Seth Katzman, May 25, 2016

Interview with Seth Katzman, May 25, 2016

SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is May 25 and we're going to start with and this is 2016, and we're going to start with your life story because it interweaves for what we're doing and for instance, we are looking at women this year and so we want to have all of this even though it's long. So if you would give your full name, where you were born, and when you were born and talk about your early life and from the time you were born and any memories that you think have been important.

SETH KATZMAN: My name is Seth Katzman. I was born on March 28, 1950 in Brooklyn, New York in Methodist Hospital there. My family moved to Allentown when I was one-year-old so basically I consider myself an Allentownian, believe it or not. 00:01:00The rest of my family did live in New York at the time, probably around Queens. Most of my family, I should say my immediate family, was from New York at the time there, so when we moved out to Allentown, I should say my parents moved out to Allentown, it was a big move because everybody was in New York. It was unheard of that somebody would move to the Lehigh Valley away from the city.

So essentially I grew up in Allentown, I went to the public schools in Allentown, we were members of Temple Beth El in Allentown. I went to Hebrew school at Temple Beth El, I got bar-mitzvahed at Temple Beth El, I got married at Beth El. Unfortunately I buried my parents as well at Temple Beth El over 00:02:00there. I have a long history just being in the Lehigh Valley overthere. So as a kid my mother, my parents were always involved with the Temple and at the Center. Actually my mother was very active on that. My father was also on the board of different things, so as a family we always went to services on a somewhat regular basis. I went to Hebrew school and everything.

So I had a pretty normal, safe and good childhood in Allentown. Actually, my parents moved to 29th and Liberty St. At that time that was almost the end of town. There weren't any houses past 30th Street. I used to play in the fields out back as a kid. As I was growing up they kept building more and more homes. A lot of my friends and I became friendly with a lot of kids. Basically what I said, I went to public school and really formed a lot of different friendships 00:03:00over the time and as time moved along, graduated from William Allen High School and went to Brandeis University. I graduated from Brandeis. At Brandeis, I made a fateful decision, which was not to go to medical school. So instead my father had a business at the time, and I knew he wanted to retire. I think what happened was one of the reasons I didn't go to med school was I was getting tired of school. But also at the time I was seeing Kathy and I decided that I don't know if I really want another 8 to 10 years in school before I get out. I knew my father wanted to retire and I kind of just said 'okay I'll try the business on that,' and that's how I got into the garment business over there. Because really the only work experience I had besides the garment business was 00:04:00that I was a waiter at camp one summer. That was my total work experience before the garment industry.

But I started out really driving my father to work because he had health problems. And I think by senior year of high school, during the summer, I drove him all summer to work and I would work in the factory for no pay. Just helping out with whatever they had doing there. And I did that for - I think it was two summers I did that. One summer I went to art school because one of the things I got interested in at Brandeis was art. I was doing painting and different things. So that's how I really got exposed to start with the business. So when I graduated, like I said, I really didn't decide to go into the business until close to graduation, and at that point before I went to the business, my father 00:05:00said well you should go to FIT, and FIT is the Fashion Institute of Technology.

So what happened, my brother, since I was going to the business, my brother had graduated before I had, he was five years older than I was. He was in the Peace Corps and doing different things, hadn't really settled on anything he wanted to do, and he said 'well since you're going into the business, maybe I'll try with you.'

So we both went to FIT, and the problem with FIT was it was kind of interesting, the professors were nice but I had just done four years of school. My brother's really an intellectual type, he had done a lot of reading in school, he graduated from Boston University, and we both looked at these courses and said 'jeez this is kind of a little slow for us.' And then it was good with the technical courses because we didn't have the technical background for the apparel. But the other courses they wanted us to take-- marketing and some 00:06:00different things-- were really I think really elementary to us. And we said could we speed this up, and what really happened was they didn't let us really speed it up. But what we did was we took the technical courses, kind of skipped the other courses, and by the end of the semester we were only going like one day a week. We were trying to just do technical things then we would just go home and work at that time. So by the time June came, we were done with FIT after about a year of doing that. We did make some interesting contacts and got to meet different professors and different things.

So the summer 1973 I would say is when I started really working full time. When I started out, my father had a manager of his business. Just to give you a little background about our business, my father was actually in the business a long time, in the apparel business. He wasn't in this particular business that 00:07:00long that he had. My father and my uncle had started a business, really manufacturing t-shirts to start out with. They had a couple different plants and that's one of the reasons he moved to Allentown. I think they had a place in Hazleton, a place in Allentown, and a place in Reading. My uncle I think ran the place in Reading, and my father kind of took care of the ones in Hazelton and in Allentown. Rather than travel all the time from New York, he decided to move to the Valley.

So as time went along they built their business, and I think beside t-shirts they started making golf shirts and after a certain period of time I think my father and my uncle had a falling out. My uncle bought my father out, but I think my father . . . I'm trying to think, 1965, he kind of got out of business but decided he couldn't retire. He didn't want to stay retired, so he ended up 00:08:00buying a contracting business in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, which was a dress business contracting business, and that was the business I started in.

So when I came along, my brother and I both started in the business. He had a manager at the time, he didn't plan to replace his manager, he figured we would learn the business with him and then see what would happen. As it turned out, after about two months my manager decided he was going to go into his own business, in the flower business or something. So he quit after two months, so I ended up taking over the production there. It was an experience because what did I know about production, I really had to learn everything from there.

So at that point, I started to really do what I had to do to run the business. I had to learn all the things about pricing, production, and sewing. I learned how to sew; I learned everything in the business. My father actually didn't know how 00:09:00to do those things. He knew the outside of the business-- he knew how to price, he knew about the sales part-- but he really didn't know the inside sewing part. So I had to run that, so that's really what I got to do. So it didn't take me too long, I mean I kind of started doing it. I went to New York on a frequent basis to learn about the buying from our manufacturer. At the time we were strictly a contractor. My father really only had one customer, and it was a question of how much you can get out the door. So it was a question of how good you were, were you doing your planning and production, ad doing that. And that's really kind of how we made money was getting your production done, and if you had it priced right, and you did the quality right.

