Marc Malkovsky, June 1, 2017

Marc Malkovsky, June 1, 2017

Marc Malkovsky talks about helping his dad cut samples in the basement for the business while Marc was still in high school. A few years after college, Marc joined his father in the business. Together, they embraced the Internet and incrementally built an e-commerce site for the business. Nick of Time is a current, thriving Allentown business.

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

2017-06-01

Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.

video

LVTNT-20

Susan Clemens-Bruder

Marc Malkovsky

01:09:23

5.4 June 1, 2017 Marc Malkovsky, June 1, 2017 LVTNT-20 1:09:23 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Marc Malkovsky Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 MalkovskyMarc_20170601 1.0:|21(14)|46(14)|67(17)|94(12)|123(8)|148(9)|175(3)|196(13)|221(14)|248(5)|273(10)|300(11)|329(7)|350(15)|381(2)|406(8)|435(4)|464(10)|489(10)|514(6)|547(14)|574(15)|601(15)|626(13)|657(9)|682(15)|709(3)|738(8)|767(16)|796(2)|825(8)|852(6)|879(7)|904(3)|931(12)|958(2)|983(3)|1010(6)|1035(6)|1060(7)|1085(14)|1112(3)|1135(9)|1162(6)|1185(18)|1210(11)|1237(9)|1262(19)|1293(5)|1322(8)|1351(9)|1380(17)|1405(9)|1434(7)|1463(4)|1492(4)|1519(7)|1544(7)|1573(10)|1602(14)|1633(11)|1654(12)|1681(13)|1712(3)|1735(7)|1762(15)|1783(14)|1808(9)|1833(5)|1934(15) 0 https://youtu.be/3hzoMqWzkkQ YouTube video 31 Introduction—Marc Malkovsky SC: So first of all what is your full name? Where were you born? Where do you live and also what is your educational history?&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Okay, Marc Alan Malkovsky. I was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Still live in Macungie right now, right outside Allentown. Born and raised, only left for college. I went to IUP for one year for business, and then I wanted to go into the culinary field, so I went up to Johnson and Wales in Providence. I was up there for four years doing restaurant and hospitality management. Left there to get a job in the Outback Corporation, worked there for about a year and a half, started through the process of becoming a proprietor and running a kitchen. And then one day I just decided, you know, that's not what I want to do. Maybe not just that type of restaurant work, still maybe in the industry but possibly something else, maybe business. And while I was looking for job, you know, my dad was like, I'm still living at home, said, you know, I’m going to work four hours a day for me on the phones, the other four hours a day you try to find a job, go out there, look to see what is available. And it was a hundred percent commission, and I just said well, if I do four hours times two a day, eight to nine hours a day, hopefully that means double the money that I'm making. It wasn’t anything crazy at the time, but you know for somebody who is unemployed, you know, anything is good. And living at home, expenses were low and you know it worked out. And I just stayed there, and that’s kind of where my career took me. 0 208 The Family Business in the 21st Century MM: [S]o when I went in to work with my father - and that was about 11 years ago now ; so it was about when I was 24 - it was just me, him, and the warehouse gentleman, George, that worked with him since he started the business basically after he moved out of the garage that he was using. So since then, I mean you know, it's changed tremendously. Our Internet presence has changed tremendously. You know, we kind of had to evolve with the times as you know through the late 90s and 2000, you know, the Internet and online shopping and marketing, you know, became a big time change. And our industry as a whole is really old school so a lot of people don't have that. They don't do the online so that was a huge change for us, and it was evolving every year, you know, little by little. 0 409 Family History in Philadelphia SC: So let’s go back into your family, what you know as far back from your father's side of the family, your mother's side of the family, and where they came from, how they got to Allentown, and anything you know about them.&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: So, my mom's side: they were from South Philly, so she grew up, she had two sisters, and one of them actually isn’t, well is a cousin, but her parents actually died at a very young age, so my grandmother took her in. So basically from day one, I mean it just basically was her sister, and I assumed that was her sister for many many many many years, you know, didn’t even think about it. You know, similarities in looks and everything, so I didn't get to meet, I met my grandfather, her father, but he died when I was two, maybe, something of that age. So she grew up in a pretty nice household, obviously, you know, nice family with them in South Philly.&#13 ; &#13 ; My dad grew up in North Philly. He and his brother and his mom and dad. They, I kind of knew a little bit more about that history for some reason maybe because my grandparents on that side owned a business and they sold, they had a wholesale lingerie shop underneath the blue rail in Kensington on Allegheny. And so I was there when I was little, you know, while they were selling the stuff or you know I remember the area. So I guess you could say even with that that has to do with the fabric business, you know, garment and stuff. 0 770 Father's Textile Business MM: [Y]ou know, you obviously mix in - home life was the business at a certain extent just because, you know, my dad worked in the fabric industry ; he went to Philadelphia Textiles. And my mom was, she did two different things, she was in the orthodontist field and she also, or the dental field, I guess I would say, and then she also was a nail technician that she did. So around, all these different companies my dad worked for, some big textile people in Allentown because you know, we talked about how Allentown was a big hub-mecca of whether it was for milling or selling or manufacturing just because of our location and what real estate cost compared to New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, DC, it was just so inexpensive, but yet so easy to get to. &#13 ; &#13 ; So he worked for all these different companies and eventually he just said ‘you know what, I can't work for people anymore, I just, I just can't do it, I need to go out on my own.’ And that happened in ‘95, yeah ‘95. So, big risk. My sister graduated in ‘97, so two 2 years before she’s about to go to college. And, like I said before, my dad always wanted to do everything he could for us. So my sister did get a job when she went to school. I think she had a partial soccer scholarship, but you know it wasn’t a question, he wanted to make sure he took care of us and try to help out in any way. 0 900 Mother's "Tips to Toes Nail Salon" MM: And not long after that, my mom decided she was doing nails and everything in our basement and they had different clothes that they were selling while they were down there. They decided well, let's open up a shop for her too. So my mom is running a business at the time, and my dad was also helping and that was on Tilghman Street, it was called Tips to Toes Nail Salon. And she was running that, my dad was helping, so I was there, you know, sometimes when she had to watch me, sometimes, you know, I was with my dad. &#13 ; &#13 ; So I had two parents that were kind of running their own business, which was a great experience to see and I think, you know, it was definitely valuable in not even realizing it subconsciously of probably having how I grew up as a child, and things that I've learned without even knowing I was learning them and experiences, which definitely helped me to where I am today, for sure. 0 1058 Sister's Education and Career SC: May I ask where your sister went to college and what she does and you have another brother?&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Nope, just a sister.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Oh, just a sister, I don’t know why I imagined that.&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: No, it’s alright. She went to Ohio University. She went to play soccer and she then decided two years afterwards, I think she’s stopped playing soccer her senior year, she went into Family Education, I guess I'm trying to think of whether the exact title was back then. And then she came home and she didn't know what she wanted to do. She went and worked in Hoboken and actually that was kinda, that was, she lived with, you know, her roommate from Ohio who was from Ohio and she moved out to Hoboken, so they actually stayed together, and they lived out there, which was nice. 0 1243 Reflecting on Change—Technology &amp ; Childhood MM: [L]ife is, life evolves, life’s different. You know, we were talking earlier about just, you know, even this computer, you know like everyone talks about how different things were back in like the 50s and the 60s and the 70s and to us, I was born in ‘82. You know, when we say ‘well you know I was in the 90s’ and to us it doesn't seem that long ago. You know, but 20 years, if you go look back you’re like, when you talk about the Internet, you click on your phone, you're up on that just like that 30 seconds. We used to have to sign on and you’d hear these weird noises and you know seeing you can’t connect, you can't do this, and that's basically, you know, where my business went and that's how our business flourished, which was great and that's, that was a huge change, like everything. I used to remember sitting in front of the typewriter, had to type papers, and every time you know I made a mistake, I have to white it out with the brush and kind of set it back up perfectly if I could, you know, just to type something up. And now I mean, it would be odd to see a letter come that's typed on the typewriter. It would be very weird. 0 1483 Father's Experience as an Employee in the Textile Industry—Burlington, Levine's, and Fisher Textiles MM: So he actually wasn't in wholesaling when he first started, he was in the manufacturing end of it, so he worked for large companies. He worked for Burlington out of New York. So he basically, his one of his, in the early years of his career, after he graduated from Philadelphia Textile, which is Philadelphia University now, he was in charge of the manufacturing, so he got to see that end of the business as well. You know, up to the garment making, the pattern making, you know all the costs that are involved in that, all the different levels. And as he progressed then he, you know, decided to change, you know, fields in the industry. And when he came into Allentown, he worked for Levine's, and they had a large warehouse, and he was in the upper management there, the selling of the fabrics. So they also had retail stores in Allentown, downtown Allentown they had one, they had one in Tilghman Square. And, so he was involved in that a little bit but not so much because he was involved more in bulk purchasing and selling. At that point I really didn't know much anything about the business. I knew where his office was, I knew where he worked, I used to go visit him mainly because the Levines, for their sons, they had go-cart so I was able to drive those around the parking lot, which is pretty cool as a little kid. So obviously I always liked visiting my dad at work. But he then he worked for Levine's, he worked for another company called Fisher Textiles, which was in Allentown. And I'm pretty sure there's one other one but Fisher was the last one and that was basically when he said you know ‘I can't work for anybody anymore and I just decided to get out.’ 0 1588 1995: Creating "Nick of Time Textiles" MM: And through, let’s see, that must've been, see ‘46, and he graduated at 20, so ‘66, ‘67, so probably about 30 years. And, you know, over 30 years in the fabric industry, you tend to meet a lot of people. He is definitely a jokester, you know, he's pretty lighthearted, you know, likes to have a good time, so he was able to meet a lot of contacts, meet a lot of people that liked him, I’m sure there were some people might not have, but that’s everybody. &#13 ; &#13 ; And fortunately he decided to leave, he talked to some people down in the Carolinas, and his one friend said ‘you know, I'm going to ship you some fabric, let’s get you started and you pay me when you pay me, no big deal.’ And luckily, only friends are to do that for you, you know, help you get started. And everybody needs that when you're starting your business. It’s hard to do it just solely on your own. You always need a connection. You always need someone to kind of help you, push you. &#13 ; &#13 ; So, you know, he did that. He formed a website, which was in ‘95/’96, right when, you know, the Internet started coming along. It really was just kind of an informative website, really didn’t have much to it, no relativity to search engines back then, you know, whatever search engines might have been at that time, and, you know, just making calls. Calling people all the time, talking to people, traveling. 0 1755 Purchasers &amp ; Products GE: And the people who were buying, tell us again, they were other, who were they? What businesses were they in?&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: I’m pretty sure, I mean, back then it was, you know, there's a lot of larger manufacturers. I mean everything was in the US, you know back then. Everybody was making everything here, so there could have been small, you know, now we would called them boutique people, you know, small companies, people, you know, just got out of sewing school, you know, they’re starting their own apparel company, and you know they are trying to make it, so they’re buying fabric. There could be large stores, you know, like any of the malls, you know, whether it was Hess’s or Macy's or something like that, you know, they were buying from different people in the US, like my father was building to be a company like that that could supply them. So large and small, back then it was all basically apparel manufacturing is what the fabric industry was and what people were selling to, the people that were buying, and that still is a big part today but it's changed tremendously. 0 1919 Marc Malkovsky's Role in the Family Business—Partnership with Harris Malkovsky MM: So I got into the business, that was the mid-90s, you know, and I was always working with him, not for him, I was, like I mentioned earlier, I was cutting samples, I was, you know, moving the fabric, you know, helping him cut stuff, you know, after school. So kind of integrating myself into the business even though that definitely was not where I said I wanted to go nor did he say he wanted to direct me there. So I was involved at that point and then after college when I wasn't involved and then I, you know, went my own route and then decided, you know, that wasn't the way I wanted to go and he asked me to start working for him, as I mentioned, so it's, you know, I started doing phone sales. It was very small. I mean we had a decent sized warehouse at that point. We had a lot of fabric, and, you know, I just started working for him. And, you know, it was nice. &#13 ; &#13 ; Luckily I think getting into it at that point and not being my primary thinking of that's my job, it was kind of maybe an easy way of getting us to work together. Cause working with family for most people is impossible. Some people it’s very hard. Some people find it very easy. I’d put us probably right in the middle of easy and hard. It's not hard by any means. It's pretty easy. Luckily because he, from day one when I started working with him, he was kind of open. 0 2160 Becoming an E-Commerce Business MM: The Internet, as that evolved, you know, that kept helping us go. I was Internet, not Internet savvy, but I knew more about the Internet, you know, and that was a good push for us to be able to do that but that took, to get to that point I mean, that probably took another five, six . . . 5 years, I would say, until like we really pushed it because Internet is very expensive in order to create a legit website. Not these websites that say go on GoDaddy.com and get a website for $10. It doesn't really give you the presence out there if you're trying to sell to America, you know, and Canada and possibly Mexico and everything else. So that kind of propelled us to the next level. And we’ve kind of, you know, you never want to get stagnant just like kind of stay. You need to keep evolving, you need to keep changing. We’ve changed our website, you know, maybe four or five times and that's helped us grow and he still has a ton of input and I learn something from him probably every single day. And, you know, things that I might not think are good idea, he does, and, you know, we do them. And things that he doesn’t think are a good idea, he lets me know them. You know, and that's kinda the great relationship that we formed, and like how we helped the business grow to where it is.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: So at this point you were really truly an e-commerce business. 0 2308 Internet Versus Warehouse Sales GE: So of your total sales, about what percentage at this point are come from the website, you know, that are e-commerce versus coming to your warehouse?&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Um, of it's kind of tough to put an exact number on it only because the people coming to the warehouse could have found us through the site so I would, I mean if you had to put a number I would probably definitely say it's minuscule of people that are just local people that just saw the sign. You know you might say that's 5%, you know, and everything is 95% otherwise. If you did just total in-house sales, you know, that number might go up to 10 or to 15%, but those people probably found us through the website, one way or another.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: So at this point your customer base, who you’re selling your fabric to, really the Internet is essential.&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Oh, yeah. The Internet goes down, our website goes down, it's, you know, there was a time, it was a couple months ago, and our website was down for say two days. While in that two days I can lose, you know, maybe $10,000 in sales. 0 2432 Advantages of Nick of Time Textiles—Youth, Diversity, Networking, &amp ; Technology MM: There’s, in my opinion, there's a lot of wholesalers of fabric out there, that's for sure. In my opinion, like us--probably a handful. You know, the one thing is, you know, you have a group of friends wherever or people that you talk to, and this person might be in this industry in somebody else's ; I don't have anybody that is in my industry. Not one friend that's in fabric, never was, never thought about it. You know, back when I started, you know, we were talking off camera, I think I started at 24 and I was probably the youngest person in America selling fabric unless some child, you know, came right out of high school work for the father that I didn't know about. But when I would go out to LA in my early years to meet people and gain more contacts, when I would walk in the door and I told them who I was, they were like ‘you’re Marc?’ You know, they thought I was 45, you know, and they see this kid walking in at 24, and they were just all shocked and they were like ‘dude, you’re young for this industry.’ You know, it was a great thing because eventually, people, you know, you get older. They’re gonna get out of it, and I'm still going to be present, and I’m gonna, you know, keep growing. &#13 ; &#13 ; We do a lot of different things than other wholesalers do. Our website is more prominent than most wholesale companies out there. There are other fabric websites but there's a lot of retail, there’s not so much wholesale, which helps. You know, the random person will go online and find us. 0 3175 Benefits of the Internet in Relationship to Suppliers MM: So the suppliers: two things the website can help in ways because suppliers are also, they’re obviously looking to sell. They don’t want to sell to the people I want to sell to. They want to sell to people like me. So sometimes they’ll go online and they’ll find people. And they’ll contact me and say ‘hey,’ you know, they’ll call me up and say ‘what do you, I see you sell this, this, and this, you know, we offer this. Let me send you some samples, let's talk about, you know.’ And then we can start doing business that way.&#13 ; &#13 ; Another way that I guess would be a supplier of ours is actually our customers are also suppliers. In ways to where they do manufacturing, and we sell them a bunch fabric or maybe somebody sold them a bunch of fabric, and they have all this excess fabric and their lines over, they don’t know what to do with it, and they go online say, ‘I got to find somebody to sell this to.’ So they go online and they find us, and I get emails all the time saying, ‘hey, I am just curious, I found you online, do you guys buy fabric?’ And obviously we buy fabric. We have to buy fabric to sell fabric. So we’ll buy their leftover fabric. 0 3295 Fabric Brokers So people call me and say, you know, ‘I wanted to…’ We probably have over million yards of fabric right now. We have on the West Coast probably you know 40 different companies we can use that probably have millions and millions yards of fabric that we can sell off anytime we want and ship directly from them as if it's coming from us, so we're repping their line in a way but nobody knows about them.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: So you’re, in that case, you’re not, you don’t own it, you’re a broker of it.&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Yup, I’m a broker of it. 0 3393 Financial Growth of the Business—Sales GE: So, um, so it sounds like, if I understand, over the past ten years that you’ve been actively in the business, from the beginning until now, it sounds like it has grown a lot.&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Yeah, for sure.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: And was that growing five times? Two times? &#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Probably, if sales wise, in sales it’s gone, you know, if sales go up and down, it stays pretty consistent. Since I started, you know, at our highest point it grew 10 times and probably, you know, on an average, it's probably about seven times. So I mean it's tremendously, tremendous to where it was for sure. 0 3624 Profits GE: So Marc, where sales have gone up about seven times over the last ten years, how about, what about the profit, bottomline? Cause I realize you also hold a lot of more expenses and things and whatever.&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Yeah I mean the expenses are a lot more compared to what they are but I mean...&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Right, but that’s commensurate with the sales.&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Yeah, I mean, most businesses are going to be like that. I mean I would love to have a business model that my business sales grew seven times and my expenses stayed the same. I mean that would be fantastic. You know, for our business that's not the case and, you know, I would say well when I was younger I would say I wouldn’t need as much money, you know, to live. And having a family now, fortunately, you know, my wife doesn’t have to work. You know, she's at home. She does work part time, you know, once she is back from having the baby, and that's kinda just for her presence of mind. 0 3797 Jewish Involvement in the Textile and Needle-Trade Industry—Past &amp ; Present GE: So I’m curious, years ago for most of the older people that we have interviewed, there was a dominance, there was a pretty large presence of Jewish people in the business. A lot of Italians, a lot of other people, but certainly, given how small the population is, there had to be a large percentage of Jewish people. Is that because, I don’t know, we have not interviewed a lot of people who currently have a business, is that still the case?