Mark Stutz, June 27, 2016

Interview with Mark Stutz, June 27, 2016

SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is June 27, 2016 and would you give your full name Mark and when you were born and where you were born.

MARK STUTZ: My name is Mark Stutz, and I am 64 years old. I was born May 18,1952 here in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

SC: Could we go back as far as you know with your mother's and your father's family, any names that you know, where they came from and what they did, and how they made a living or whatever.

MS: Sure. I'll start with my mother's side because it's a shorter story. I only knew my grandmother and my grandfather. Their last name was Bahoff.

SC: Would you spell that?

MS: B-A-H-O-F-F. And I have, um, they had three kids. My mother is the last 00:01:00surviving child of that family, and I have four cousins from the other brother and sister. I knew my great-grandmother on that side, but very briefly. And then on my father's side I knew my grandmother's mother and my grandfather's father and mother. My great-grandfather was very orthodox. I'm not quite sure whether he was one of the people who wrote the Torahs or if he just studied all day, I'm not sure, but I know he had the long beard and the hat. It was always a little scary to see him the first time when we were little kids. I only met my great-grandmother on that side a couple times before she died. And my 00:02:00grandmother, I only met her mother. I never met her father. Let's see, my grandmother's maiden name was-- hm, it will come to me. I knew it, I just can't think of it right now. My grandfather originally was Stutsky, but my great grandfather got rid of the '-ky' so. I don't know why they did that. Was it because of immigration or he did it himself and it could have been another longer name that was gotten rid of. But my grandfather was a Stutz, and he had, and my grandmother's name, I only knew her as Tilly, I can't tell you what her real name was. I knew her as Nanna. So she had a son, two sons and a daughter. 00:03:00My father passed away seventeen years ago, and my uncle and my aunt are still alive.

SC: Where did they come from?

MS: Poland.

SC: Do you know where?

MS: No, I don't. My mother's grandparents were already Americans. My great-grandparents moved here, so my grandfather was first-generation American. He wasn't born in America - my grandfather - he was born in Europe, so I guess really my father's generation is the first generation that was born American.

SC: So did they all come from Poland?

MS: I know my grandfather and my grandmother did. I don't know about the others.

SC: What kind of work did any of the generations do that you know?

MS: I know that my grandfather on my mother's side was involved with some weekly 00:04:00newspapers as far as delivery or, he wasn't involved as a writer or anything. They were hand-to-mouth living; they didn't really have a lot. My grandmother on my mother's side never worked, that I knew of. And they were not extremely religious as far as Judaism was concerned. That's where I first tasted bacon was in my grandmother's apartment from my mother's side. If you walk up the steps to their apartment, you could smell it cooking.

But on my father's side, like I said, my great grandfather had something to do with religion, I don't know exactly what. My grandfather entered the garment industry as his very first job. He worked for my grandmother's brother, Dave. And he ended up, the story goes that it was the height of the Depression and 00:05:00there was an argument going on in the office, and my grandfather's brother-in-law, my grandmother's brother, said something about her. And my grandfather slugged him and walked out. And there he was without a job in the Depression. And he wouldn't go home without a job, so he went to a, he saw an ad that they were looking for a foreman at a garment factory. He had never been a foreman at a factory. He had done packing or whatever. He walked in and the guy said, 'what experience do you have?' My grandfather said 'don't worry about it,' he said, 'look, try me out, if I'm as good as the other person who was here [before] then you keep me hired, and if I'm not any good, get rid of me.' And that was how he started in the garment industry. He didn't know he was getting paid, he had no idea. Then when he got his first paycheck or cash in those days, it was pretty good.

And then he became what today would be called a consultant. He used to go around 00:06:00to other people's factories and help them do better at their factory. He was, they didn't have a name for it back then. He just got hired. Then my grandparents lived in Cuba for a while when it was, you know, friendly to Americans, and he helped build factories there. He was doing it all over the place. And my father worked for Surefit. Ok, so I don't know if you spoke with anyone from Surefit, but he worked for Surefit. That was Krasnov. He said that he was settling here, and he said to my grandparents, to my grandfather, 'you know you're making money for a lot of other people, why don't you do this yourself?' He said my grandfather had a small factory, down by where the Good 00:07:00Shepherd Home is right now, down there somewhere. They had a small factory on the second floor. And that's what starts. Now that had to be after I was born, because the company is called BruMar. Bruce for my brother, Mark for me. So I would say 1952/53 it was started.

SC: As far as any other names or in your family or any business names that you know of?

MS: Well, my mother's, my mother's sister-in-law, they were the Nowaks out of Philadelphia, N-O-W-A-K. I know they owned a camp, a summer camp at one time, up in the Poconos. I think Lieberman was my grandmother's family, something like that. And they lived in Coney Island. I used to spend time at their apartment, 00:08:00and that's how I kind of knew them. We didn't have a very large family that, you know, it didn't seem to be extremely large. Because there was only two and three kids from each group. Also, the company that we worked for, that my grandfather contracted for was Little Kids Bathing Suits, and we'll talk about that when we talk about the business. But that owner's name was Paul Yellin. He was from New York, from the Scarsdale area in New York.

SC: And could you, would you talk about, I know you can, would you talk about your education from the beginning all the way through?