That changed relatively quickly in a year or two because what happened is the garment industry itself started to change a lot. You had a lot of competition 00:10:00from the South, and then within a couple years you had competition from Chinatown and overseas. In the beginning, Chinatown was actually cheaper than overseas because they never paid minimum wage in Chinatown, and it was always a problem there. We were a union plant so I always had to deal with the union and the employees. We had about 50-75 employees. I think when I started it was 75 employees, and it kind of whittled down a little bit for various reasons which took place, but we had a fairly sizable operation for what we were doing. It was, as it was, antiquated-- it was an old building. We kept it in fairly good shape; my father put air-conditioning in. It was fairly comfortable in the building and for the employees over there except when you were in the pressing room; it didn't matter whether you had air conditioning or not. It was very hot, 00:11:00so as I learned that, after a year my brother decided he didn't like the business and left over there.

Kathy and I had moved to Schuylkill Haven to start out with because I'd be at the plant, we would start at 7 o'clock in the morning, I was at the plant 6 to 6:30. I opened the plant and basically started running the plant. It was very long days. It was most likely from 6:30 getting there or getting there at 7 to 5:30- 6:00 o'clock at night. Because even though the plant really ran from, they worked seven hours a day. They might have been done but there was over time and then there was planning I had to do, and calls I had to take, and stuff like that so I really was there pretty much the full day of work. By the second year, we decided we didn't like Schuylkill Haven, and we moved to the booming 00:12:00metropolis of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. After living in Lebanon for about two years, we decided since it took 40 minutes from Lebanon to Pine Grove each day, and half for the extra 15 minutes, I might as well go to Allentown, and that's what we did in 1976/75. We moved to Allentown and then I would commute to Allentown to Pinegrove. So I would get up at 5:30 in the morning basically and go to-- in some cases I would get up earlier and I would go to the gym--to do that but that's pretty much what I did for 25 year.

SC: And as far as the workers at Schuylkill Haven, were they mostly Eastern European by that time?

SK: No, all the workers, we were in Schuylkill County. It was all Pennsylvania Dutch, all-white. There were no minorities. You just didn't have it. It was very 00:13:00close knit, in fact, I was the outsider. My father and I were the outsiders really. There weren't really too many Jewish people in Pine Grove. Actually, the optometrist was Jewish. There were a couple of other contractors or manufacturer; actually I would say contractors in Pine Grove. There was another manufacturer called Canoe Mfcg. They were Jewish as well, they live in Reading. They had a sizable operation over there. There was another outerwear plant called Fox-Knapp that had been there a long long time. They were probably the first ones there. They probably had about 100 employees. Canoe probably had about maybe, they had a lot of employees, they might have had 200, I'm not exactly sure. And there was another small contractor, there might have been another small contractor there at the time.

But really what happened in a few years was just the three of us left, and actually by the time I left Pine Grove, I was the only one left as an apparel 00:14:00manufacturer in Pinegrove. So really what happened is in my father's business, I said he had one customer, and I used to go into New York every, pretty much every other week, what was needed. Because they helped me learn the business actually about the pricing, and they gave me different things to price, and I worked for manufacturing people there because they gave us a lot of different stuff. We did a tremendous amount of styles. Women's clothing had a tremendous amount of style, and it was dresses. What took place in a few years was they moved away from Pennsylvania doing manufacturing, so I had to find other work so I would go to New York City and knock on the different doors to make sure that I had enough work for the plant. I started doing different things so I started doing blouses, I started doing dresses, I kept doing dresses, I would do slacks, 00:15:00I did sportswear of all different types on that. I also took work that wasn't union at the time when I started to think. After 2 to 3 years there I became involved in the dress contracting unit there you know which was a manufacturer's association for dresses. It was out of Wilkes Barre, but it had all the contractors around Eastern PA. That might've been 200 of us.

GAIL EISENBERG: Was that the Delins?

SK: No, that wasn't Deins, that was Atlantic Apparel. This was the counterpart to Atlantic Apparel, it was the dress division. It was a similar group to Atlantic Apparel, but it did dresses. What I learned quickly was after a couple of years, actually I was the youngest guy on the Board. When I walked in, it was actually kind of funny. I was in my twenties and they put me on the Board, I was the youngest person where everybody else was probably in their 40s or 50s. There was a 20 year gap on that. I was the youngest guy there. So I started going to 00:16:00the meetings and after years of being there I said to them, 'you guys are not going to be around unless you change,' and they all looked at me and laughed because you know they were older and said 'we can't change, we can't do this.' I said, 'I don't think you can continue to operate the way you operate.'

And really within another five years or so, I would say by 1988 or so, I left the Association and formed my own contract with the union. Because what happened is I didn't have union sources anymore for work, and I really was working totally non-union sources. What I really ended up doing was instead of being just a straight contractor, I started doing package deals and different things, I would take on different work. It took me a number of years to learn a lot of this because I took contracting work from other contractors, there were a lot of mistakes I made in different things, but what I realized was the contracting 00:17:00business was going to end, and I went into the private labor business.

Then I ended up getting a salesman, I guess in the 90s, and basically we started doing business with LandsEnd and Eastern Mountain Sportswear. Ellesse and I really started to build a business. The problem was there was a lot of risk for me since I had to finance everything myself. So I was really a small player for these guys but what I was able to do is that I was able to do fairly good quality for them, which took a long time to do. I mean it was really painstaking to learn how to do it because I had a plant that was really a popular price plant that made very typical goods, and I had to make high-quality goods. And it was kind of painful to learn that, and get the operators to do it, and we did do it successfully for a while. But then essentially when it got to be the later 90s, everything went offshore, and I couldn't stay in Pine Grove.