&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Yeah, uh, 99%.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Ok, wow.&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: You know, where did that come from…&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: I was going to ask you, what do you think might be any reasons for that?&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Uh, I don't know, I think, you know, I just I think it was something from back in the day, you know, over whether it was in Israel or Iran, you know cause there are a lot of Iranian Jews, you know, that have come over that were in the fabric industry. I think there was a big fabric hub, you know, back in the day like over there and when everyone came, everybody, you know, migrated over here it kind of followed them and that was what they knew, you know, so you tend to have into whether it was the Jewish over here or Irish over here or you know Italians over here. Everybody for certain, it might have started in other industries, starting to diverse itself, for some reason in this industry it's not and I don't know why. Everybody I deal with is Jewish basically. I don't think there's one, there might be maybe one or two people, you know, that I buy fabric from that are not Jewish by any means. 0 3962 Marc Malkovsky's Inspiration and Values SC: What has made you feel the most creative in your life?&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Um, the most creative, um, hm, I mean I, you know, probably my parents. You know just, you know, the openness of letting me do things, you know, and then in business with my father, you know, letting me take control as a young person. Being, you know, getting ideas and seeing them and then learning and being able to open up and kind of venture into my own things, you know, they never, they never pushed me and said ‘you need to go to this.’ You know, I got tons of friends and families say, ‘well you need to go to nursing school, or you need to do this.’ You know, I was never pushed in any direction, but I was backed a hundred percent no matter where I went, so that’s what I would say.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: And what do you value most in life?&#13 ; &#13 ; MM: Um, it would, I mean, there's a, you know, family obviously is very important, you know, and I think a lot of people would say that off the bat. 0 MovingImage Marc Malkovsky talks about helping his dad cut samples in the basement for the business while Marc was still in high school. A few years after college, Marc joined his father in the business. Together, they embraced the Internet and incrementally built an e-commerce site for the business. Nick of Time is a current, thriving Allentown business. Interview with Marc Malkovsky, June 1, 2017 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: So today is June 1, 2017 and we're going to be starting with some just general background questions and then move into a little bit more of your family connections and then go from there and then go into the business and then and end of my two questions sort of go deeper into you. MARC MALKOVSKY: Okay. SC: So first of all what is your full name? Where were you born? Where do you live and also what is your educational history? MM: Okay, Marc Alan Malkovsky. I was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Still live in Macungie right now, right outside Allentown. Born and raised, only left for college. I went to IUP for one year for business, and then I wanted to go into the culinary field, so I went up to Johnson and Wales in Providence. I was up there for four years doing restaurant and hospitality management. Left there to get a job in the Outback Corporation, worked there for about a year and a half, started through the process of becoming a proprietor and running a kitchen. And then one day I just decided, you know, that's not what I want to do. Maybe not just that type of restaurant work, still maybe in the industry but possibly something else, maybe business. And while I was looking for job, you know, my dad was like, I'm still living at home, said, you know, I'm going to work four hours a day for me on the phones, the other four hours a day you try to find a job, go out there, look to see what is available. And it was a hundred percent commission, and I just said well, if I do four hours times two a day, eight to nine hours a day, hopefully that means double the money that I'm making. It wasn't anything crazy at the time, but you know for somebody who is unemployed, you know, anything is good. And living at home, expenses were low and you know it worked out. And I just stayed there, and that's kind of where my career took me. SC: So next let's just go where do you live, more specifically and where talk a little bit more about are you still with the business and have you changed with the business of your job, with the business? We'll talk more about that later. MM: Sure, yeah, the location I live is still over by, it's called Brookside Country Club. It's over off of Sauerkraut. Moved there about three years ago. I used to live over in an area called Greenhills in a condo that I owned before I got married. So we lived there for about a year or so. And in that time before marriage, six months before, we were looking for a house. Just said, you know, let's not wait to the very end, let's kind of start looking now, and if we happen to find something, you know, that's great. And I think we looked for about a year and a half until we found what we really wanted because we were pretty picky in what we were looking for. And then we bought the house, and we moved over there, so that's where we reside. And you said, you know, about the company, so when I went in to work with my father - and that was about 11 years ago now ; so it was about when I was 24 - it was just me, him, and the warehouse gentleman, George, that worked with him since he started the business basically after he moved out of the garage that he was using. So since then, I mean you know, it's changed tremendously. Our Internet presence has changed tremendously. You know, we kind of had to evolve with the times as you know through the late 90s and 2000, you know, the Internet and online shopping and marketing, you know, became a big time change. And our industry as a whole is really old school so a lot of people don't have that. They don't do the online so that was a huge change for us, and it was evolving every year, you know, little by little. We eventually had to move out of where we were because of building inspections in Allentown about nine years, eight years ago there was a huge overhaul because building were not up to code, people were using them as apartments, they weren't supposed to, there were electrical heating fires, people's plug in heaters were going all over the place. So landlords that owned all of these building started telling on each other, and they started coming in, the marshal started coming in, and they wanted to shut our building down day one and we convinced them because it was a family business, they were basically going to put us, we were not going to make any money, put us out and they left it open for seven days, the landlord came in and was like I'm not fixing any of the stuff, you know, I'm not paying for this, it's too much money. So we had to move an entire warehouse just my dad, I and the gentleman, George, in seven days while we still ran the business. So we would work from 8 AM to 3 PM, and then we take a break and work from 4 PM until 10 PM for a week to try to move everything out as fast as we could. Ended up being a blessing because where we moved we have a lot more presence on the street. We're on Union Boulevard in Allentown-- big, the tall building. We had the third floor. It's a retail space but we're not retail and there's no elevator that gets you all the way up there, really, so it's not, it doesn't cost us that much per se because there's no other retail stores that would really go in there so we take space for the landlord that really would be unsellable, and we just grew from there. Now we have that floor, we have another floor. The company now instead of my dad, I, and a gentleman in the warehouse, we went and we had one employee, and then we got another person in the warehouse, so we had two extra employees. Then another lady in the office. Now we've grown to, on-and-off it really depends on right now with three ladies in the office, we did have four at one time, but learning new ways of how to do everyone's job more efficient, we only three right now. And we have five gentleman in the warehouse. So yes, so basically with my dad and I, I think we're, you know, anywhere from 9 to 10 employees at this point. SC: It's so interesting hearing this from your dad's perspective and from your perspective-- MM: ...it intertwines different, different points of view for sure, I would assume that. SC: It does, yes. So let's go back into your family, what you know as far back from your father's side of the family, your mother's side of the family, and where they came from, how they got to Allentown, and anything you know about them. MM: So, my mom's side: they were from South Philly, so she grew up, she had two sisters, and one of them actually isn't, well is a cousin, but her parents actually died at a very young age, so my grandmother took her in. So basically from day one, I mean it just basically was her sister, and I assumed that was her sister for many many many many years, you know, didn't even think about it. You know, similarities in looks and everything, so I didn't get to meet, I met my grandfather, her father, but he died when I was two, maybe, something of that age. So she grew up in a pretty nice household, obviously, you know, nice family with them in South Philly. My dad grew up in North Philly. He and his brother and his mom and dad. They, I kind of knew a little bit more about that history for some reason maybe because my grandparents on that side owned a business and they sold, they had a wholesale lingerie shop underneath the blue rail in Kensington on Allegheny. And so I was there when I was little, you know, while they were selling the stuff or you know I remember the area. So I guess you could say even with that that has to do with the fabric business, you know, garment and stuff. My dad was always around that type of business in that area. You know, the families, I think on his side for sure, I was always told my grandparents, my dad said his parents never did anything wrong, you know. And I think, it's probably a little different, you know, working with him, where obviously we're partners so I have a sometimes critical things, and it's tough for him on that side because you know, in his eyes his parents never did anything wrong. But in a business you know he accepts that because we're all going to make mistakes and as long as you can work together, it's better that way. So, you know, his dad was always there for him, did everything he could, and I think, you know, that passed onto my father to, you know, how he treated his kids and raised us. You know, my grandmother, I think she got a sense of humor from her. She was a riot, and she still was until the day that she passed. And, you know, I think it's just a lot of the values of the family. Luckily they were both very different, like how, you know, my mom's side was definitely more religious, my dad's side, you know, still had the Judaism in them and were religious to a certain extent. But that whole living situation, you know, my dad wanted to move in with my mom before marriage, her parents weren't happy about that by any means, so they would come over, my dad would leave, so he wasn't there, so they really didn't see anything or, you know, out of