MS: Okay, sure. I went to the Jewish day school. I don't think I ever went to the JCC, but maybe I did for nursery school, I probably did. I went from 00:09:00kindergarten through sixth grade at the Jewish day school. We were members of Sons of Israel back then. I was bar-mitzvahed there. Then went to Raub Junior High, 7th, 8th and 9th. And then William Allen from 10th, 11th and 12th. And was really involved in the JCC at that time. Then I went to University of Bridgeport for my undergraduate degree in liberal arts and as a theater major. And then started to act professionally. Oh, I'm sorry, I went back to grad school at Catholic University for directing. And then I went to, while I was there I got some professional gigs, so I stopped going to school, because I was working, acting in shows, and I had a layoff between shows. I knew I had another show to 00:10:00go to, then I had a layoff of about six/seven in the weeks. I was living in DC and it was needed income. So my mother suggested that I come for a while and help my father out in the factory. At that point my father was involved, because it was the busy season, and he needed any help that he could get even if it was minor help, it would be something. I said, okay, and I never left. Well I didn't leave for 25 years anyway. Because, I thought, 'wow this is interesting' and I can use my people skills with the people and there was income, and I sort of got sucked into having a steady income, so I stayed there.

And this says athletics on it, it should say the arts, cause I'm now the arts director for Parkland School District but this shirt matched my outfit today, so.

SC: And will you do some of the shows that you were in?

MS: That I was in?

SC: Yeah, or that you worked with.

MS: Yeah, okay, so in acting I played Tevye a bunch of timesfor The Fiddler on 00:11:00the Roof. I've done Fagin in Oliver. I've been in Neil Simon plays like the Chapter Two, and, what's the one with the two men that fight all of the time, not the Odd Couple. I was in that also. I'm talking about the golden, oh gosh, it was with Art Carney and Walter Matthau, and they fought the whole time. I was in that show. I've done a lot of interesting different shows. Directing wise, I directed 20 or 30 musicals easily and just as many straight shows. So anything from American classics like Our Town and Tennessee Williams plays to Shakespeare to anything that comes around because in a school environment you have to give 00:12:00them all sorts of opportunities.

SC: And this a question I haven't asked anyone yet, do you see a connection between directing and your work in theatre with being a business person?

MS: Well, yeah, a lot. First of all, I think the fact that I always wanted to be a director more than an actor is because I like to be in charge of the result, not boss, although that comes with the territory, but I like to have an endgame plan and be responsible to make that happen. So it's a vision, the same way I had with the factory. I enjoyed the end game of it. I did not, there were things I didn't like about it, certainly the challenge of meeting deadlines and things like that and working with people. And in the factory, it was working with employees, and in the schools it is working with students and as a director it's working with people who you are their boss, they might not be getting paid, but 00:13:00they're acting and you're in charge of what happens so yeah there is a connection.

SC: Do you know when your family came to Allentown, what years they came? We can look that up, but it's easier to ask.

MS: Well I know my brother was born here so that was 1950, so I would say around 1948/1949 they came to Allentown. First my parents came, and then my grandparents came. And then they, my grandparents lived, moved into a twin in South Mountain, and my parents were living in Valley View Apartments. And then my parents moved to the same cul-de-sac called Vine Street in South Mountain, near South Mountain Little League, where my grandparents lived. I grew up living two houses away from my grandparents. Then when we moved to the Westend, they had houses next to each other. So I grew up like Something About Raymond 00:14:00[Everybody Loves Raymond] that was what I grew up with. Okay but I was the kid, not the parents. My grandparents lived right next door.

SC: Do you have any memories of when you were a child about the business when you weren't a part of it?

MS: I do, I remember, I do, I remember being, going to the old factory, the original original factory because we moved three times before we ended up at the place where I was working. And the old factory that was creaky elevators, I remember, and just the very, the smells and you know it was hot or cold and was dusty. My grandfather's office was like a mess, you know. I think I inherited that from him. But I do remember that. I don't remember any conversation about it. My father wasn't working [there], it was too small of a business. My father was with Surefit and he was not working with the business at that time.

SC: Any other anecdotes about your youth that you think sort of fit in?

MS: Um, well my grandfather, my father was also then in a dry cleaning business. So he was working part-time, he was working for Surefit, and then he wanted to be his own boss, so he and Edward Kahan, Ronald Kahan's father, who's still my best friend, they entered into a business partnership. My father did [Martinizing], the dry cleaning business. So it's sort of garment related. And I remember there is the thing that moved the clothes around. My brother and I hanging on it and pushing the buttons, we would get rides. And then that partnership ended, not in the best way. Partnerships like marriages don't always 00:16:00end great. But so I remember that.

I don't really, might we, I do remember when the factory was on North Fourth Street. I remember on Saturday mornings, my grandfather would take my brother and I first to breakfast, then to shul to synagogue on Sixth Street, and then we would go to the factory for an hour, and we would turn garments from inside out to outside in. And we would get paid for that, like two dollars and five dollars or breakfast whatever he had the mood to pay. So that was fun. It was a good memory.

GAIL EISENBERG: And that Fourth Street, was that the original?

MS: No, the original was the one that I can't remember the name of the street. I want to say Lehigh Street but it wasn't Lehigh Street. It was down right across from, I know exactly where it is because there is a Melner [?] trash/hauling thing right there across the street from it, like the third floor. I remember I 00:17:00used to fight with the landlord all the time, we couldn't have heat, whatever, you know, it was one of those old buildings.

GE: Just a quick question, you had mentioned your parents, grandparents, but I don't have anybody's names, so could you tell me some of their names?

MS: So my grandfather on my mother's side, so my maternal grandfather was Jack Bahoff, Jacob Bahoff. Jack Bahoff, I guess it was Jacob.

GE: It probably was. And Bahoff is--

MS: B-A-H-O-F-F. And--

GE: And his wife?

