could have three to four weeks worth of work piled up because you do all the making of things, all the elastic, all the cover, and then all of the trimming, and this way at the end of the day, you had finished work that you could ship. If you had to rush something to do, it was easy to do. Major, major investment and major, major consideration. It was not something that my father was, my father had a problem with the computer because he was a math guy. He couldn't understand this, what do you mean you do everything 0s and 1s, 0s and 1s. Well that's the way it works. Well, why don't they use 3s and 4, I don't know but it works this way. Binary system. So he was not, but then we took a trip out to Gerber. By the way, Gerber Garment Technology was the one we went into the Gerber Mover. There were other companies, Eton was the one that they had down at the Tama Manufacturing [Fogelman]. Because Mark and I talk about that now. Anyway, my father and I took a trip out to California to one of the customers that made bathing suits with this system. It literally took him [my father] an hour to realize what it was worth. We brought that in over a summer, introduced it to the operators, they were scared to death of it, as were we at first. But I really, I became an outspoken advocate for it, the system, writing articles for trade magazines, being brought down to the Bobbin Show by Gerber to talk to customers, going and doing consulting myself. Not for myself, for Gerber, and you know, the companies that made bathing suits. And I feel it saved our business. This was a major investment, I think it was a couple hundred thousand dollars. But it literally took our prices down and we were able to do them for half of what we could do before. There was no extraneous labor. GE: Right, so you're saying your costs.. MS: Costs dropped, cost of labor dropped. GE: Right, right. MS: In the interim we had a, when I first started, when the business first started, and I don't know what other people have said to you, the garment worker then was almost all Caucasian, and around here Pennsylvania Dutch, German, Slovak, whatever those Eastern European backgrounds were. They were all women with kids and their purpose was to make sure their kids didn't have to be in the factory. They worked so you didn't have to, you could go to college. And it worked. So there were no natural, there were no heir apparent to those positions. So for us, what happened was the next wave of immigration that came in, and that was the first time we had Hispanics and Asians coming to work for us. And it was not an easy transition for a lot of the people who worked for us. And one thing that made unit production work is that you weren't dependent on anybody else for your work. It goes through that system and there was always something feeding, so people didn't get into squabbles. But it was interesting because now we had a language situation, which we weren't prepared for. So at first it was Hispanics, mostly Puerto Rican, I think, I don't know that for fact because I never bothered. Now I would try to find out their country of origin because I'm more attune to that. Back then it was, you just assume that they are from Puerto Rico. And then our Koreans, that was our Asian immigrants and then Vietnamese. And it was interesting what happened was a lot of the Asians . . . again the Hispanics did the same exact thing that the Pennsylvania Dutch had done before. I say that generically, they worked so that their kids didn't have to. Not that they didn't have to work, but that they could go to college and do better for themselves. And we had a small amount of Syrian/Lebanese workers but that was not, not a lot of Atiyahs or that, it was mostly Hispanic. And then when the Asians came in, they had a different attitude. They wanted to learn the business because they were going to, they thought the business made sense. So the change was we still needed as many operators but now we had to go to different places to get them. And it was tough to get operators. I mean there were battles in town. GE: There was a real dearth. MS: Yeah. There were not enough sewing operators and more jobs to go and what was really interesting, and this goes back to one of my few real bad moments in the business, we had a quarter page ad running in the Morning Call about needing operators and you know benefits and anything else, right in the Morning Call. And the company . . . Al . . .he was was married to Dorney Park's, the girl who married Dorney Park's owner-- GE: Was that Weinstein? MS: Yes, Weinstein. Harris's son-in-law. Yeah, Harris' son in law, Al Simmons, Albert Simmons, came in and was running a factory in downtown Allentown. And somehow or other he got the Morning Call to run an article saying that it's unbelievable that there are actually sewing jobs available at this place. I'm running an ad that in those days are costing me a couple hundred dollars a week, and they're running an article . . . I lost it on the Morning Call, I just went nuts, and he and I did not get to be friends. But there was a friendly competition for the labor. We subcontracted once a while. Oh, one of the things that saved us, our industry, us as a company, was that we were the first to work with spandex. When we first started making bathing suits, everything was cotton. It was a cotton poly-blend. When Lycra first came out, no one knew how far it was going to stretch. So everything had to be changed because the same setting of stitches that you would use for cotton, which