sight, out of mind type of deal. So two different families definitely, just, you know, also where they grew up, my mom you know in the South was more type of suburb-ish compared to being under the Blue Rail, you know, with in an alley, in a row home. Kind of, I guess, in a row home in a way, you know, just like in the city blocks, you know, and that's kind of like where they came from. And then did you say move into my family, I guess or? SC: Well, do you know where those families came from? Did your family, your parents, your grandparents, ever talk about how they got to America? MM: Not too much, no, to be honest. That never, wasn't really big conversation, that, you know, that came up. My grandparents, you know, passed in history. I mean, you know, I know, you know, both sides were Polish. I know there was a lot of different history, and I know my dad has talked a little bit about different family members, you know, throughout Europe and where they might've been and where they might've traveled, but not anything in great detail, I guess you would say. SC: So, it gets lost sometimes, over the generations. MM: Yeah, yeah, I guess it depends on how interested maybe some people are, you know, there's always ways of finding out now, I know everybody's doing the DNA testing and stuff to see where they came from and what their makeup is. And I know that my wife wanted to do that on her side and then my side too to try to kind of see, you know, where we might have kind of originated from. But most likely, you know, based on the background, my last, my mom's last name was Press. My dad's Malkovsky. It was definitely, you know, from Poland, most likely. SC: And do you know any other names back further, did anyone ever talk about that? MM: No, it really didn't. I don't know if it was just something that just didn't come down from my grandparents, but again, you know, I was young, my, other grandfather died when I was three, so I really had no, I have memories but I don't know if those memories are just from pictures of me seeing, cause it's tough when you're three, if you are going to remember anything like that. So everything else was just kind of based around my grandmothers, and it's not so much that they didn't want to talk about it or maybe concentrate on anything in the past, but they did a really good job of concentrating on us, you know, in making us the important thing, you know, and doing whatever they could for us I would say. SC: So any memories that really stand out about your own parents with either, with the business or just home life or-- MM: Um, yeah, I mean, you know, you obviously mix in - home life was the business at a certain extent just because, you know, my dad worked in the fabric industry ; he went to Philadelphia Textiles. And my mom was, she did two different things, she was in the orthodontist field and she also, or the dental field, I guess I would say, and then she also was a nail technician that she did. So around, all these different companies my dad worked for, some big textile people in Allentown because you know, we talked about how Allentown was a big hub-mecca of whether it was for milling or selling or manufacturing just because of our location and what real estate cost compared to New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, DC, it was just so inexpensive, but yet so easy to get to. So he worked for all these different companies and eventually he just said 'you know what, I can't work for people anymore, I just, I just can't do it, I need to go out on my own.' And that happened in '95, yeah '95. So, big risk. My sister graduated in '97, so two 2 years before she's about to go to college. And, like I said before, my dad always wanted to do everything he could for us. So my sister did get a job when she went to school. I think she had a partial soccer scholarship, but you know it wasn't a question, he wanted to make sure he took care of us and try to help out in any way. So to know that he has a college expense coming on, another kid immediately graduating three years later after my sister, going out starting his own business, you know, we had, he basically had a connection that he grew friendly with in the Carolinas, which is a big mecca for fabric as well. And he shipped them up a bunch of fabric, had it in the garage and basically said, you know, pay me when you can pay me. So, you know, looking at a two-car garage filled with fabric and basically he was just selling to hopefully, you know, small designers that he knew, that he gained relationships with when he worked at other companies. And that's how he got the ball rolling. And not long after that, my mom decided she was doing nails and everything in our basement and they had different clothes that they were selling while they were down there. They decided well, let's open up a shop for her too. So my mom is running a business at the time, and my dad was also helping and that was on Tilghman Street, it was called Tips to Toes Nail Salon. And she was running that, my dad was helping, so I was there, you know, sometimes when she had to watch me, sometimes, you know, I was with my dad. So I had two parents that were kind of running their own business, which was a great experience to see and I think, you know, it was definitely valuable in not even realizing it subconsciously of probably having how I grew up as a child, and things that I've learned without even knowing I was learning them and experiences, which definitely helped me to where I am today, for sure. You know, in just when you have two family members running businesses, it's, you know, a lot different than just having, you know, a job somewhere because the financials. So all of a sudden, things aren't going as well in this business, maybe they are not going as well as this business. You know, money starts to get a little tight. You know I think there's no there's definitely some tough times in, you know, tough times for, you know, give more stress ; stress has arguments and things happen. And you never should say money is important because it is not the end-all factor. Unfortunately, it does make the world go round, and it does make things easier in life, and less stressful. So there were some rough times definitely, you know, in the house, but they prevailed, you know, they kept moving forward. You know, my dad was very determined, you know, in what his vision was, in his goal was, and where he wanted to get to. Eventually they just decide to sell the nail salon because it just became too much. Then my mom just went back to the dental field to work. And, you know, my dad continued to grow the business as much as he could. I mean, after school, I would cut samples in the basement, you know, I would help him, you know, doing that instead of some kids were cleaning up the room and doing chores, these were like my chores, you know, like I was helping out. And in that essence, I was learning part of the fabrics, you know, I was learning how to cut them, I was learning what types they were. So even at 14, 13 years old, you know, I was still starting to learn stuff at that point, not realizing how I was going to need it later in life. So, you know, it was interesting childhood, I guess you would say, to say the least. SC: May I ask where your sister went to college and what she does and you have another brother? MM: Nope, just a sister. SC: Oh, just a sister, I don't know why I imagined that. MM: No, it's alright. She went to Ohio University. She went to play soccer and she then decided two years afterwards, I think she's stopped playing soccer her senior year, she went into Family Education, I guess I'm trying to think of whether the exact title was back then. And then she came home and she didn't know what she wanted to do. She went and worked in Hoboken and actually that was kinda, that was, she lived with, you know, her roommate from Ohio who was from Ohio and she moved out to Hoboken, so they actually stayed together, and they lived out there, which was nice. And then that whole, that 9/11 happened, and my sister lived in Hoboken, and she worked in Manhattan, so she actually took the train in there, and she basically was, I forget how many blocks away but I think she was eight blocks away because she basically got off the train and 30 minutes later is when everything happened. So, you know, that was kind of rattling in our family a little bit because she had to get stuffed onto a ferry and gets sent over and luckily, you know, at that time everybody came together and somebody housed her for like a week, fed her, clothed her, which was nice, you know. And then eventually she decided to leave Hoboken and try to figure something else out. Her roommate got engaged, got married, moved out. And then she went to Kutztown University for her graduate degree in counseling. While she was living at home, she was doing that and so she went through that progress, she got a job right out of school at Allen, Allentown School District. So she's the, she's been there for probably 11 years now. You know, she started probably when she was 27 so she's been the guidance counselor at Allentown. So, she's married, two kids, niece and nephew. So she's local, which is good, local and safe. SC: Do you remember where she was working when she was living in Hoboken? MM: No, it was just, you know, as you can imagine how big Manhattan is. It was just a big firm. She wasn't doing anything that really was relative to her college degree as probably 99% of people that come out of college don't, you know, they don't know where they're going or they just need to get a job, so they get a job wherever they can to get started at least at that time. And so it was just a big firm whether it was moving papers, or you know whatever it might've been, that's kinda where she was. SC: Do you have any random memories from other... you did talk about early memories from your childhood, anything else that you'd like to share or about the future? MM: In regards to-- SC: Just life. MM: ...Just life? SC: Yeah. MM: I don't know, I mean, you know, life is, life evolves, life's different. You know, we were talking earlier about just, you know, even this computer, you know like everyone talks about how different things were back in like the 50s and the 60s and the 70s and to us, I was born in '82. You know, when we say 'well you know I was in the 90s' and to us it doesn't seem that long ago. You know, but 20 years, if you go look back you're like, when you talk about the Internet, you click on your phone, you're up on that just like that 30 seconds. We used to have to sign on and you'd hear these weird noises and you know seeing you can't connect, you can't do this, and that's basically, you know, where my business went and that's how our business flourished, which was great and that's, that was a huge change, like everything. I used to remember sitting in front of the typewriter, had to type papers, and every time you know I made a mistake, I have to white it out with the brush and kind of set it back up perfectly if I could, you know, just to type something up. And now I mean, it would be odd to see a letter come that's typed on the typewriter. It would be very weird. So I think just changing, we talked about the different generations, you know, I push my kid to, I have two kids now, but one of them can't move really, only two months old. My daughter's two and a half, we pushed her, we want her to play outside as much as possible. We did that growing up, and I don't think kids do that. I mean I see certain kids that never go outside, you know, they prefer to sit in front of a computer where they're probably learning, you know, and maybe in 10 years, maybe that was the right thing, you know, based on how the world goes but, you know, you need that outdoor activity and live as a child and kind of enjoy that stuff. I mean we played games around the yard. But the different thing is now, you know, just like I see with, you want your kids