MS: Oh, my gosh, my maternal grandmother, what was her name? That's everyone I think I know.

GE: What about your Bubbie?

MS: Actually, her name was Nana Honey. My other grandmother's name was Nana because when my brother learned to talk, he would call them both Nana, but my 00:18:00grandmother, my maternal grandmother would always call him honey, so he started to say Nana Honey when he was referring to her. So she became Nana Honey, and I don't, I don't, it's terrible, but I am going to find out for you, I'm going to call.

SC: Thank you!

MS: Yeah, I'll just call my cousins.

GE: And on your father's side, what are their names?

MS: So Lou, Louis Stutz was the patriarch.

GE: That was your grandfather?

MS: Yeah, and Tillie, T-I-L-L-I-E, and again, it is the last name that I am struggling with.

GE: And what was your parent's names?

MS: Leatrice. My mom's name is L-E-A-T-R-I-C-E. And her name was originally Bahoff. And my father's name is Alan, A-L-A-N.

SC: And was Louis L-E-W-I-S?

MS: L-O-U-I-S.

SC: I was just taking a guess.

MS: Yeah, L-O-U-I-S.

SC: Cause we've tried both.

MS: Yeah, I'm sure.

SC: So I think that's it for the early years.

GE: So the only other one quick question I have from the early years is what about your father's education?

MS: My father went to Temple University, got a degree in math. My mother was a high school graduate. They were married young. They were married in, if I get this wrong I'll be in trouble, March and my brother was born in January. Everyone was counting the months, but it wasn't. It was okay. They were cleared on that. None of my grandparents ever went to college.

GE: Do you think they went to high school?

MS: My paternal grandfather did. I don't know about anybody else. I just happen to know that he did.

SC: And dry cleaning did have some connection for people that they might have 00:20:00started in dry cleaning and then on--

[unintelligible]

MS: Saul Kivert. Actually it was my father who started that business and then he ended up at the factory.

GE: So Mark, I want to now go back and just give us the history with the business. How your grandfather got started, when your father came in, and eventually when you came in.

MS: Sure. So, as I said in the earlier conversation, my grandfather was sort of a 'Journeyman,' going around to factories and helping people be more efficient in what they were doing. That industry didn't exist then as consulting, although my grandfather would have been very wealthy having created a consulting business. They never went through any agencies. People would just, he would work for someone long enough and he just couldn't take it, and they would fight, and he would leave. He had a big-time temper, not violent, just loud. He didn't mean anything.

So then they opened up the little place in Allentown. He got one client which 00:22:00was a company that made little girls' bathing suits for what we now call boutiques but then it was just children's stores because there weren't any Walmarts and K-marts in those days. So it was a specialty item and it was little kids' bathing suits. And they were high-end, and he always felt that if you made for high-end, you could always do a better living because no one was going to nickel or dime you because they could afford it on the other end. And he was the, this man, Mr. Paul Yellen, started this business and my grandfather was his contractor. They started together, so he never had another factory [contractor] and my grandfather never had another customer. Later on we did, but not at the beginning. And they did it all with a handshake, no contracts, nothing, it was all done with a handshake.

GE: And where was Paul Yellen?

MS: He was in New York. He had a small office on 34th St., I want to say 34th St., which got bigger later on in years, but at that point, it was small. And he 00:23:00did, his business was a very good business. They had good designs, they had good marketing, and they had quality production. My grandfather always believed in quality production.

So they were outgrowing that space and they found the place at 4th and Green, like Washington, I'm sorry, Greenleaf and Washington, down on 4th St. And it was a low, long, flat building. And what they did was they moved, my grandfather only did Bru-Mar, the company's name, only did assembly and finishing. We didn't do cutting, we didn't do marker making, and we didn't do packing. Dive-ettes owned their own, they were always connected to us, as far as physically, but the 00:24:00spreading of the fabric and the making of the markers and the cutting-- all that was done in the same space, but that space was rented by, or they shared the lease, with Dive-ettes, that was Paul Yellin's company. And he had his own shipping area. So at one time, it wasn't even in the same building and that got very nonproductive. So they were in 4th Street for a while, until they built it bigger, and I would say in those days, my father maybe, my grandfather maybe had 35 to 40 or 50 operators.

Then my father started to, my grandfather had a number of heart attacks, and my father started to do both--work at the factory and work at his 'Martinizing'-- his dry cleaning place. But it was mostly, he would mostly do the dry-cleaning place. It sort of ran on its own. But he was there like Thursday nights and 00:25:00Monday nights.

Oh, by the way, to go back in history, one time my father was working for Surefit, he also worked at Hess' in the woman's shoe department. I think that's interesting to note because in those days he only worked Thursday nights cause that was the only night Town was open. For those of you who don't know what Town is, its where Hess' was, it was Town, and it was Thursday nights and Saturdays cause they weren't open any of the other nights anyways. So then his part time job, he split his time between the factory and the dry cleaning.

The business became, it got to grow and the building at Seventh and Allen Street, which is still there, the building. The Levine's-- Jack Levine and Ben Levine, and another brother, who I never met-- were looking to and that's Ira and Robert and that generation, their fathers and my dad, they were all looking 00:26:00to expand this old building, which has been a Sears building. The building that was on Seventh and Allen that was a Sears building. They were trying to sell it. And it had four floors. And we wanted to have a floor for the cutting and the shipping, I'm sorry, for the shipping upstairs, cutting and sewing on our floor, and then the Levines were going to have the first floor for their fabric store, and the basement for their outlet. They used to do, I don't know if you have spoken to the Levines yet, but Robert would be a great source for you. I'll, and I tell Ira, and I'll mention it to them. So that was a big move because it was a major building.