only went so far, would snap if you, because spandex went forever. I mean we were, we made, and I guess Tama did at one point too, because of the stretch pants. We made the leotard, the top leotard for Danskin because we would just make hundreds and hundreds of dozens in pure white that they would dye the color they wanted. Because we knew how to work, what saved us was knowing how to work with that fabric. That is when athletic gear became big, in Jane Fonda years, before she bankrupted the industry. That was where we came in, 'oh you need something done with stretch, go to Bru-Mar, go to Bru-mar.' We started to become, we were still higher end, but those companies started to go out. Rosemary-Reed closed up, Oscar de la Renta went overseas, Bill Blass not so much. And then what happened with the industry, it's interesting because it started off in boutiques then it went to mainstream and it's still mainstream but that's not produced domestically, most of that's produced overseas, so that your Walmarts and Targets, those are not made domestically. But the domestic shops are making now, if they are around, are making it for the real top designers, the ones that make very small lots. And you can't make, you can't have a big factory going. Yeah so in around, by around 1998 or1999, you can start to see, I mean most of the people were closing all over the place. The things that were staying open were small shops. Jick had come and gone by then, that was one of the big companies in town. GE: Who was that? MS: Jick. That was John Klein and, that was where the name came from, and Joe Jaffe and, oh my gosh-- GE: Were they also bathing suits? MS: No, no, they were a big company that did, they were just big in town, used a lot of contractors. And that was a, that company was big, and they closed, and suddenly they were gone. And all that work dried up is all I'm saying. So now all of a sudden there were a lot of operators who worked for them. And we were starting to lay off, we always laid-off in the summer, but we were starting to lay off already in late spring. Night shift wasn't running. It was getting tougher and tougher for us to get paid. We were, you know, we were doing okay, we were used to having, I would just transfer money over to the payroll account, and now we sort of had to wait for checks to come in. It's no way to run a business, you can't work that way. And so we started to look at.. GE: And this is what? MS: Late 1990s. And in 1999, Jill and I got married in September, and by the end of that year, by the winter of 2000, I was already closed. It was a gradual thing and then I saw the writing on the wall, and I knew I would end up owing somebody something. And basically it had to do with the, I would have stayed open for a little while longer but the owners, we had at one time sold the building to some people who neglected it and didn't. . . We ended up doing our own heat and air conditioning. Anyway, we knew that they were trying to sell the building. So we kind of got out of Dodge, sold our machinery off, our inventory, what was there, and yeah, it was a closed door. I had already started in the fall, in the winter of 2000, like January 2000, I had already been asked to help out directing the play at the new high school-- the high school had just opened. And the woman directing it, up to then was used to a very small stage, and she just wanted some help. She felt a little overwhelmed. And David Klasko actually said 'oh, you should talk to Mark Stutz, he's my neighbor, he knows everything about--' Anyway she called me, and I came up, I came to the school. I always say, I'm like the man who came to dinner. I came to the school to direct that show, which came out in the spring of 2000. I fell in love with the kids, I fell in love with the process. I had never experienced anything like it. I was lucky enough that the woman who had been directing the shows until then retired that summer. They brought me back in, just as a play director for two shows, just a couple thousand dollars, not even worth talking about. I was lucky enough to have just gotten remarried to a woman who understood, and all four kids lived with us, understood that that was my passion and was willing to be there for four kids instead of just her two daughters in the evenings, because I never came home again, because you know it's lots of work. And I did that for about two and a half years with the school, helped build up that program. Then they realized that they needed somebody to manage their arts program, and I was fortunate enough to get that job. And I've been doing that now for thirteen and a half years, fourteen year. GE: Wow, so you had, that really worked out beautifully from one to the other. MS: Yeah, it did. There were a couple of years, a couple of lean years there but, you know, I did other things, you know, I did some other jobs in between. There was still some money left from closing the business for myself and my secretary, for about a year closing up business. GE: So up until the end you were at the building on Seventh Street? MS: Yes. GE: Okay. And, um, you no longer owned it initially? MS: No, we did not own it anymore. Levines had moved back over to Tilghman Street. They were trying to build where the movie theater is. Tilghman Square, whichever that is, I don't know. And they were, the builder was trying actually to build the center around Levines to make them the focal point. So they moved there and they have been there. And they worked for a while. That home sewing business is not what it was either. SC: Did they also have franchises in-- MS: Yup, they have franchises in a bunch of places. I don't know what happened to them. GE: Right, right. I think, Mark, you did a great job. I think that's really...