outside, but then you have to be watching your kids. When I was little, not saying that my parents didn't watch us, 'oh, you're going two doors down, yeah, go ahead.' No big deal. You run around, you bike somewhere, now you see people posting watch out for this car, approaching kids, you know, people that are trying to take kids, stuff like that, you know. So, not that maybe that wasn't happening back then, but I think everything is now under a microscope and everybody is so sensitive nowadays compared to what they used to be and in some situations, that's a good thing and I think some situations, it's horrible because you look too deep into situations and when things used to be, you know, so easy and so fine and not a big deal, now everything is a big deal. I think that's an unfortunate part, but there's no way to change that. That's kinda, that's why I will be curious to see where it is 20 years from now. Everybody says, oh just wait, you know, all the time you know, like just wait 'til you're married, just wait 'til you have a kid, just wait 'til your kid's ten, just wait 'til your kid, you know, does this or wants to go out here, you know, where you can say 'oh, I'll be fine,' you know, then all of a sudden it happens and you're like wait a second, no you're not going or you can't do this. So it's fun to see evolve as long as your mind is open to change, you know, I think it's nice. SC: Thank you. MM: You're welcome. GAIL EISENBERG: So now we're going to start talking a little more about the business and if you want to give us a sense of the origins, how, you did quickly, how your dad got started, what role was he? Cause as I understand correctly, he was wholesaler, right? MM: Yup. GE: And so what role that was, how that business model works, how do you get your supplies, how do you, who were the customers? So if you want to give us a little bit of background telling us about how it started, how it grew, you know, when you got into it, and that way we can start a progression. MM: Yeah, sure. So he actually wasn't in wholesaling when he first started, he was in the manufacturing end of it, so he worked for large companies. He worked for Burlington out of New York. So he basically, his one of his, in the early years of his career, after he graduated from Philadelphia Textile, which is Philadelphia University now, he was in charge of the manufacturing, so he got to see that end of the business as well. You know, up to the garment making, the pattern making, you know all the costs that are involved in that, all the different levels. And as he progressed then he, you know, decided to change, you know, fields in the industry. And when he came into Allentown, he worked for Levine's, and they had a large warehouse, and he was in the upper management there, the selling of the fabrics. So they also had retail stores in Allentown, downtown Allentown they had one, they had one in Tilghman Square. And, so he was involved in that a little bit but not so much because he was involved more in bulk purchasing and selling. At that point I really didn't know much anything about the business. I knew where his office was, I knew where he worked, I used to go visit him mainly because the Levines, for their sons, they had go-cart so I was able to drive those around the parking lot, which is pretty cool as a little kid. So obviously I always liked visiting my dad at work. But he then he worked for Levine's, he worked for another company called Fisher Textiles, which was in Allentown. And I'm pretty sure there's one other one but Fisher was the last one and that was basically when he said you know 'I can't work for anybody anymore and I just decided to get out.' And through, let's see, that must've been, see '46, and he graduated at 20, so '66, '67, so probably about 30 years. And, you know, over 30 years in the fabric industry, you tend to meet a lot of people. He is definitely a jokester, you know, he's pretty lighthearted, you know, likes to have a good time, so he was able to meet a lot of contacts, meet a lot of people that liked him, I'm sure there were some people might not have, but that's everybody. And fortunately he decided to leave, he talked to some people down in the Carolinas, and his one friend said 'you know, I'm going to ship you some fabric, let's get you started and you pay me when you pay me, no big deal.' And luckily, only friends are to do that for you, you know, help you get started. And everybody needs that when you're starting your business. It's hard to do it just solely on your own. You always need a connection. You always need someone to kind of help you, push you. So, you know, he did that. He formed a website, which was in '95/'96, right when, you know, the Internet started coming along. It really was just kind of an informative website, really didn't have much to it, no relativity to search engines back then, you know, whatever search engines might have been at that time, and, you know, just making calls. Calling people all the time, talking to people, traveling. He would go down the Carolinas probably twice a month, you know, and he would do, because family was very important, he would drive down and drive back up, you know, basically in a 24-hour period. So he was always traveling, always, and that's how the business was. You know, you would take your samples, you cut your samples off your rolls, you pack them up in a suitcase, you would travel to different people that you can sell fabric to, whether it was large manufacturers, small apparel manufacturers, anybody else who sold fabric as well that you could job fabric to. And that's, you know, what the business was. GE: So when you say that he went down to the Carolinas with, that was selling fabric-- MM: It was selling and buying, you know, it was meeting a lot of people, you know, that he could either to do business with, also, you know, to sell to or that he could get, you know information on what goods can he buy, you know, what other goods are out there. So he knew based on what customers might be looking for, where he could turn to go and get those goods in order to sell them to them. You know, you can always work off of your own inventory which is a great thing because that's money that you can just bring in, but to always have an awareness of what else is out there when somebody's asking you. That's the type of people that kinda ended up making it because they kept going, they kept searching for new stuff, so that's why he made a lot of trips down to the Carolinas. GE: And the people who were buying, tell us again, they were other, who were they? What businesses were they in? MM: I'm pretty sure, I mean, back then it was, you know, there's a lot of larger manufacturers. I mean everything was in the US, you know back then. Everybody was making everything here, so there could have been small, you know, now we would called them boutique people, you know, small companies, people, you know, just got out of sewing school, you know, they're starting their own apparel company, and you know they are trying to make it, so they're buying fabric. There could be large stores, you know, like any of the malls, you know, whether it was Hess's or Macy's or something like that, you know, they were buying from different people in the US, like my father was building to be a company like that that could supply them. So large and small, back then it was all basically apparel manufacturing is what the fabric industry was and what people were selling to, the people that were buying, and that still is a big part today but it's changed tremendously. GE: Now your dad is not selling made apparel, correct? MM: No, they are so, it's not, he didn't make the garments. Basically what it is, it's the raw material. GE: So he's selling the fabrics. MM: Yup. So the raw materials is really, I mean you could look at it two ways. It's finished material after it's made, it's rolls of fabric and basically you would sell them and they go to a pattern maker and a manufacturer and then they cut the garments and sew the garments up for the customers. And then they sell them as their own product line. GE: So when a Hess's or Macy's bought from him, were they just buying from him for the fabric department, not for their clothing. MM: No, it was all for clothing. So they, since they were probably doing their manufacturing in the US, they would say 'okay we need the designers for that worked for them at the time, we need 10,000 yards of black X type of fabric.' So they would buy that, send it off to the mill, they would have it manufactured, they would have to make the garments, then they would dispersed it to the stores. So they all had different buying departments and that's how that would work, and then that's what you would see if the final product on the shelves when they have their own brand in there compared to all these other brands nowadays in small boutiques and everything else that's going on. The big department stores don't really buy like that in the US anymore. GE: So this is the mid-90s, and tell us now when you got into the business, and then together, how you and your father have continued to grow the business? MM: So I got into the business, that was the mid-90s, you know, and I was always working with him, not for him, I was, like I mentioned earlier, I was cutting samples, I was, you know, moving the fabric, you know, helping him cut stuff, you know, after school. So kind of integrating myself into the business even though that definitely was not where I said I wanted to go nor did he say he wanted to direct me there. So I was involved at that point and then after college when I wasn't involved and then I, you know, went my own route and then decided, you know, that wasn't the way I wanted to go and he asked me to start working for him, as I mentioned, so it's, you know, I started doing phone sales. It was very small. I mean we had a decent sized warehouse at that point. We had a lot of fabric, and, you know, I just started working for him. And, you know, it was nice. Luckily I think getting into it at that point and not being my primary thinking of that's my job, it was kind of maybe an easy way of getting us to work together. Cause working with family for most people is impossible. Some people it's very hard. Some people find it very easy. I'd put us probably right in the middle of easy and hard. It's not hard by any means. It's pretty easy. Luckily because he, from day one when I started working with him, he was kind of open. A lot of old-timers that open their own business are closed ; this is the way we do it, this is how it is, don't tell me anything new or anything of that sort. So working with him, he got to see maybe younger mind working and try to evolve and see what other avenues of business we could do. So back then, in mid-2000's, one of the things was he would always go to New York, New York, New York, that's where the fabric is imported, that's where everything came in. Well everything in real estate New York got super expensive. Everything start pushing out to Los Angeles. It was cheaper to import to Los Angeles. It was closer to the Orient, and that's where most of the fabric was milled and came from. So it only made sense: land's less expensive, the shipping is less expensive, the fabric the same cost, let's move out there and see what we can, what they can do. So a lot of people did that and somehow, I'm not exactly sure, but whether it was through somebody he knew and said 'hey, why don't you call so-so,' you know, and I formed a pretty good relationship with a gentleman out there. Their company is called Ben Textiles. And, you know, I was like, you know, well, why don't we see their fabric? You know, say we have our fabric but they have a lot of stuff that we don't have and people are calling us and I had to keep saying 'no, I don't have this,' 'no, I don't have this,' so I was like let's find it, let's serve these customers and see what we can do. So, you know, I started working with them. They would send us samples and, you know, we kind of formed that relationship and that kind of put our business to the next level a little bit. It was giving us a broader spectrum of different items that we were able to sell. And basically the more you can sell, the more you have access to in any business kinda helps you with the type of customer basis that you'll have and you're able to get out there. So that kind of pushed us to the next level of having more sources, you know, you always want sources, that's for sure, to be able to get more fabric. And so, you know, we started doing that, we still did our own inventory and on level to help our business grow with the sources, it's always about getting great quality fabric at low prices. You know, and that's kinda what I helped him to do too. He was always doing that, but we had to find better sources, we had to find better fabric, we had to find more of it, diverse to bring it in and that. So that's kinda started to push us into the next level. The Internet, as that evolved, you know, that kept helping us go. I was Internet, not Internet savvy, but I knew more about the Internet, you know, and that was a good push for us to be able to do that but that took, to get to that point I mean, that probably took another five, six . . . 