GE: And that was what time period?

MS: I'm going to say that was in the, I'm going to say, I graduated high school and we were still at 4th Street. I'm going to say early '70s, '70/'71, I would 00:27:00think. Yeah, I think so. And there were a lot of renovations that happened. There were escalators in the middle of the building that needed to be taken out, closed off, things like that. And Dive-ettes was then signed to do big work for JCPenney and stuff like that but that was before JCPenny started to get really tight. It was, you know, we could do a, we did the Girl Scout bathing suits, you know, I remember that.

So then we moved to the new building, and it started to grow again, still only one customer, they still had no other customers. Do you want me to continue on the history of it?

GE: No, no, that's fine, that's great, yes.

MS: Ok, so around 19--, actually I think we probably had the factory, the new building in the late 60s because I graduated, I finished college in '73, and by 00:28:001975 I was very back here, so yeah so I was here on that break and was starting to work it, and my grandfather was spending less and less time up here and more and more time in Florida for his health, and for my father's health, I think. My father was spending less time at the dry-cleaning stores, and more time at the factory, which was a larger income provider than the dry cleaners stores because it used to be very good but then there was more competition and things like that. And as fabrics changed, as synthetics came in, people could wash their own stuff, it changed the dry cleaning business tremendously. Plus fashions changed, people don't wear jackets all the time, so things changed. So I was now pretty 00:29:00much in a year and a half or so, pretty much a part of this business. I knew I was there for the long haul.

GE: And at this point, it was you and your dad and--

MS: And my grandfather, and we all shared one big office. It was a real treat.

GE: Okay, and now your grandfather, at this point, is not in the business too much.

MS: No, but he's a full partner in it.

GE: Okay.

MS: And my father and him are equal partners, and I'm an employee.

GE: Okay, okay.

MS: It was smart on their part because I wasn't worth being a partner at that point. I didn't know anything.

GE: Okay, and already your father for a while wasn't associated with Surefit.

MS: Oh, yeah, he had, once he opened up his dry cleaning store..

GE: That was the end?

MS: ...he was done with Surefit. Yeah. And Mr. Krasnov, he really liked Mr. Krasnov. He liked working at Surefit. Surefit taught him a lot. It was good. And anyway, after I realized that I was going to be there and I also realized, in my 00:30:00opinion, you couldn't have one customer. My feeling was if you only had one customer and that customer went out of business, you have no business or if that customer wanted to get it made cheaper, then you had no choice. By the same token my grandfather's line was, well, where is he going to go with all this production. He doesn't know anything about that, and he's never going to know anything about that. So they never did leave us. They eventually went out of business, that was a few years later. It was, I went, I was reading in the Ladies . . . , in the Women's Wear Daily, which was the trade paper for our trade, that this company called Bobby Brooks which you may have heard of but most of the generation doesn't know what it is, was looking for contractors for 00:31:00bathing suits. And that was our specialty and it was a different size area. It was Juniors. So I said to my father, let me look at this, because I said we have to have more customers here. And he was like, okay, we had someone else there, so it was fine. So I contacted them. They sent me, a man came out, Sam, I don't remember his last name, but he was funny. He came out, he checked out the factory, and he brought some garments in, garments that they weren't going to do. I went to the office and I priced them out, my father and I did. And by the way, we were very fancy with pricing. We took out a piece of paper, we said that must cost about, that would cost about and no engineer, no nothing. When it was all done, we made money. And my grandfather said, if I make for a dollar and sell it for two, as long as I make 1%. And I said okay.

So we were doing very well, labor was the only thing that we sold, besides 00:32:00thread. And it was before unions, and while we paid a fair wage, you didn't have all of the union stuff to worry about. We never became, I'm getting ona different rant here, we never became a part of the ILGWU. Our operators didn't want it. They had a vote and they still, and they had their own, and my grandfather was smart enough back in the day to offer them the chance to unionize within their own place. So they had a charter, and he paid for it. They hired a lawyer, and they put it together. It was their own charter, and it made them a union house so ILGWU couldn't strike them or picket by us because we were a union house. We just weren't their union. And it worked out well for everybody. We never really had any problems. And we sometimes worked for union shops, we just didn't put a union label on it, it was against the law. And they would know that. They would come up and they would marshall it.

Anyway, this Bobby Brooks thing came through, and we started to do work for them. And it was a big education for me and my father now because we had a big company with people in charge of shipping, and people in charge of. . . not us, I mean, Bobby Brooks' a big company that we are working for. They had people in charge of specs., people in charge of quality, so you had a million. . . And we weren't even used to that. We were used to us doing it all and just getting paid. Now we had to bill and get paid and it was different. But it was what saved our business because eventually Dive-ettes went out of business. And then we went from Juniors, to starting to work in Misses, then started to work for Rosemary Reed, Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta. They were all part of the same buying group. We became one of their top contractors so now we had gone from little kids bathing suits, no longer doing that, to women's one or two pieces with full blown bras and, you know, stays and the whole bit, which you know, was 00:34:00a whole new world. At this point we were averaging about 85-100 operators all the time and in the busy season we'd have a second shift that would run from like, if our first shift was 7:30 to 3:00, I remember, then at the 4:00 to 9:00 we would have a second shift. Sometimes up to 50 operators, and we, myself, my father, and my foreman would run those. So each of us would take one night a week or two nights a week. I was the young guy so I got two nights a week. And that was a very busy busy time. Those years were really busy and very good for us.

GE: And those were what time period?