And even though I had good relationships with the union and the help, and we were in Pine Grove a long time, I felt bad in a way. You know, but I tried to do what I could and we transitioned out, and I ended up closing the factory over there. I still moved to Allentown, I moved my operations to Allentown, but I had to go to Mexico. And I did contracting with the union plants in Allentown for about a year or two. That's how long it lasted. I was in Mexico trying that. Even Mexico was a hard thing because maquiladora kind of went down there, started up from scratch, had to send our equipment down there, hire people, and do different things. It was a pretty risky proposition actually. And it was risky because the laborers in Mexico couldn't make the quality goods that I 00:19:00needed right away. It was a big learning curve for them. And it took me months to really train them and it cost a lot of money to do that. But I managed to make that happen there and we got some good contracts from LandsEnd and Eastern Mountain Sports.

The problem I had, the Mexicans were great people, and they were good to work with except their time management was a little bit slower than what we're used to here, so they were always late in getting things done. And what would happen is it created a problem for me as far as you know. I got certain penalties from the manufacturers and the cost was contracts over there but I still managed to make it work. And we were going good for a year, and management would go good, and then what happens they went to China, and we ended up losing the contract. And when I saw that happen I kind of closed. I decided I was just going to get out and we had closed. I decided to close and liquidate it out and get out of it 00:20:00and that was another painful process, too. But it was a lot of pressure on me because essentially I had the bank loans, and they were sizable bank loans. I had a lot of pressure from LandsEnd and the others.

In fact, we needed to approach Walmart, and Walmart said to me "you have to be able to take a million-dollar order, that's the minimum order we'll do with you." But I was taking million dollar orders because that is what I had to take even with LandsEnd to do business, and even the other people, you couldn't stay in business taking small orders. I knew I had to go to 5 to 10 million dollars minimum. We were probably at 5 or 6 million dollars but what happened is because of the credit lines, they really put a big demand on me and stress and one of the suppliers, I found out later actually, wasn't happy because they said even though I paid the bank and everybody on time, they just felt like I was too small, and I ended up losing a contract from LandsEnd, which I found out later. 00:21:00But when they cut me out of the program-- because I had done this program for five years-- that's when I decided to close. I said this isn't right. So what happened, I liquidated out about a year later, and they ended up coming back to me and said "do you want to do this" because what happened is that they got screwed because they couldn't get the quality from the other supplier but at that point I said "I'm done" and I had decided to close and extricate myself out of that. And that was the end of the apparel business for me really by 2000, by 1999 actually, it was over for me.

SC: I'd like to take you back to your family history, as far back as you know, but I have one question, which union?

SK: ILGWU

SC: Okay, that's what I thought, but yes, and also, there was another question I had with how far was Pineville from Reading?

SK: Pine Grove from Reading is--

SC: Pine Grove, I'm sorry.

SK: Pine Grove from Reading is approximately 45 miles

SC: Because they had all the outlets by that time, all the stores and the business, weren't they? Reading was still producing when you were...?

SK: Actually my uncle was still in business at that time. He was in manufacturing, but they had problems also with that, even the manufacturing. Really what happened is most like in Pine Grove, Fox-Knapp had been there for 100 years. They made outerwear, there weren't a lot of guys making outerwear. And outerwear went strictly to China, overseas, Korea. They just couldn't compete, and they ended up closing the plant over there. And the same happened, now you could do manufacturing the children's wear, and I guess the same thing 00:23:00happened to them. They had problems and they just closed. I was actually, like I said, I was able to stay because what I did is I did certain work in Mexico, and I did certain work in Pine Grove, and also I had a good connection with my sales guys at LandsEnd. We were able to produce for them on a very quick turn. We had a special system that you can turn things in a couple days, and we were able to really get the goods for them but the problem is I was paying $17 an hour. They could land the goods, the whole product complete, for 10 bucks. There was no way you can compete. It didn't matter how good and how fast, the only thing I could do was on reorders. We were good, and they really depended on us, and that's how we lasted in Pine Grove as long as we did for that. Because the plant, the plant people were generally pretty good, you know, they tried to get the quality right 00:24:00and get it done, and we were pretty responsive to getting things done. And it's not that we didn't have problems, we did have problems. Generally you know we were pretty consistent for them on that.

SC: Could you talk about the names you know in your dad's family and your mother's family? Where they came from as far back as you know.

SK: As far back as I know. Quick thing I never knew my grandparents really. I knew one grandparent; my great-grandparents I never knew. They were long gone. My great grandparents-- actually from one side was from Poland I think. My parents . . . my father's was from Poland then. My mother's was from Kiev, Ukraine, over there. So they came to New York City, the typical Eastside. My mother's side had a store in the Lower East Side, on Orchard Street where else on that. And their whole family worked that store for a long time. Actually they 00:25:00worked that store until the 80s; I think on that type of thing until the neighborhood really changed over there.

My father lived with my mother's family when they got married, so they lived in New York City. And it was hard on my father because my father did not work in the, he tried working in the business with them, and decided this isn't for him. So he started looking for other businesses. He worked in the bank for a while, he had a decent position in the bank, but he decided that he wanted his own business. So then he started looking for a different business. He probably failed in a couple businesses before he ended up connecting with my uncle working in the business room. But they still lived in New York with the mother's family till 1950 when they moved, 1951 when they moved to Allentown. So that was there.