5 years, I would say, until like we really pushed it because Internet is very expensive in order to create a legit website. Not these websites that say go on GoDaddy.com and get a website for $10. It doesn't really give you the presence out there if you're trying to sell to America, you know, and Canada and possibly Mexico and everything else. So that kind of propelled us to the next level. And we've kind of, you know, you never want to get stagnant just like kind of stay. You need to keep evolving, you need to keep changing. We've changed our website, you know, maybe four or five times and that's helped us grow and he still has a ton of input and I learn something from him probably every single day. And, you know, things that I might not think are good idea, he does, and, you know, we do them. And things that he doesn't think are a good idea, he lets me know them. You know, and that's kinda the great relationship that we formed, and like how we helped the business grow to where it is. GE: So at this point you were really truly an e-commerce business. MM: Yeah, I guess you would say in a way. Most likely I would say, you know, we worked out percentages, you know, when we first started the website we added a shopping cart then and that shopping cart, the sales we do on the shopping cart from day one which is seven years ago, you know, whatever that total probably, you know, now annually is probably a 10,000% more, you know, than we first started 10 years or seven years ago doing just the shopping cart. So that's how people find us all the time. Word-of-mouth people find us as well in the business for sure. So even if they're not online sales, people are calling us based on it, so yes that is a big portion. We do have our warehouse where it's open to the public and anybody can come in. So we get a lot of local people, we get customers that are traveling from out of state that want to come see us because we do send samples to everybody. Whoever wants to see a sample, we send them a sample for free, you know, we take care of that. But there's nothing like coming into a warehouse and seeing everything they have to offer. GE: So of your total sales, about what percentage at this point are come from the website, you know, that are e-commerce versus coming to your warehouse? MM: Um, of it's kind of tough to put an exact number on it only because the people coming to the warehouse could have found us through the site so I would, I mean if you had to put a number I would probably definitely say it's minuscule of people that are just local people that just saw the sign. You know you might say that's 5%, you know, and everything is 95% otherwise. If you did just total in-house sales, you know, that number might go up to 10 or to 15%, but those people probably found us through the website, one way or another. GE: So at this point your customer base, who you're selling your fabric to, really the Internet is essential. MM: Oh, yeah. The Internet goes down, our website goes down, it's, you know, there was a time, it was a couple months ago, and our website was down for say two days. While in that two days I can lose, you know, maybe $10,000 in sales. You know, I might, those might be customers that know there might be an issue and they might just wait, they might email me and order anyway, and there might be sales in there that somebody went to the website and it's not working and they just move on, and they'll never come back. So not only could that sale have been $500 but that $500 could have been another $500 next week, down the road, another month, could have been more, that company could have grown and could have helped us tremendously. So if you're not up, you're not present. You don't know what you're missing. GE: So now tell me a little bit about the industry. In other words, what competitors are there in this industry? Are there many people? Are there many wholesalers like you? MM: There's, in my opinion, there's a lot of wholesalers of fabric out there, that's for sure. In my opinion, like us--probably a handful. You know, the one thing is, you know, you have a group of friends wherever or people that you talk to, and this person might be in this industry in somebody else's ; I don't have anybody that is in my industry. Not one friend that's in fabric, never was, never thought about it. You know, back when I started, you know, we were talking off camera, I think I started at 24 and I was probably the youngest person in America selling fabric unless some child, you know, came right out of high school work for the father that I didn't know about. But when I would go out to LA in my early years to meet people and gain more contacts, when I would walk in the door and I told them who I was, they were like 'you're Marc?' You know, they thought I was 45, you know, and they see this kid walking in at 24, and they were just all shocked and they were like 'dude, you're young for this industry.' You know, it was a great thing because eventually, people, you know, you get older. They're gonna get out of it, and I'm still going to be present, and I'm gonna, you know, keep growing. We do a lot of different things than other wholesalers do. Our website is more prominent than most wholesale companies out there. There are other fabric websites but there's a lot of retail, there's not so much wholesale, which helps. You know, the random person will go online and find us. You know, there might be another fabric place if they really dug or made some phone calls, but nowadays it's how quick can I get it, how, and that's kinda where my dad came up with the name of Nick of Time Textiles, so that kind of worked in our favor. We do, I sell customers one yard of fabric, I sell customers 5000 yards of fabric, you know, we don't care. I'll sell, you want fabric, I'll sell it to you. Other people are like minimum 500 yards, you know, they don't want to deal with the small orders. Realistically, I could sell say five different fabrics 5 yards each and that order could take just as long as one of my guys doing 500 yards. And 500 yards could be a couple thousand dollar order. The 25 yard order could be $100. So it's not that the value is not there, but maybe this 5 yard customer turns into a 5000 yard customer. You know, we just always kinda, when the big customers aren't there, you know, all the little customers kinda make up into a big customer. We do bridal decorative goods, and we do apparel goods, and you know we sell to churches, and we sell to schools and, you know, like home sellers so when this industry isn't really doing much, and maybe that industry's down, then this industry is picking up so we like to do a little bit of everything. And other people are concentrated on their specialty item, but if that specialty item goes down the tube, your company is, you got to reinvent yourself, and fortunately, you know, we don't have to do that. We've gained a presence to where, you know, we don't, I came in and I was making calls, cold calling, calling people that my dad dealt with. I don't call anybody. Everybody calls us, which is fantastic, you know, so that helps us too. The other people in my industry they're, you know, if they're a wholesaler, they could be a broker, they don't own a lick of fabric. They sell everybody else's fabric, so sometimes I'll get from other wholesalers, I'll get five samples in and they're exactly the same. Everybody's the same ; they are selling off of one person's inventory and they're all just brokering the fabric and making you know five cents, ten cents, fifteen cents a yard. Our margins are greater, but we also have rent, we pay for the fabric, we have trucking, we have employees, we have insurance, you know, all the overhead that they don't have, so that's why our margins are larger but we still keep our prices extremely low compared to the market, for sure. SC: So, may I ask you, they used to talk about the benefits when we were in the industrial economy, you know the benefit of coming in... do you think this is the new world where you can sell on the Internet and that it is no longer beneficial as all your diverse patience and friendliness to make a smaller profit? MM: Um, you mean like-- GE: I think she means it gets the economy and scale through the Internet, that's how he gets much larger sales. MM: Yeah, so, yeah those people, the Internet brings all sizes, you know, but yeah it does help, you know, with the larger scales. You know it's just the e-commerce is has created such an opportunity just to touch everybody, you know, you really in this business you can only sell to who you can get to and who you can sit in front of and, you know, what you had to show them, which was a that was the way, that was a great way to do it, I guess, you know, everybody did then. And that's how a lot of, that's how some people still do it. I have people that joke in my warehouse who say 'hey I want to come in.' You know, they come in, they bring up suitcases, like four suitcases of all these different fabrics and start showing them to me: 'do you like this, you like this?' Personally I don't even like that. I don't even like when somebody's in front of me showing me 100 or 200 different fabrics that's just not, you know. One is typically, I don't buy a lot of stuff that way. Their prices are higher, depending on what they're repping. It works mostly upholstery people that are doing that type of traveling. I prefer just to kind of 'hey I need this, people, send me samples.' You know, it's just a lot easier that way. The website, you know, has brought us people that buy thousands of yards that helps. But we had one of our biggest customers and they slowed down this year to reconfigure some things, you know, it was Urban Outfitters, which is a big, you know, retailer. And my dad, you know, the only way to get into those companies is really somehow you just run into somebody. You meet somebody somehow and you get in and they want to use you, and as long as you make their life easy, you know, even if they could probably find the fabric a little bit cheaper, they'll use you. So they used us for many years, and they were a great customer for sure. And that was just kind of by association, that wasn't through the Internet and that can still happen, you know, you still can get those big sales without it, I just don't think it's as common or as easy. But to get those big ones, like an Urban or if you're going to do anybody else who, you know, say Levi's or anything like that, it would probably be a verbal 'I know this person, somebody.' Most likely people aren't going online trying to find fabric sources, so I would say. SC: So I guess what I was getting at: you