MS: You're talking about mid to late '70s into '96/'97. Around '98 we had 00:35:00already peaked and it had already started to, you could see the writing on the wall. By that point, we had looked at possibly moving our production to Puerto Rico, moved to Virginia. I had traveled to different places looking at places where the labor was more inexpensive. But it all, all said and done, we liked staying where we were. So the business grew, my grandfather was out of it, out of the business years ago before that, and he passed, I don't remember when exactly.

And then we finally rebuilt the offices. and I actually have my own office after a while. It was, they were good years. They were tough years-- hard, hard, hard work. Lots of hours. But my whole world was revolved around it. My social events were based around it. And my friends that I went to conventions [with]. We did 00:36:00something very . . . and so did Tama Manufacturing, we invested in technology way before most people in the garment industry did. So one of the first things I wanted was we went from, we were hourly, and I felt that we needed to go piece-rate, and I'm sure you've heard someone talk about piece-rate here.

GE: Right, right. But if you want to tell us about it.

MS: Yeah, so the difference was you worked at our factory, and you would get an increase every year, let's say it was 25 cents an hour, whatever it was. So at that point, you're making $7 an hour, which may sound like a little bit now, well I shouldn't say that because there are some kids that make that now. But if you are making $7 an hour, it didn't matter if you made one of your operation that day or a thousand, you still got the same money per hour. So we felt that it was unfair to the productive operators, number one. Number two, it was a way, 00:37:00it was getting very costly for us not to go into some sort of a piece-rate system.

So we brought on an engineer, I can't think of his name anymore, a young guy who had been at another factory. He was actually from, I don't remember where he was from, up by Pottstown somewhere. And good at what he did, very good. And then along with that computers are just starting to come out. I was very fascinated by them, and IBM was looking to get a foothold in the garment industry. So I had a meeting with some people at IBM, and we decided that we were going to invest in the technology. They were going to give us a programmer to basically live with us, learn what we did, and transfer that somehow to a computer, which would 00:38:00not fit in this room. Literally, well probably it would just fit in this room. And the consols are this big, and they did nothing but payroll. I mean a calculator does more now. So, but it was, at the time, quite a step, and we had this young man, Vince La Salle-- wow, how did I remember that name-- who was really into what we were doing. And we were able to create a piece rate system that didn't have to be hand put in. We actually used a wand, like you use in the grocery store now, we were talking, oh my gosh, I'm out 17 years, if you're talking 35 years ago when this stuff was really not happening. And we were setting up in the same time the Army-Navy store. I don't remember that last 00:39:00name, it'll come to me. They were also putting one in for their purposes, and that was right before they made their move out to Grape Street. They still had a place next to us, or two doors away. So we had an IBM34, which then became a 36, and two terminals, and it worked. It did a good job. It worked well enough that we, Vince and I, went as a dog and pony show to other factories who IBM was trying to sell the machinery. We have proprietary, we owned the program, and we actually sold it half a dozen times to other companies for the purpose of them to do piece-rate on IMB's new equipment.

GE: By doing piece rate, did it bring down your operating costs?

MS: Very much so. We were very productive. And it brought down, better than it brought down our, it brought up their earnings [the operators], there and more. 00:40:00The operators earned more. I made that a rule: if we are going to go piece-rate, if you worked hard, it was only going to fly, if the operators who worked hard made more than they are making now. So if there was, I wasn't going to--

GE: Some operators made more and some operators didn't I assume.

MS: Right. And there was also the, they also couldn't make less than the minimum. That was written into our contract, which was fine. But some tried to make some operators, we called them girls, that's terrible, that's a throwback, what a sexist way the world we lived in. Operators were called girls, anyway. Yeah, so one of the things I was insistent on with my engineer was to make the rate, I'm worried that if they told me that an operation was going to cost 25 cents a garment, that's what I used to make my price. I don't care if it came out to 27 cents, that's not good. If it came to 20 cents or 21 cents, I don't 00:41:00care. Leave it at 25 cents, that's how I'm pricing that, let them make their money. I was happier that way and so were they for a long time.

Then things got really interesting because I was not happy with the way the industry ran. The industry was cutting stacks of things this high and then there would be people who would run around and tie them into bundles which had the piece-rate ticket on it. So let's say that you're just making a bikini bottom, make it simple, a front and a back and a crotch piece. So you put a bundle of 24 or 36 together fronts and backs and the crotch pieces, and you tie them up with a little ticket. The operator would then reach into a bin, put it up to a table, have to untie it, put everything in an order, and then start to sew. So all the 00:42:00extraneous time, she wasn't producing for herself or for us. Well at one of the Bobbin Shows, that was the garment world's convention down in Atlanta, I was introduced to unit production. Unit of production meant that instead of an operator working on thirty six garments at a time in one bundle, she worked on one or two garments at a time on just her operation. And to make this easy, they had a system that used a hanger with a little clip on it that the people would feed into one end and would come to me as an operator, and I would just pick it up, line it up, do my operation, put it back on, push a button and it would go. Very revolutionary for the time, but also very smart because now all I had in 00:43:00production was cut work and finished work and a few hundred garments that were on the system. Where before, I could have three to four weeks worth of work piled up because you do all the making of things, all the elastic, all the cover, and then all of the trimming, and this way at the end of the day, you had finished work that you could ship. If you had to rush something to do, it was easy to do.