Now my father actually was from Detroit, and I don't know about his family too 00:26:00much on that type of thing. What I do know is my grandmother at the time lived in New York City as well. I never knew my grandfather, I think he passed away when I was one year old and I wouldn't know. They lived in the city. My grandmother-- I don't know exactly which business she was in-- whatever it was she was, pretty tough, tough woman. She lived in the city and she would come visit us every two weeks or something. She died right before my bar mitzvah on that but I remember her being there. She would cook and stuff, she liked seeing the kids and stuff. Really I didn't know her that well. We used to see her at the holidays. Whenever we had Passover and stuff, we would always go into the city with our families. We would have big seders, families would be there on that. And my mother and her sister were very close. My aunt lived in Belle Harbor and she didn't live two blocks from the beach. So every summer we'd all 00:27:00go visit her, extended stay because when I was a baby she would bring me along, and she had a nanny for me, and we would stay right in my aunt's [home] and go to the beach all summer. We would stay just about most of the summer over there, so my sister and my aunt were very close. We got very close with that side of the family. Still close today, really I just know my cousins.

SC: Do you know their names?

SK: Well my mother's name was Veiner over there, her sister was also a Veiner, but became a Weiss, and Weiss was our cousins on the other side over there. Now her husband was an optometrist. They lived in Belle Harbor for 30/40 years, whatever, they were there a long time. And their kids grew up there; we became very friendly with their kids. They had two boys, Alan and Fred. Fred became a 00:28:00doctor, moved to California. Alan stayed in the New York area, he became an accountant. Fred has passed away since then but I know the other families in California still keep in touch with them in California. Alan, we still keep in touch with him. He's still in the city but his kids, one's in Washington, the other's in Hawaii over there. So really that's pretty much, or we're pretty close there. I have other family members in New York, which we still occasionally see, a lot of cousins over there.

One of the cousins was also in the garment business. He was like a rep selling different things for a long time. I think that was it, everyone else was not. The other part of the family stayed in the store actually. My father's side he had four other brothers, most of them stayed in the city as well. One of them 00:29:00was a banker actually at Sterling National Bank, and he became the president or vice president, he's high up that for a long time. His other brother had another dry goods store where he sold for a long time in New York, as well as another store, which he sold. And his other brother died younger. I don't know what he was in, he was doing something else but he died when I was much younger from that type of thing.

SC: Do you know when your grandparents or their parents came to the United States? About what year?

SK: I think it was in the 1900s era, it's got to be the late 1800s when they first came because my parents were both born in the United States. So they had to have come back then and I don't exactly know the details. I only saw, you know my parents never really talked about it too much. It was interesting. Actually, there were a lot of things I saw just from looking through the stuff 00:30:00that they left when they passed away. But they never talked too much about their families and that type of thing.

SC: They embraced the United States. I think that's it, do you want to trade positions?

GE: You know what, what we're going to do is we're just going to take a minute just so that we can make sure that we're doing okay technology wise.

SK: So we actually started making goods for the Miss America contest. And we also made stuff for the US Open. We had [Ivan] Lendl made in our unit, we made 00:31:00it as one of the manufacturers, to see them play. Also, Chrisy Evert had some stuff that we had, we made stuff for her as well.

GE: I'm going to let you tell me in a minute. So just pause, we are going to take a break.

SK: You know, there's another guy that is really Jewish, but not Jewish in a way, that might still be working in the Valley.

GE: Although it has happened to be mostly Jewish, it doesn't have to be.

SK: There's a guy here that's still working actually, that does apparel stuff, he does embroidery, which is Lilly daVid. Now I don't know if David, cause I 00:32:00haven't talked to them in years, but I believe that they are still there because they do embroidery, they used to do embroidery for me all the time.

GE: The other one that I was going to reach out to, the other one I know, that I just heard recently is Harris Malkovsky. And I don't know if he does any, from what I understand he is a middle man. Does he just buy stuff..?

SK: I don't know what Harris does, but he was in the garment business

GE: Right, and here's something, so I thought I would reach out to him

SK: Yeah, no he would be good too. But Stu Ullman, the reason I say that, his father started Canoe Manufacturing, which was in Pine Grove way before we were. So he was there for a long time. But he really is definitely a person to speak to. I think he still is in the garment business-- David Lilly. He's down off 00:33:00Lehigh Street there, I'm trying to think.

SC: Are they still there?

SK: Yeah, they are still there, I forget the name of the street that they are on. No, when you take a left, right before the diner's right there. There's a diner there, I can't remember the name of the street.

SC: So it is not in Emmaus?

SK: No, it's right in Allentown.

SC: So it's right in Allentown.

SK: It's 18103, if you look it up on the Internet, it will be there cause he's, I'm positive he's still there.

GE: Thank you. So a couple of follow-up questions, one,you'll share those stories about the Miss America and about the other. Couple of follow up questions. One, what was the name of your businesses? Initially you were manufacturers right?

SK: Initially we were always contractors. We started out as a contractor.

GE: You did, your father did?

SK: My father did. And the name of the business was Summit Station Manufacturing.

GE: That was your father with the T-shirts? Correct?

SK: Well, no, my father and the T-shirts started out as Rick Knit.

GE: R-I-C-K-K-N-I-T? And that was the t-shirts, correct?

SK: That was the t-shirts and the golf shirts. That's what evolved into the golf shirts business

GE: And then just tell me the evolution?

SK: The evolution was my father and uncle were partners in that business and then they were in it since the 50s. I think in 1965 they split, they had a parting and then essentially my father left that business. My uncle still continues to run the business with his son, then his son ran it for a long time. I don't think they are around anymore.They ran it for a while. Then what 00:35:00happened was my father looked for another business. He was thinking about different businesses, but he ended up buying a contract plant in Pine Grove and called it Summit Station Manufacturing.

GE: So he called it Summit Station Manufacturing but you were always a contractor?

SK: He was only a contractor and that's how I started, it was strictly contracting. He strictly worked for union jobbers at the time in New York City. It was all union work.

GE: Right. And you said there was one customer, who was that customer?

SK: That customer was called Dorby Fox.