could get in and out of the business much easier than well half the people. You have real estate and all that, and maybe I'm putting word in your mouth, do you think you could get in and out of the business, which is so much better in history, to be able to get in and out quickly and not to have-- MM: In and out to deal with the customer? SC: With everything. MM: Um-- GE: I think she's saying, moving because the way the business now has so much with the e-commerce, you're able to be much more nimble. SC: That's a great word nimble. GE: On both sides.. MM: Yeah, um, yeah I mean you definitely can be quick because, you know, a lot of the information is already out there so you can get to people quick, you can get to, you know, describe things quicker, you can show them things faster, yeah I mean it's... GE: And am I correct that one of your major competitive advantages is that you have a terrific site. It sounds like your competitors typically they don't have that. MM: Yeah so our site, I would say the advantage is the site. GE: Right. MM: There are things about the site, you know, there's all these different companies and I don't know anything from marketing on a website or the backend or how to create a website or anything like that. So you put all your eggs in a basket, and you hope that company does well for you. The company we use is very good at the behind the scenes, you know, where meaning for Internet savvy, it's organically searching, you know, it's people making us relative on the Internet world, you know, getting us out there so people see us in different spots. And they are very good at that. Designing a website you know maybe isn't their forte by any means, so that's the part that they're lacking, so we have to help but at the same time, you know, as my dad said, I get people that call me for recommendation for that company, and I say 'listen, they do things great, but it's still your company, so if you want to put everything in their hands and just say go do it, well they're only going to do so much. It's your company, you need to still work on it, you still need to give input, you need to come up with ideas, you need to stay on top of it if you want it to grow.' So we have to give them still ideas, but on the back end getting us out there, I mean they've done a fantastic job. There's something just recently that we started doing, well they started doing it for us, but we always talk and throw out ideas, is typically when you go on the Internet now and you search something, you know, whether you went to store to go buy something, you know, all of a sudden you're on your Facebook page and you see the ads come up. Well most likely that ad all the sudden you're like 'how is that ad there? I was on it on a different computer and now it somehow linked to my screen and now it's there.' Well I find that I go to Yahoo just as my open browser and the banner up top says Nick of Time Textiles you know on a Yahoo page. However, integrated that in to link to what your history is, is a great thing because I even talk to some customers who say 'whoever does this back end is great for you guys.' My wife was searching for this and she was on your fabric and then all of a sudden I was on my computer and it shows Nick of Time Textiles banner running up the side and you know the good thing is you just like to see people and trucks driving around with your name, you might not be looking for fabric at that point but all of a sudden you might be looking for it, six months later you might say 'wait, yeah is that Nick of Time,' or something like that. Type it in and it's easy to find. GE: So that does all of the search engine optimization. MM: Yeah, all of the optimization they do. They do a lot of our social media, they send out our different email programs where we can send email blasts about different specials were running, you know, we're are doing 20% off this weekend or we're giving $50 off the free shipping and we send it out to everybody, so all our customers, you know, every single day we have new customers, new people that call in, we get their contact information or email addresses, we add them to a list and we just send a mass list out. You know, it's just kind of an email blast, just like everyone gets some, like if you buy something at Nike, 'oh, we're having a sale this--' So basically we're kind of mirroring the same thing that bigger companies to do to kind of just keep our name out there. You know, some customers say 'take me off this list, if I need fabric, I will call you.' Other ones say, 'you know what? I hate when people send emails but I love getting your emails because it keeps me informed.' We send out emails when we get new fabrics and so people are aware of what's coming in, so you know it's helpful. Without them we would still be on ground zero, you know I would say. GE: So this is in regards to your customers. How about in regards to your suppliers? MM: So the suppliers: two things the website can help in ways because suppliers are also, they're obviously looking to sell. They don't want to sell to the people I want to sell to. They want to sell to people like me. So sometimes they'll go online and they'll find people. And they'll contact me and say 'hey,' you know, they'll call me up and say 'what do you, I see you sell this, this, and this, you know, we offer this. Let me send you some samples, let's talk about, you know.' And then we can start doing business that way. Another way that I guess would be a supplier of ours is actually our customers are also suppliers. In ways to where they do manufacturing, and we sell them a bunch fabric or maybe somebody sold them a bunch of fabric, and they have all this excess fabric and their lines over, they don't know what to do with it, and they go online say, 'I got to find somebody to sell this to.' So they go online and they find us, and I get emails all the time saying, 'hey, I am just curious, I found you online, do you guys buy fabric?' And obviously we buy fabric. We have to buy fabric to sell fabric. So we'll buy their leftover fabric. And that's how we're able to get, you know, they might've paid 5, 6, 7 dollars for it. They are creating their product, they have, you know, their margins set and all of their costs, but when they're done with it, that fabric is not worth 5, 6, 7 dollars, so they might sell it to us a dollar, fifty cents a yard and then we're just turning and selling it whether it's two dollars, three dollars, four dollars, depending on what type of fabric it is. And some people come to us and say, 'how are you selling this at this price?' Because they know what it costs to make. Well we're secondhand but then, you know, we're able to give it to, get it to people that can make the same type of products and have a better margin because they're getting in on the secondary market. So with the suppliers, you know, that's how they can use our website. But then we just have a separate list of all our suppliers and their emails. So people call me and say, you know, 'I wanted to--' We probably have over million yards of fabric right now. We have on the West Coast probably you know 40 different companies we can use that probably have millions and millions yards of fabric that we can sell off anytime we want and ship directly from them as if it's coming from us, so we're repping their line in a way but nobody knows about them. GE: So you're, in that case, you're not, you don't own it, you're a broker of it. MM: Yup, I'm a broker of it. But my, the way I detail it out is...cause there are some people that would just try to go around you as much as possible. And, you know, I've built those relationships so they cost me money in order to get to them. So basically I just stayed, you know, I have a storage facility in Los Angeles and, you know, we store some of our fabric that we import and I can ship it directly to you from there. And nobody questions. Typically nobody digs or anything like that. So with the suppliers we send..somebody calls me and says 'I need 500 yards of this.' I don't have it. The people I know out there don't have it. Maybe I deal with people in North Jersey too, they don't have it. We send it out to 4000 people on this email broadcast saying 'hey we're looking for 500 yards of white cotton, you know, twill, does anybody have it?' We get replies. People send us samples, I send it to the customer, they approve it and we broker it that way then. So that was a way that we grew our business because it gave us the ability to just supply people with larger amounts without having to spend the money on inventory of something that we didn't know was going to sell or not, which was nice. GE: So, um, so it sounds like, if I understand, over the past ten years that you've been actively in the business, from the beginning until now, it sounds like it has grown a lot. MM: Yeah, for sure. GE: And was that growing five times? Two times? MM: Probably, if sales wise, in sales it's gone, you know, if sales go up and down, it stays pretty consistent. Since I started, you know, at our highest point it grew 10 times and probably, you know, on an average, it's probably about seven times. So I mean it's tremendously, tremendous to where it was for sure. You know the great thing for that is definitely in the business we weren't, you know, fortunately for us were not like 'we got to pay x, we got to pay y.' You know, we're at a more financially stable place. That's not an issue, you know, at this point luckily for us, so, you know, we can buy fabric. We know, you know, 'hey, we don't know where these sales are coming from but, you know, on an average we're doing X amount, you know, every single week.' So as long as that's coming in and, you know, we're probably buying more fabric sometimes that we should but at the same time without new fabrics we can't keep new sales going selling old fabric you know we will sell it off at a lower price to gain, you know, more income bringing it in, more cash flow. But yeah, with the employees, and I have to hire somebody else in the warehouse now to help out, so yeah I mean it's gotten to a point, you know, my father always says, 'well you know this is your business, this is your business.' And he was always like that and, you know, a couple years ago we were like we're going to do 50%, and just gave me 50%. You know, it's not that maybe I didn't earn it, which I probably did, but at the same time it's his business. He doesn't owe me, you know, anything from it. So he gave me 50% of the company, but always in his mind he said 'I'll give you 100% if it made sense' but financially it made sense for him to be a 50 partner and for me to be 50. And, you know, it's just, he was always it's your business, it's your business, I just work for you. And he just wants it to grow and for me to be able to provide for me and my family to what it can be. You know, this business can be 10 times what we are now if we could do this and do this. And I say, 'yeah you know I understand that, you know, and that's nice and some people have this strived to you know have the biggest business they can possibly have, which I want to have a profitable business.' I want to have a good business, but I also want to have my family, my life. And I talked to older people in our business and all you know says, 'oh, you know, you're this or whatever.' Sometimes they're like, 'I couldn't get a hold of you last night.' And I was like 'yeah, you know, it was last night, call me during the day.' You know, my friends are like 'you're the only business owner that doesn't answer his phone after 6 o'clock.' I'm like what do you want, you know, I'm at home, I need to enjoy myself. I take vacation, and my dad thinks I take too much vacation. I tell him, you're living in the old times, you don't even realize how much vacation days people get nowadays out in the workforce. I don't even get that much and I'm a business owner. And he says you are a business owner so that's why you don't