Major, major investment and major, major consideration. It was not something that my father was, my father had a problem with the computer because he was a math guy. He couldn't understand this, what do you mean you do everything 0s and 1s, 0s and 1s. Well that's the way it works. Well, why don't they use 3s and 4, I don't know but it works this way. Binary system. So he was not, but then we took a trip out to Gerber. By the way, Gerber Garment Technology was the one we 00:44:00went into the Gerber Mover. There were other companies, Eton was the one that they had down at the Tama Manufacturing [Fogelman]. Because Mark and I talk about that now. Anyway, my father and I took a trip out to California to one of the customers that made bathing suits with this system. It literally took him [my father] an hour to realize what it was worth. We brought that in over a summer, introduced it to the operators, they were scared to death of it, as were we at first. But I really, I became an outspoken advocate for it, the system, writing articles for trade magazines, being brought down to the Bobbin Show by Gerber to talk to customers, going and doing consulting myself. Not for myself, 00:45:00for Gerber, and you know, the companies that made bathing suits. And I feel it saved our business. This was a major investment, I think it was a couple hundred thousand dollars. But it literally took our prices down and we were able to do them for half of what we could do before. There was no extraneous labor.

GE: Right, so you're saying your costs..

MS: Costs dropped, cost of labor dropped.

GE: Right, right.

MS: In the interim we had a, when I first started, when the business first started, and I don't know what other people have said to you, the garment worker then was almost all Caucasian, and around here Pennsylvania Dutch, German, Slovak, whatever those Eastern European backgrounds were. They were all women with kids and their purpose was to make sure their kids didn't have to be in the 00:46:00factory. They worked so you didn't have to, you could go to college. And it worked. So there were no natural, there were no heir apparent to those positions. So for us, what happened was the next wave of immigration that came in, and that was the first time we had Hispanics and Asians coming to work for us. And it was not an easy transition for a lot of the people who worked for us. And one thing that made unit production work is that you weren't dependent on anybody else for your work. It goes through that system and there was always something feeding, so people didn't get into squabbles. But it was interesting because now we had a language situation, which we weren't prepared for. So at first it was Hispanics, mostly Puerto Rican, I think, I don't know that for fact because I never bothered. Now I would try to find out their country of origin 00:47:00because I'm more attune to that. Back then it was, you just assume that they are from Puerto Rico. And then our Koreans, that was our Asian immigrants and then Vietnamese. And it was interesting what happened was a lot of the Asians . . . again the Hispanics did the same exact thing that the Pennsylvania Dutch had done before. I say that generically, they worked so that their kids didn't have to. Not that they didn't have to work, but that they could go to college and do better for themselves. And we had a small amount of Syrian/Lebanese workers but that was not, not a lot of Atiyahs or that, it was mostly Hispanic. And then when the Asians came in, they had a different attitude. They wanted to learn the business because they were going to, they thought the business made sense.

So the change was we still needed as many operators but now we had to go to 00:48:00different places to get them. And it was tough to get operators. I mean there were battles in town.

GE: There was a real dearth.

MS: Yeah. There were not enough sewing operators and more jobs to go and what was really interesting, and this goes back to one of my few real bad moments in the business, we had a quarter page ad running in the Morning Call about needing operators and you know benefits and anything else, right in the Morning Call. And the company . . . Al . . .he was was married to Dorney Park's, the girl who 00:49:00married Dorney Park's owner--

GE: Was that Weinstein?

MS: Yes, Weinstein. Harris's son-in-law. Yeah, Harris' son in law, Al Simmons, Albert Simmons, came in and was running a factory in downtown Allentown. And somehow or other he got the Morning Call to run an article saying that it's unbelievable that there are actually sewing jobs available at this place. I'm running an ad that in those days are costing me a couple hundred dollars a week, and they're running an article . . . I lost it on the Morning Call, I just went nuts, and he and I did not get to be friends. But there was a friendly competition for the labor. We subcontracted once a while.

Oh, one of the things that saved us, our industry, us as a company, was that we were the first to work with spandex. When we first started making bathing suits, everything was cotton. It was a cotton poly-blend. When Lycra first came out, no 00:50:00one knew how far it was going to stretch. So everything had to be changed because the same setting of stitches that you would use for cotton, which only went so far, would snap if you, because spandex went forever. I mean we were, we made, and I guess Tama did at one point too, because of the stretch pants. We made the leotard, the top leotard for Danskin because we would just make hundreds and hundreds of dozens in pure white that they would dye the color they wanted. Because we knew how to work, what saved us was knowing how to work with that fabric. That is when athletic gear became big, in Jane Fonda years, before she bankrupted the industry. That was where we came in, 'oh you need something done with stretch, go to Bru-Mar, go to Bru-mar.' We started to become, we were still higher end, but those companies started to go out. Rosemary-Reed closed up, Oscar de la Renta went overseas, Bill Blass not so much. And then what 00:51:00happened with the industry, it's interesting because it started off in boutiques then it went to mainstream and it's still mainstream but that's not produced domestically, most of that's produced overseas, so that your Walmarts and Targets, those are not made domestically. But the domestic shops are making now, if they are around, are making it for the real top designers, the ones that make very small lots. And you can't make, you can't have a big factory going. Yeah so in around, by around 1998 or1999, you can start to see, I mean most of the people were closing all over the place. The things that were staying open were small shops. Jick had come and gone by then, that was one of the big companies in town.

GE: Who was that?

MS: Jick. That was John Klein and, that was where the name came from, and Joe 00:52:00Jaffe and, oh my gosh--

GE: Were they also bathing suits?