GE: Ok, Dorby, D-O-R--

SK: D-O-R-B-Y Fox over there. And they were on Seventh Avenue; there were right in the garment industry

GE: Right, and you said it was dresses?

SK: Yes, all dresses.

GE: And what type--was it very casual dresses?

SK: No, they made all types of dresses. They made fancier dresses. They didn't make wedding dresses or anything like that. But they really made more popular priced dresses, stuff at JCPenney, Sears; those were the type of dresses they 00:36:00were selling. That was the type of market they were selling.

GE: And was it typically old women as opposed to teens?

SK: Women, mostly women, yes, mostly women.

GE: And how long did your brother stay in the business?

SK: One year.

GE: Oh, so he was only in it-- and you were in it with your father? Or once your father left, he was done?

SK: What happened was when my brother and I both started, my father was still there. Like I said, my manager left after two months. I took care of the. . . it's just, I'm more detailed than my brother. My brother is way more marketing/sales person. I just picked up on the details, so I really became the plant manager, running it because you had to know a lot of details. It was a heck of a lot of details to know. So, I lasted about a year. We both shared, you know, the production duties. I basically helped tell my brother. My brother and I both helped in planning and ran the sewing. After a year, my brother said that 00:37:00he couldn't take it anymore and had enough and left. At the time we were living in Lebanon, and he just left and went to try to do something else.

GE: And then it sounds like you stayed with this until the end.

SK: Yeah, I did. What really happened is I ended up running the plant, not happened, I did run the plant. I was responsible for all of the production and everything. I was the one that scheduled everything and the quality and stuff like that. My father helped a little bit, but my father really had some health issues, so after a year or two, he left and went in the winter to Florida. So really in six months I was basically all on my own. Now he would call, and if I had a problem, but I was really on my own. And really within a couple of years he ended up retiring. I would say within five years he was not coming to the plant.

GE: Well do you want to share with us - so then it was really a matter, if I 00:38:00understand correctly, it was the matter of keeping your cost down, and that's how you tried the Mexico...

SK: The beginning problem was actually getting work that you could actually make at a price. And I would go to different places and like I said, I ended up doing a lot of different things. I expanded out of dresses. I started doing blouses, sportswear. I went into running suits. I went into anything that we thought we could make. We actually made outerwear, too. For LandsEnd, we actually made outerwear, that's how I got started with LandsEnd. I made their 'squall' jacket. Then, most of the squall jackets were made in California, but I made it because I could make it quicker and delivered the small runs quicker so basically that's how I got started with them.

It was painful, it was really painful because making outerwear from a dress 00:39:00plant, it was really an experience to do, but these are things I undertook. I would take on a lot of different things that a lot of people would never do because I just felt like if I could find my niche, and that's what I was looking for. And in that process I ended up working on making warm-up suits and different things. I started with Ellesse and that was like a semi package thing, and I had to do different things for them. We made different warm up suits and they actually made stuff for the US Open, so that's how I got to make stuff for the US Open. They would make it for a lot of these tennis pros, and would wear their label. And we made a lot of their suits and stuff like that, like I said, [Ivan] Lendl. Actually, I think Lendl was not Ellesse, they worked for Mizuno also, that was another contact that I made.

And Mizuno was a Japanese firm, and the craziest thing about them is they wanted 00:40:00to see the plant so they came from Japan to see my plant. So I will be there, and then he said, well can you stay a little bit later at 8 o'clock at night and he said, can you stay a little bit later, 11 o'clock at night. They came to my plant. They roll up in this big limousine, literally, I'm so serious. It was really funny. So 11 o'clock at night they come and look at my plant, literally. I was there until 12 o'clock/12:30 at night with them. And the reason I remember Lilly daVid is Lilly daVid would do the embroidery. Some we would first self-cut, then I would take it down myself to Lilly daVid a lot of the time or ship it.

And Lilly daVid and Ellesse, they were really friendly, they would be there and what they did with Mizuno even, I think Lilly daVid had a party one time and all 00:41:00the people who were doing the contracting or designing for them got together and they served sushi. We all got together one day and had this big raw tuna that they had for lunch, and we all got you know for the customer we were there. It was actually my first time that we had sushi, and that's how I got to like sushi. It was pretty good sushi. But it was this huge raw tuna sitting there, and we had it and it was an interesting experience. But we made different things for different people at that time and that's how I started getting into manufacturing because I wasn't total manufacturing, but I had to buy certain things or do certain things for them, and I got to learn about how to put the garments together on different things. And I got a lot of different experiences during those things and also during that time there was another time when we made dresses for the Miss America pageant and that was on TV. And that was kind of a thrill because you made these dresses, and we shipped them out, and you 00:42:00actually got to see them wear them on TV. And I think we got mentioned on TV. But that was some of the other things that we did.

GE: And when you did that, that was for whom?

SK: I don't even remember anymore, to tell you the truth. It was another one of those deals that was, I don't know, it might have been through Ellesse through somebody again that we. It wasn't Ellesse actually, the dresses were not Ellesse. It was somebody else, and I don't remember anymore who it was for, another contractor. It was kind of a contract, wasn't totally a contract. It was a guy who sent me a couple of packages. A lot of things we had to do for them and package it and put it together.

GE: So during this time, if I understand correctly, these were where you were doing a lot of small runs?

SK: Yeah, my business was [doing] a lot of small runs. That's how I really survived. Later on by 1995 when I hired an outside sales person and he said I 00:43:00have contacts I think we can do business. And the reason he knew me was because when we started he found out I did some smaller runs through some of these guys. And we connected, I went to New York, I used to go to New York a lot. And in New York, we started talking and his name was Jim Stabile and he was working for somebody else at the time and said you know, I bet we could get together and do something. And, you know, you kind of listen, and they never do it and then one day, he called me and said I think we could do something, you want to come in? And we got to talking, and I said okay if you think you can do this, I'll do this and that's what happened. We started getting sales and then I went out to LandsEnd. I would go out with him, and we would restructure some deals, and we actually got some contracts and that's how I got started.