get that much because it's your business. But when I go away, I go away as much as possible. I try not to stay in contact with the business cause you need that time away, but what that helps, and it helps him, and I have seen him do this, is when you step away, you're not thinking about it. You're thinking about it a little in the back of your head, and you're kind of innovating a little bit, thinking of new ways to do things because you got to step away and you started thinking about it. GE: So Marc, where sales have gone up about seven times over the last ten years, how about, what about the profit, bottomline? Cause I realize you also hold a lot of more expenses and things and whatever. MM: Yeah I mean the expenses are a lot more compared to what they are but I mean... GE: Right, but that's commensurate with the sales. MM: Yeah, I mean, most businesses are going to be like that. I mean I would love to have a business model that my business sales grew seven times and my expenses stayed the same. I mean that would be fantastic. You know, for our business that's not the case and, you know, I would say well when I was younger I would say I wouldn't need as much money, you know, to live. And having a family now, fortunately, you know, my wife doesn't have to work. You know, she's at home. She does work part time, you know, once she is back from having the baby, and that's kinda just for her presence of mind. So, you know, financially bottom line, you know, it could be, it could be three times, you know, maybe. Maybe up to four, I don't know hundred percent on the mark but just because of the added expenses of everything else that goes up, it does mean more profit, but we sink a lot of our profit back into the business because, you know, I do do investments in retirement stuff but my dollar, you know, in my business can make me, you know, say that dollar can make me 400%. Well go show me something in the market that's going to make me 400%. It doesn't exist. So, you know, if I took into account everything that we made, yes, you know, it would probably be a lot more than that but everything we have to put back into the business on a daily, you know, business day takes away from that. But at the end, you know, we had at one time we might have had you know 150,000 yards of fabric, and then we might have had 300,000 yards. And we had one of the ladies just doing inventory just real quick nothing exact just goes through all of our headers and I told my dad what I thought we had and he came back and he's like 'we have over 1 million yards' and I said 'yeah, I know.' You know, so that helps our business value and gives us, you know, everything's paid for. We buy stuff, we paid it off within 30 to 60 days, so basically everything that's in there, we own, which is a great thing because if say we hit a hard time and we're like 'okay we can't buy any more fabric.' Well I have 1 million yards of fabric to sell so if I can just bite the bullet for three months and I wouldn't have $80,000 in bills, well, after three months I would have a nice you know bank account to go start buying again and start the business up and it wouldn't take that long, which is good. GE: So I'm curious, years ago for most of the older people that we have interviewed, there was a dominance, there was a pretty large presence of Jewish people in the business. A lot of Italians, a lot of other people, but certainly, given how small the population is, there had to be a large percentage of Jewish people. Is that because, I don't know, we have not interviewed a lot of people who currently have a business, is that still the case? MM: Yeah, uh, 99%. GE: Ok, wow. MM: You know, where did that come from-- GE: I was going to ask you, what do you think might be any reasons for that? MM: Uh, I don't know, I think, you know, I just I think it was something from back in the day, you know, over whether it was in Israel or Iran, you know cause there are a lot of Iranian Jews, you know, that have come over that were in the fabric industry. I think there was a big fabric hub, you know, back in the day like over there and when everyone came, everybody, you know, migrated over here it kind of followed them and that was what they knew, you know, so you tend to have into whether it was the Jewish over here or Irish over here or you know Italians over here. Everybody for certain, it might have started in other industries, starting to diverse itself, for some reason in this industry it's not and I don't know why. Everybody I deal with is Jewish basically. I don't think there's one, there might be maybe one or two people, you know, that I buy fabric from that are not Jewish by any means. GE: Interesting. MM: Yeah I think it's just it just was part of the culture. And I think people stuck to it. It's what, you know, what they knew and that's what they did. So it is interesting when you hear that, but it's definitely an industry that there's, the only way you're getting in this industry most likely is through your family. Nobody I don't even know if there's a course for college, you know, that's called fabric wholesaler, you know, where you can learn to sell fabric. There is manufacturing, you know, sewing, you know, getting into that, running your business, being a designer. There's a lot of that, fashion institutions, stuff of that sort. But everybody I know that's in it and that's younger that it's just through family, and I like just, it keeps, it's like a revolving door. I think that's why. SC: So I have two just sort of thought questions that I'd like to ask you. What has made you feel the most creative in your life? MM: Um, the most creative, um, hm, I mean I, you know, probably my parents. You know just, you know, the openness of letting me do things, you know, and then in business with my father, you know, letting me take control as a young person. Being, you know, getting ideas and seeing them and then learning and being able to open up and kind of venture into my own things, you know, they never, they never pushed me and said 'you need to go to this.' You know, I got tons of friends and families say, 'well you need to go to nursing school, or you need to do this.' You know, I was never pushed in any direction, but I was backed a hundred percent no matter where I went, so that's what I would say. SC: And what do you value most in life? MM: Um, it would, I mean, there's a, you know, family obviously is very important, you know, and I think a lot of people would say that off the bat. You know, I definitely value that, you know, especially now that I'm having two kids. You know, it's I think I also whether it's not just, you know, the family, it's your surroundings and everybody. Doing the right thing, you know, being good to people that you don't even know. You know, I find it comforting, you know, something simple as, you know, I'm walking into Wegmans and, you know, somebody that, say somebody is in the handicap spot, they just unloaded their carts and they are looking around, it's like just say, 'hey, I'll take your cart for you, I'll put it up.' I value that type of stuff. Those type of people that their faces isn't just forward, you know, looking at their day, they're looking at their surroundings, you know, looking to help others, you know, if they can, you know, as much as possible, you know, I value, you know, so it's that. It's family, it's that, and, you know, I value experiences, you know, in life whether it's traveling to different areas or meeting new people, you know, listening you know to other people, to hear about how things were and then, you know, being able to relate that to my life and move forward. So, you know, I would say those things are pretty important, yeah. And then, you know, obviously like I said, family is, I was raised that family is number one, you know, sometimes too much, you know, sometimes it's too much push, but, you know, as I said, you know, before it's like you don't know until, you know, you're in your 20s. You don't know until you get married, you don't know until you have kids. And now, it's the same thing when my parents say well you don't know until you have grandkids, you know, because I'm like well you don't, we need to do this with them, and they're like when you have a grandkid you'll see. You don't care what parents say, you do what you want to do and that's that. You know so it's that's why it always comes back to family and, you know, value and learning, and, you know, being able to experience things together, I would say. VIDEO ENDS HERE GE: So Marc is going to give us a little guided tour of the Nick of Time Textiles website. MM: Yeah, so we just actually, this is a new format that we have that basically we just changed probably a month ago. It's probably like our fourth or fifth change. Basically what we implemented two changes ago was something called a heat map, so when somebody comes to the website, they are able to track each user every time somebody signs on and they can track where their mouse goes, where they scroll to, what they look at. And what that enables us to do is to see what's commonly clicked on, where do people go, so then we can bring that stuff up to the top so they can see it right away once they sign on. Move some stuff down below, change wordings. You know, put different, maybe they're looking for our contact information, we always had it up here, but we also had a lot of other stuff up here. It could have been too much, maybe they were missing it, maybe they were looking for it somewhere else. So basically, you know, we change where, you know, the coupon is, you know, we wanted to put it up top easily visible. When we run more than one coupon, this just slides over. We have a couple different ones, so people can always see what they're doing. You know, dealing with now, you know, with the Internet and social media, you know, we have, you know, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Twitter, Pinterest, and then you know the Google Plus for keywords and ad-words. So basically it kind of just gives you the availability to browse our website pretty easily. As you go down, it tells you, you know, the stuff that's maybe the most popular, stuff whether that we sell a lot of or we have a lot to offer to customers. So we always have the main categories, two fabric categories that are split up between the knitted and the woven, those are the main categories in the industry and everything kind of falls under one or another and then we just pick out the ones that we sell the most of that people come to our website for the most common things, I would say. So we also, up here, we have a search engine. It's tough to get a really good search engine, but mainly we use this whether for style numbers that we have our fabrics and go right to them or, you know, if I just type in, you know, you type in the style number and then you want to find it real quick, you know, you just hit go and it just pops up everything that comes under that style number. And then, you know, this is kind of the generic way to look at it, doesn't give you all the information until you click on one of those, but if you go under knitted, this is like all the different categories that we'll have that's all broken down, shows you some fabric that might be included in there that you can, you know, look at and sell. It gives you a preview. And then once you click, it could be subcategories as well, so you don't lose, if you are looking for solids you don't have to go through all of the stripes to get the solids. And then once you get to it, it will kind of give you the prices, breakdowns, style numbers. You can order free samples on the website. You can just add it right to your cart, and you can just continue shopping to add more. If you go into it specifically, it will give you descriptions, it will tell you if it's in stock, if there are any customer reviews on a product that will tell you there. 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