\ MS: Thank you. Thank you, it was fun to reminisce. SC: Now we just have a couple of other questions. MS: Uh oh, thought questions. What I'm thinking about is that my phone's buzzed about a hundred times in my pocket, and I can't imagine what I've got going on there. GE: You gave us a very good story though. SC: Oh, yeah. GE: You gave a lot of good information. I didn't know that you were, that the Levines. I didn't know that you had that association with them. And we did an interview last week with Marty Krasnov. SC: Right. MS: Oh, did you? Oh wow. SC: Okay, so my crazy questions are first of all, what has made you feel the most creative in life? MS: Well, certainly nothing in the garment industry made me, and just so you have this on record, I will say it, I hated the last 12-15 years of the career. Hated it. Hated every . . . I felt like there were so many important things happening in the world, and I was wondering whether or not Macy's got their bathing suits a day late. And stressing about it and fighting with buyers about it and having real issues about . . . and there were people out in wars and doctors, and people. I understand the reality that it's not just that bathing suit because that bathing suit then means that the person who sells the bathing suit on the floor of the store loses their job if we don't make it. And, you know, I understand that there is a certain amount of . . . but it just didn't seem that important to me to make everyone go crazy about it. So it was very unsatisfying. Now understand I never . . . until I got divorced with my two boys that lived with me, I did theatre all the time. I worked at Civic, I directed before Bill came in as a full time director, I directed at Civic, Pennsylvania Playhouse, Guthsville Playhouse, I directed all the time. I was always doing something theatrically because it's part of who I am, and I couldn't get away from that. But I think the most satisfying thing I've done creatively has been make sure, making sure that the arts, music and theatre and dance and visual arts are never going to leave the Parkland School District. That was done by educating not just the kids, but the parents, and not just the people who come to the spring musical, but the kids who paint and draw and dance, creating a dance team, creating a festival of the arts. Things that we've done to ensure that that is now one of the three pillars of our superintendent's stance on education. Because that's, I don't have a legacy from the garment industry. No one, well I don't want to say no one does, obviously people do, but I don't. My kids sort of kind of remember the unit production system. That's probably it. And that's okay. The legacy that I'm leaving, or I hope to leave, is all about public education and the arts. That's what I keep doing and going to . . . and I'm learning more about diversity. I didn't know how to handle the diversity that I had in my factory because I didn't know the language. I'm now dealing with that at the school district because our demographics are changing. And I'm speaking at a conference in Dallas in October and it's a discussion panel about how do you bring in diversity when you have got such a standard already set-- kids taking private lessons, private dance, private voice. How does a kid who's, you know, on the border line of that, get involved because if they are competing against it, and it could be sports too.But if they are competing against that trained person, when do they get their chance. So, it's an exciting time, and I hope to do it for about another five years, and I don't know what I'll do after that, we'll see. SC: And what do you value most in life? MS: My family. It's not even a question. They come, they're, they come before anything. And not just my mother and my wife and my kids, but my step-kids, and their significant others, their boyfriends and girlfriends. Family, I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't grown up with a family that had great strong family values. My kids have strong family values. And I think that that is, and that's a challenge for a lot of people who don't. I raised my kids as a single dad for a while. Their mom was in town, but they wanted to be with me. They were boys, and they wanted to be with their dad. You know, I lived, I never moved out of the house, and that's where they grew up . . . and that is, that house, that sofa that I tried to get rid of and now I have to put in the living room because the kids say 'where are we all going to sit when we all come?' Well you all are going to come? I got two in Denver, one in Baltimore, one in Philly, one in Bethlehem. How are you..well they do, they all show up. And on Father's day, they were either with me or with their dads or one was with my mom down in Florida. So they value family. So that answer is simple, my family. Other than that it is my integrity. My family and my integrity. That's it. SC: Is there anything else that you would like to say, just for the record? MS: I think this is a great project that you are doing. I think that it is a shame that we didn't do this when we were all younger when we had more memory cells left because there are names that I know I have, and I'll find them, and I'll write them down, and I'll call you with them. But