GE: And even with LandsEnd was it, were these concerns small runs?

SK: For LandsEnd we started on a small basis but I was totally responsible for everything. In other words, they would tell me where to order the fabric but I had to buy the fabric. I had to buy the trims. I had to do everything. And really at the beginning I had a hard time making it. I can't figure out how they put these deals together because I was always behind the 8-ball. It was very very tight for me, and they gave me a little bit more money because it was smaller runs, but I always couldn't get a bigger run because my pricing was wrong.

Then one year he got a big contract and they said to me if you get this contract they will introduce me to the fabric person. They said you're going to get special pricing if you get this contract. And they gave me the pricing for the fabric. And I saw the pricing for that fabric, and I saw the pricing that I had to pay for the fabric, and it was a huge difference. And they said 'well if you buy the zippers this is the source you should use.' Actually they didn't tell me the source, they said, 'we want you to buy 25,000,' we're talking about big 00:45:00buying. And I said, 'if I do 25,000,' and I went to the zipper guy, I said, 'what price would you give me?' And all of a sudden, the prices were different. I mean substantially different, like way different. And that's how I got into the contracting. I realized, wait a second, there is a different world here. And then I started calling suppliers, and if the supplier couldn't do the business, they said, well try this supplier.

And you know when I talked to . . . with a lot of people when I told them 25,000 or I'm not going to spend $10,000 with you, or $20,000 or you know. The fabric guys were not hundreds of thousands of dollars, the zipper guys were thousands of dollars, could be $20,000/30,000. It was now big orders for them. And when they said LandsEnd, they knew who I was doing it with. They said that they'll work with me and do the business and that's how I got into the contracting business. But there was a big difference in the beginning. I was struggling, you know, how could these guys do these? How they did it was through the buy-in because they get special deals. Everything was a special deal and unless you 00:46:00knew and had the contacts to it, and Mizuno couldn't do this again.

I started with the bank in Pine Grove and I got started with a small line of credit and all of a sudden I got big lines of credit. Today you couldn't do that, by the way. They would never grant me the credit. I had million dollar lines of credit. Nobody today would grant you that thing, not in this world today. They do not do that then. I could finance nothing but I lived check to check. In other words. I'd have people who would look at me and say, I had these enormous checks come in, and I'd have to go to the bank, cash it. Even with LandsEnd, I would spend, I had a special deal with them that said, I have to get paid right away. And they worked with me, I got to give them credit, they did work with me, but they were tough. You had a problem with your quality, they would hold, no matter what, whatever you had with them, they would not pay you. If your quality wasn't good, they didn't just not pay, they rejected the lot, and you had to fix it or do whatever it was and they'd say, 'we're sending back 00:47:00'x' amount and wouldn't give you the money.'

And that's why I said at the beginning with LandsEnd, you really had to know, cause if you'd ship for me it was really critical because I was doing so much quantity. I had to make sure the quality was right and get paid. I've got to tell you another thing, so there is a lot of risk, or else a lot of people would have done what I did. Like I'm surprised I did what I did. I did it, and then I realized that I reached a certain point with Mexico. I got a lot of disappointment a lot of times, and I said I can't keep doing this, it was just too much risk for me. And that's what got me out of it, really. Just one day I realized, I said, I had everything on the line and nobody else had everything on the line, and I just said, I'm not going to do this anymore.

GE: And what year was that?

SK: It was 1999 that I finally pulled the plug. I just said, and it was tough because really I had been doing this, people were depending on it. I really gave it a shot because I knew when I went into the private labor because I knew that 00:48:00contracting was not going to make it. And I knew I had to go between 5 and 10 million dollars to survive, and I was close to doing it but the problem was with LandsEnd. The old way was you go in, you make a handshake with the guy, and they would live up to what they did. At LandsEnd, that's not what happened.

I had contracts by the way, of a big size, but they didn't even live up to their contracts. That's what, when that happened to me, I said wait a second. Actually, at the end I had to sue Eastern Sportswear to get my money, and I had to settle with them because the smaller you are, you know you're not going to court at the end, even though they owed me the money, I settled with them, and gave them a discount to get out of it. And after that happened, that's when I said, I'm done. Cause I just didn't have the financial wherewithal you would need to have substantial money to do what you're doing. And not only that I couldn't rely on them, the garments had really changed. Even LandsEnd started to 00:49:00change within their organization. It wasn't the same. That was a real close-knit organization there, you almost became a part of their family in a way. If they counted on you; they would tell you certain things. Not that they wouldn't demand and hammer you on the price but if they gave you the order, they would cut you certain breaks. They would help you with the money if you said you needed the money on some things, and if you delivered for them, they would help you. But after that happened, I said I can't count on this anymore and stopped. But they were a good organization to work with, it did help me, but it changed, the whole world changed. Everything went overseas.

GE: So at that point, you're about 50 I assume. And so I'm just kind of wondering if you wanted to share with us what you've done since, um you know, in terms of how did you personally have to adapt, right?

SK: Well, when I left I actually liquidated the plant. I actually walked away. 00:50:00It cost me a lot of money, really a lot of money. Okay but, I almost thought that I would have to declare bankruptcy. Because of how I handled most of my customers, and I had good relationships with everybody, I was able to pay, repay everybody and that type of thing. When I say everybody, there's only one person I didn't really repay at the end, but they actually should have paid me. I left them my equipment so it ended up being fine, and that was down in Mexico--maquiladora. And I wasn't too happy with them, but they actually ended up ahead in the deal because they never would have gotten the business that I gave them. And they were very late, and they actually caused me a lot of money, and frankly, they should have cut me better breaks, but they didn't. But I don't harbor any resentment, it's what it is, it's the way we had the business of doing it.