MS: No, no, they were a big company that did, they were just big in town, used a lot of contractors. And that was a, that company was big, and they closed, and suddenly they were gone. And all that work dried up is all I'm saying. So now all of a sudden there were a lot of operators who worked for them. And we were starting to lay off, we always laid-off in the summer, but we were starting to lay off already in late spring. Night shift wasn't running. It was getting tougher and tougher for us to get paid. We were, you know, we were doing okay, we were used to having, I would just transfer money over to the payroll account, and now we sort of had to wait for checks to come in. It's no way to run a 00:53:00business, you can't work that way. And so we started to look at..

GE: And this is what?

MS: Late 1990s. And in 1999, Jill and I got married in September, and by the end of that year, by the winter of 2000, I was already closed. It was a gradual thing and then I saw the writing on the wall, and I knew I would end up owing somebody something. And basically it had to do with the, I would have stayed open for a little while longer but the owners, we had at one time sold the building to some people who neglected it and didn't. . . We ended up doing our 00:54:00own heat and air conditioning. Anyway, we knew that they were trying to sell the building. So we kind of got out of Dodge, sold our machinery off, our inventory, what was there, and yeah, it was a closed door. I had already started in the fall, in the winter of 2000, like January 2000, I had already been asked to help out directing the play at the new high school-- the high school had just opened. And the woman directing it, up to then was used to a very small stage, and she just wanted some help. She felt a little overwhelmed. And David Klasko actually said 'oh, you should talk to Mark Stutz, he's my neighbor, he knows everything about--' Anyway she called me, and I came up, I came to the school. I always say, I'm like the man who came to dinner. I came to the school to direct that 00:55:00show, which came out in the spring of 2000. I fell in love with the kids, I fell in love with the process. I had never experienced anything like it. I was lucky enough that the woman who had been directing the shows until then retired that summer. They brought me back in, just as a play director for two shows, just a couple thousand dollars, not even worth talking about. I was lucky enough to have just gotten remarried to a woman who understood, and all four kids lived with us, understood that that was my passion and was willing to be there for four kids instead of just her two daughters in the evenings, because I never came home again, because you know it's lots of work. And I did that for about two and a half years with the school, helped build up that program. Then they realized that they needed somebody to manage their arts program, and I was fortunate enough to get that job. And I've been doing that now for thirteen and 00:56:00a half years, fourteen year.

GE: Wow, so you had, that really worked out beautifully from one to the other.

MS: Yeah, it did. There were a couple of years, a couple of lean years there but, you know, I did other things, you know, I did some other jobs in between. There was still some money left from closing the business for myself and my secretary, for about a year closing up business.

GE: So up until the end you were at the building on Seventh Street?

MS: Yes.

GE: Okay. And, um, you no longer owned it initially?

MS: No, we did not own it anymore. Levines had moved back over to Tilghman Street. They were trying to build where the movie theater is. Tilghman Square, whichever that is, I don't know. And they were, the builder was trying actually to build the center around Levines to make them the focal point. So they moved there and they have been there. And they worked for a while. That home sewing business is not what it was either.

SC: Did they also have franchises in--

MS: Yup, they have franchises in a bunch of places. I don't know what happened to them.

GE: Right, right. I think, Mark, you did a great job. I think that's really...\

MS: Thank you. Thank you, it was fun to reminisce.

SC: Now we just have a couple of other questions.

MS: Uh oh, thought questions. What I'm thinking about is that my phone's buzzed about a hundred times in my pocket, and I can't imagine what I've got going on there.

GE: You gave us a very good story though.

SC: Oh, yeah.

GE: You gave a lot of good information. I didn't know that you were, that the Levines. I didn't know that you had that association with them. And we did an interview last week with Marty Krasnov.

SC: Right.

MS: Oh, did you? Oh wow.

SC: Okay, so my crazy questions are first of all, what has made you feel the 00:58:00most creative in life?

MS: Well, certainly nothing in the garment industry made me, and just so you have this on record, I will say it, I hated the last 12-15 years of the career. Hated it. Hated every . . . I felt like there were so many important things happening in the world, and I was wondering whether or not Macy's got their bathing suits a day late. And stressing about it and fighting with buyers about it and having real issues about . . . and there were people out in wars and doctors, and people. I understand the reality that it's not just that bathing suit because that bathing suit then means that the person who sells the bathing suit on the floor of the store loses their job if we don't make it. And, you know, I understand that there is a certain amount of . . . but it just didn't seem that important to me to make everyone go crazy about it. So it was very 00:59:00unsatisfying. Now understand I never . . . until I got divorced with my two boys that lived with me, I did theatre all the time. I worked at Civic, I directed before Bill came in as a full time director, I directed at Civic, Pennsylvania Playhouse, Guthsville Playhouse, I directed all the time. I was always doing something theatrically because it's part of who I am, and I couldn't get away from that.

But I think the most satisfying thing I've done creatively has been make sure, making sure that the arts, music and theatre and dance and visual arts are never going to leave the Parkland School District. That was done by educating not just the kids, but the parents, and not just the people who come to the spring 01:00:00musical, but the kids who paint and draw and dance, creating a dance team, creating a festival of the arts. Things that we've done to ensure that that is now one of the three pillars of our superintendent's stance on education. Because that's, I don't have a legacy from the garment industry. No one, well I don't want to say no one does, obviously people do, but I don't. My kids sort of kind of remember the unit production system. That's probably it. And that's okay. The legacy that I'm leaving, or I hope to leave, is all about public education and the arts. That's what I keep doing and going to . . . and I'm learning more about diversity. I didn't know how to handle the diversity that I had in my factory because I didn't know the language. I'm now dealing with that 01:01:00at the school district because our demographics are changing. And I'm speaking at a conference in Dallas in October and it's a discussion panel about how do you bring in diversity when you have got such a standard already set-- kids taking private lessons, private dance, private voice. How does a kid who's, you know, on the border line of that, get involved because if they are competing against it, and it could be sports too.But if they are competing against that trained person, when do they get their chance. So, it's an exciting time, and I hope to do it for about another five years, and I don't know what I'll do after that, we'll see.