it's something that our, that this generation, doesn't understand. The silk mills were the start of it, and we always called them silk mills, but we weren't silk mills, we were factories. The fabric companies that were in town, the Schneiders. GE: [unintelligible]..we interviewed him MS: No, they were a factory. Howie Schneider, and I don't remember his company's name. They made fabric. GE: Only fabric maker that we spoke to was Finkelstein. MS: Well Fabknit was one, but they're not in town, there's only one. And there were other bathing suits people around . . . Bobby [Feinberg] . . . there was another, it was big, they were a big factory compared to us [Sea Nymph]. There were like 250 people. And then in Easton there was A& ; H, Pembrook Swimsuits. So there we had a lot of swimsuit factories in the area. So yeah. SC: Do you think there is an advantage to having a smaller factory where it's easier in and easier out in some ways? MS: Well it's the same way with a cast of a show, like a big cast show or a small cast show. Each one has its own problems. Each one has its own advantages. When I directed Our Town with 35 or 36 people, my director directs Titanic last year and he had 60 people in the cast. Thirty people in the pit, and thirty people on crew, it's great but there is a lot of people to manage. It is a lot of ins and outs. But there is a big value to it because a lot of people get [some] benefit from it. I'm doing a show this fall with six kids in it, so the advantage is that I can get really close with six kids, bring out something that they've never had the opportunity to do. And it's good for them. So, there is advantages to both. I think the answer quite frankly is, it sounds like a cop-out, but midsize. Family run, 50, 60, 70 operators was when we were ideal because we could control everything, and everyone knew our name, we knew their name, and we knew their kids. It was different. GE: Mark, Mark, just a couple of quick little questions for refining. So I know at the beginning when you were working with that Dive-ettess company, you just did sewing. How about with the others? MS: Well then we started to do cutting-- GE: So then you were doing cutting and sewing. MS: Cutting and sewing, and then we were . . . we became cutting, sewing, finishing, which we actually tagged it, folded it, bagged it. We had a bagger, the whole thing. GE: Okay, okay. Right, so then you did the whole thing. Okay, got it. SC: And would you spell that company, just for the future? MS: D-I-V-E- [hyphen] -E-T-T-E-S. Dive-ettes. GE: And, um, just one last...what do you, why do you think that the Jewish community was over-represented in this industry? As owners. MS: Over represented? GE: Yeah. In other words, they had a substantial... MS: Um, well I think it's the same mentality that why there's so many, and not to be, I don't mean this in the wrong way, the Korean Market mentality. That everyone wanted to have their own piece of the American Dream, not work for someone else. But they all did at first, and then they went into their own businesses, and then the families started to depend on those businesses, so the second generation came in. I don't know how many went past a third generation. I think you'd find very few. GE: Right. MS: Not just because of the attrition of the industry, but in the interest of the industry. I mean in Paris Neckwear, Nate Braunstein, have you spoken to him? GE: Mhm. MS: I mean, that was a huge business at one time. The manufacturing is all somewhere else now. The Mendelsohns . . . You know, and that was third, it's the last generation of that company, you know, family wise. And I think that's what happens. I think either they don't care or can't maintain. . . Different generations, they just get bigger and bigger because there's, it's just that growth, you know .. .it's like network marketing. And you know . . . now there are twelve families that you're trying to feed out of one factory. I think it's hard. I think that it's over-represented in the sense that they understood the value of property. It's been drummed into them, us, forever of you know you can't kick me out of my country if I am important. You know, they've kicked, you know, Tevya's been kicked, moved around a lot, and that's why we still wear our hats. But, it's, I think it is the fear of someone else trying to control you, or the fact that you wanted to be self-reliant. The same reason I think they become doctors and lawyers. You could say we were over-represented in that at one time or in the world of musical theatre, the same thing, it comes from the traditions and family is a big part of it. GE: Okay, thank you. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:09:14
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Mark Stutz, June 27, 2016
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Mark Stutz talks about how his grandfather started in the children’s bathing suit sewing business with one customer. That relationship held for a few decades while that company remained in business. Later, Mark’s father and he ran the business. Over time, they got into producing high end women’s bathing suits. During the years Mark worked in the business, he stayed active in local theatre both as an actor and director. Later he was able to pivot and became the Director of Fine Arts at Parkland High School .
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LVTNT-22
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2016-06-27
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.