So when I left I took a year off because I was really kind of stressed, to say the least. And I ended up paying the bank completely back with the credit lines 00:51:00which I had to sign for personally. In fact all the credit lines, I paid all my suppliers, I paid all of the contractors and everybody got paid. And I was almost surprised because I didn't think that was going to happen, but I was able to do it. And I liquidated out on that.

I had a manager, I said I would help him if he wanted to stay as a contractor. I didn't want to be in the garment business anymore. I said, I've had enough and I really had so I lent him a little bit of money. He was the biggest disappointment because he was with me a long time and at the end he kind of just reneged on me because I lent him a fair amount of money. I mean not like the garment business, but I did lend money to get started in that. I guess it didn't work out. I knew it would be tough but it's not the money that bothered me, it's just how it ended. He didn't come to me and say, 'hey Seth,' you know, he kind of just walked out, and you know just kind of left it that way. So that kind of 00:52:00left me negative a little bit. But like everything else I've moved on, and I, you know, it's just, I took a year off to kind of relax, did some different things, went on some vacations, just did different things.

Then I started to get really antsy and wanted to look for another; I always intended to look for another business. But it wasn't going to be in the garment business, I was kind of done with that. So I started looking around after that. My brother was in Valpak since 1991. So this was 2000 at this point, and I was looking. I put out flyers for different businesses and was looking around. I didn't want to go, like I said, in the garment business, I probably could have gotten business as a consultant going overseas and stuff, but I didn't want to do that. I didn't really want to travel like that. So I started thinking about other businesses.

My brother said, 'hey I need some help here, why don't you just, you know what you needed, I need a manager.' Well I looked at his business and said, his business is strictly marketing and sales. I said, I'm not really big on sales, it's not me. You know, it's more him. And I said, I'll look at your salespeople inside, you know, to see if you have the sales person. So I looked at the salespeople, and I said to him, you don't have any. You're lucky if they are salespeople, let alone, you could have them as a manager. Then I sort of said, I wasn't going to do that. I said I'd help him for a while, if he wanted me to. But then he made me a proposal, and I guess I was kind of antsy. too. I looked at his figures and said, now I guess we could make this work. But I said, I could really do that inside for you, because his wife was doing the inside at the time, and didn't want to do it. And I said, I can help in the sales, but I'm not really going to be a prime salesperson. I said I can help really do the inside for you and do all the financial stuff and help. I can do everything, but I said don't count on me as the prime salesperson. I'll do what I have to do for 00:54:00you, you know I'll help in the sales. So that's how that got started on doing that because what we decided to. We would split the business in the sense that I let him own that business. I did not want to own the business, I said we can work as partners. I'll treat you like I own the business, but I'm not going to own anything so that's how we got started.

And frankly that's how it is today, basically I run the business for him on that. I do a lot of the sales, in fact I do more sales than I want. But I do the sales, I help out with the sales people, I do all the financials, I do all the inside, all the technical stuff I do on that type of thing. So that's really what's happened, he still likes marketing and the sales, so he still does that. My brother never pushed himself that hard on that business. He kind of goes along, you know, we do it on that type of thing and we're still doing it on that.

GE: So a couple of last questions before Sue gets back to you. What do you think 00:55:00about the community here? How has the community been affected, in terms of when it was 1950, when you were very young, there were many families that were in this business.

SK: You're right, the community has definitely changed a lot. When I was growing up as a kid there were a lot of small businesses. In fact when I went to the synagogue, even in the Jewish community there were a lot of small businesses. In fact that was the majority of people, you had doctors and lawyers but the majority of givers, the people involved in the community, were all small business people. On that, in fact a lot of the givers to the [Jewish] Federation were from the garment business. I used to know, my father used to take me down to his plant, show me things. You had, um, I'm trying to think, some of the others there, not Bernstein, it was belts, you know, Braunstein. Braunstein, I 00:56:00knew Nate, I was at his plant and so, they were all involved in the garment business, you know.

And there were a lot of big givers, a lot of big plants actually. We were a small plant in comparison to what they were. That started to change, some people retired, some people had to retire. You know if you get out, some people sold, so the businesses did not stick around. So really say by the 90s there, you started to see the change. By 2000 there weren't too many people left over there. In fact, the Atlantic Apparel when you talk about it in sportswear, I think they had like 500, close to 500 plants in the Lehigh Valley and surrounding area. I don't know who was left, there were very few left on that 00:57:00type of thing, and even the garment in the dress apparel, we had like 200 and some. There was nobody left. In fact, I think I was the last one left, but I wasn't a part of, I made my own contracts at that point. I wasn't even a part of it anymore. I think I was the last one left on that type of thing. So there was nobody left on that type of thing, all those businesses shrank or disappeared over there. So what happened over time was you had professionals come into Allentown. There's still some small business people, but even the small business community started to have problems. By 2008 when you had the recession, it was a turning point, I think you lost businesses there. And being in Valpak, I see a lot of small businesses. People in the Jewish community, they had small businesses, but they're not too many of them, and that disappeared. Now you have a lot of professionals that have taken that place but it's really changed the character of the community.

GE: How? GIve us an example? In what ways do you think?

SK: Well it's a combination of businesses changing, but I also think it has socially changed. When I grew up, the synagogue was a social side of religious thing. Religion was always a secondary thing, I mean it was always secondary. It played a part in our community, but it was really secondary. The temples were social; people went to the temple to meet people and to get their friends. And my mother and everyone, she had a clique. My mother really knew a lot of people because she was involved in not only the temple but also in the auxiliary of the Jewish Community Center. She was involved in all these things. But the women didn't work at that time so you had them involved in all these community type things--Jewish affairs, Hadassah-- you name it, my mother was part of it.