SC: And what do you value most in life?

MS: My family. It's not even a question. They come, they're, they come before 01:02:00anything. And not just my mother and my wife and my kids, but my step-kids, and their significant others, their boyfriends and girlfriends. Family, I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't grown up with a family that had great strong family values. My kids have strong family values. And I think that that is, and that's a challenge for a lot of people who don't. I raised my kids as a single dad for a while. Their mom was in town, but they wanted to be with me. They were boys, and they wanted to be with their dad. You know, I lived, I never moved out of the house, and that's where they grew up . . . and that is, that house, that sofa that I tried to get rid of and now I have to put in the living room because the kids say 'where are we all going to sit when we all come?' Well you all are going to come? I got two in Denver, one in Baltimore, one in Philly, one in 01:03:00Bethlehem. How are you..well they do, they all show up. And on Father's day, they were either with me or with their dads or one was with my mom down in Florida. So they value family. So that answer is simple, my family. Other than that it is my integrity. My family and my integrity. That's it.

SC: Is there anything else that you would like to say, just for the record?

MS: I think this is a great project that you are doing. I think that it is a shame that we didn't do this when we were all younger when we had more memory cells left because there are names that I know I have, and I'll find them, and I'll write them down, and I'll call you with them. But it's something that our, that this generation, doesn't understand. The silk mills were the start of it, and we always called them silk mills, but we weren't silk mills, we were factories. The fabric companies that were in town, the Schneiders.

GE: [unintelligible]..we interviewed him

MS: No, they were a factory. Howie Schneider, and I don't remember his company's 01:04:00name. They made fabric.

GE: Only fabric maker that we spoke to was Finkelstein.

MS: Well Fabknit was one, but they're not in town, there's only one. And there were other bathing suits people around . . . Bobby [Feinberg] . . . there was another, it was big, they were a big factory compared to us [Sea Nymph]. There were like 250 people. And then in Easton there was A&H, Pembrook Swimsuits. So there we had a lot of swimsuit factories in the area. So yeah.

SC: Do you think there is an advantage to having a smaller factory where it's easier in and easier out in some ways?

MS: Well it's the same way with a cast of a show, like a big cast show or a small cast show. Each one has its own problems. Each one has its own advantages. 01:05:00When I directed Our Town with 35 or 36 people, my director directs Titanic last year and he had 60 people in the cast. Thirty people in the pit, and thirty people on crew, it's great but there is a lot of people to manage. It is a lot of ins and outs. But there is a big value to it because a lot of people get [some] benefit from it. I'm doing a show this fall with six kids in it, so the advantage is that I can get really close with six kids, bring out something that they've never had the opportunity to do. And it's good for them. So, there is advantages to both. I think the answer quite frankly is, it sounds like a cop-out, but midsize. Family run, 50, 60, 70 operators was when we were ideal because we could control everything, and everyone knew our name, we knew their name, and we knew their kids. It was different.

GE: Mark, Mark, just a couple of quick little questions for refining. So I know at the beginning when you were working with that Dive-ettess company, you just 01:06:00did sewing. How about with the others?

MS: Well then we started to do cutting--

GE: So then you were doing cutting and sewing.

MS: Cutting and sewing, and then we were . . . we became cutting, sewing, finishing, which we actually tagged it, folded it, bagged it. We had a bagger, the whole thing.

GE: Okay, okay. Right, so then you did the whole thing. Okay, got it.

SC: And would you spell that company, just for the future?

MS: D-I-V-E- [hyphen] -E-T-T-E-S. Dive-ettes.

GE: And, um, just one last...what do you, why do you think that the Jewish community was over-represented in this industry? As owners.

MS: Over represented?

GE: Yeah. In other words, they had a substantial...

MS: Um, well I think it's the same mentality that why there's so many, and not to be, I don't mean this in the wrong way, the Korean Market mentality. That 01:07:00everyone wanted to have their own piece of the American Dream, not work for someone else. But they all did at first, and then they went into their own businesses, and then the families started to depend on those businesses, so the second generation came in. I don't know how many went past a third generation. I think you'd find very few.

GE: Right.

MS: Not just because of the attrition of the industry, but in the interest of the industry. I mean in Paris Neckwear, Nate Braunstein, have you spoken to him?

GE: Mhm.

MS: I mean, that was a huge business at one time. The manufacturing is all somewhere else now. The Mendelsohns . . . You know, and that was third, it's the last generation of that company, you know, family wise. And I think that's what happens. I think either they don't care or can't maintain. . . Different generations, they just get bigger and bigger because there's, it's just that growth, you know .. .it's like network marketing. And you know . . . now there 01:08:00are twelve families that you're trying to feed out of one factory. I think it's hard.

I think that it's over-represented in the sense that they understood the value of property. It's been drummed into them, us, forever of you know you can't kick me out of my country if I am important. You know, they've kicked, you know, Tevya's been kicked, moved around a lot, and that's why we still wear our hats. But, it's, I think it is the fear of someone else trying to control you, or the fact that you wanted to be self-reliant. The same reason I think they become doctors and lawyers. You could say we were over-represented in that at one time or in the world of musical theatre, the same thing, it comes from the traditions and family is a big part of it.

GE: Okay, thank you.