She was involved in doing that, and I grew up with that, and my father tagged along cause you know he had to because of my mother and that was part of it. But that started to wane because women had to go to the workforce and became more 00:59:00involved, and not that they weren't involved in the community, but less so. It became less and less. And then also what happened is as the older generation died off and moved away, the younger generation, not as many stayed here, because the opportunities weren't here. They didn't go into the family business because there wasn't a family business to go into. Now some didn't want it, and did different things. It, you know, changed, and the dynamic people moved away, and people came here, but I don't think now as many people move here as they used to 10 or 15 years ago.

GE: Okay, good. My last question before I turn it over to Sue is why do you think that the Jews were really overrepresented in the apparel industry? From what we've seen and from what we've read, it's very many Jews and Italians. But why do you think that the Jews were overrepresented in that industry?

SK: I would say that there are a couple factors. One is discrimination factor that you couldn't have, you couldn't get into other businesses fields that easy or that readily, you weren't accepted, so they started in that. A lot of these Jewish merchants started as peddlers and they built up. Now, maybe some of the owners, their parents might have been peddlers to start out with, and they got started because you could start a garment business relatively inexpensively. Not that you didn't need money, you could start it up relatively easily, you could never do that today, could never do it.

That's what's hard about small businesses, in general it's hard to start a small business. Any small business requires a fair amount of capital. But in those days you could go to a guy who'd lend you a machine, they would lend you, you could buy things on credit, and they would let you get started. And you could make a living and that's how they started a lot of them. That type of thing, I 01:01:00think that's what happened a lot. That doesn't happen today out there, and for a Jewish guy, like I said, it was an opportunity. There weren't a lot of opportunities, and you could make decent money if you were good.

Now a lot of guys didn't make it obviously, but there were a number of guys who did make it and became good. Now, not all, some of the Jewish guys or Jewish merchants that were here in the Valley, their fathers had started a business. So that's how the guys who were bigger generally got bigger, their parents had started before them. Like Mr. Mort Levy, his father started the business and then he built it and obviously expanded it. His father started it before he started and he grew up in it. I got to mention Mr. Levy because Mr. Levy helped me. He mentored me a little bit when my father passed away when I was 36. I was really on my own pretty much, on the younger part of business. My father really had no connection at all with what I did on that, but I used to talk to Mr. 01:02:00Levy, and he would help me in a lot of cases. There were a lot of Jewish people that had these factories and that's how they built up.

GE: Okay, great, thank you. Okay, I'm just going to push this.

SC: Okay, so I really only have two more questions, so one is what has made you feel most creative in life?

SK: What has made me most creative in life?

SC: Given you a sense of satisfaction or creativity or whatever other word you want to add?

SK: It's a mix, it's a mix of things for me because essentially I would say my family has been one of my key satisfactions in my life, no matter what because 01:03:00they have always been there, and I always have enjoyed them, proud of them. But one of the things, the garment business was a big change for me because I was a shy little guy. I'm still quiet, but it made me do things I would never do. And that's what I found interesting about it. After all the years, you know, it changed whether I went to med school. In retrospect, I could have been a doctor probably, probably wouldn't have been a problem for me. But the garment business just changed my life by doing it over there, so being creative is really up to you as a person.

Brandeis changed my life in a certain way. It stopped me from being a doctor, believe it or not, because I learned about art, and I never knew I had an interest in art. What happened was that at Brandeis, I had taken all the science courses. I had taken organic chemistry, I was ready to go to med school and had taken this art course. I think during my sophomore year, and I said I liked it. 01:04:00And I was talking with the professor, and at Brandeis, you could speak to professors pretty easily, and I was doing this artwork and this guy says, 'you should really take more art courses.' He said, 'I think you have the ability.' And I started taking some more in my junior year, and I really enjoyed them, and I said, you know what, I don't really want to go to medical school. I stopped taking science courses. I was one course away from my science degree at Brandeis, but then I stopped, and I said that I'm just going to take art courses. And the rest of my courses were all art courses. They were all drawing, art history, to me they were so simple after science, it was like a breeze for me, and I enjoyed them so much.

And I learned a lot of different things at Brandeis cause essentially I got to meet the professors, and the courses were really different. Actually, one of the professors there, I'm trying to think of his name, I don't know, he contributed to the art museum in Allentown over there, it was one of my professors over 01:05:00there, and he used to invite us out for wine. It was just a completely different environment from the sciences. But even the science professors that I got to talk to over there. So that's what changed my mind about expanding, looking at things differently over there and the garment industry. You had to be more creative, maybe that's why I stuck with it longer because I realized I could do things with it, I was willing to try different things over that thing.

SC: So it changed the way you looked at things, and more artistically.

SK: I used certain things artistically. I still do a little bit of drawing and painting. I said to Kathy that really to be an artist you have to do it full-time. It's hard to do it part-time. I still do crazy things but I always liked the abstract art and I would do different things, I would do canvases and different things. I said I can never make a living doing that. If I had my choice going back, I probably would have been an artist. But I don't think I could have made a living doing it although when I go to the museums and look at 01:06:00some of the stuff of some of the artists who "made it." I have to laugh because I was doing some of that stuff that they were doing, and I was looking at it. That's chance, really it is chance.

SC: And what do you value most in life?

SK: I still value my family the most in life and really you know people say that the money and different things. Your money is not just life because it's not all about money, it's, there's a balance that you strike between. Yeah it's good to have means. Then you could support yourself and your family and send the kids to college, and you know, help them when they need help. But it's really about relationships with your people, the community you live in that you feel comfortable with, friends that you have over time. Yeah, even friends as you get older, they move away too and you know it's good having them but it's, you still rely on your family to some degree-- my wife, my kids, your grandkids, and that 01:07:00becomes really one of the most important factors.