Charles Levin

Below is the full transcript of Charles Levin's Recollections-Transcribed and edited by Ira Levin.

STRIVE AND SUCCEED

Charles Levin's Recollections

Transcribed and Edited by Ira Levin

Copyright © 1994 by Ira Levin

FOREWORD

In his later years, when he was retired and living with his wife Bea in their house on Lake Mahopac, Charles Levin (Charley to his friends and family, C.L. in his place of business, Dad to Ellie and me) wrote a memoir of "the many happenings in a long and interesting life" — some sixty pages in a spiral notebook. I appropriated it from his desk drawer, along with a yellow-paper early draft, after his death in 1973.

I read it, and resolving to make photocopies for the rest of the family, put it aside...

Twenty-one years have passed. Five or six weeks ago, Nick asked me how his grandfather got started in business. I remembered the notebook, searched awhile, and found it. I found too that the hand-printed pages, with their deletions and insertions, made for difficult reading, and that the two versions, the notebook and the early draft, varied considerably, the notebook being fuller and more formal but the draft containing some sharper details and more vivid language.

So I decided to make this transcript, a blend of mostly the notebook and partly the early draft — for Nick, and for Ellie and Joe, Paul, Judy, Adam, Jed, and those few friends of Dad's who are still around. And for Rachel and Sarah and whatever other de-scendants may ultimately descend.

The "many happenings" are almost all business-related. Wife and children rarely rate more than brief asides, and there's no mention at all of friends, family trips to Burlington, pleasure cruises with Mom, or Fenway Golf Club. But there's an interesting history of the birth and growth of a successful business in the first half of this century, a business to which his descendants owe much, and the engaging sense of an old warrior recalling his triumphs, modestly attributing to God much that resulted from his own hard work and sound judgment.

Making this transcript— editing as little as possible, keeping it all in Dad's words — was like having a conversation with him again after all these years. It was a heart-warming job, and I'm grateful to Nick for spurring me to it.

I was struck by the way Dad embodied the ideals promoted by the Horatio Alger novels he relished as a boy. Pluck and Luck. Work and Win. Strive and Succeed. That's why I took the latter as the title for these pages.

The footnotes and bracketed additions are mine, the words in parentheses his.

— Ira Levin

New York City October, 1994

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It is very difficult for me to get started on this story because of the lack of schooling that I got, and I fear there will be many mistakes in grammar, but I want to put down on paper the many happenings in a long and interesting life and one that has been a happy and fruitful one.

My mother was left a widow at an early age (in her early forties). We

were seven children. The oldest was my sister [Gertie] who was sixteen and I was third in line and I was twelve. My mother was left just enough money to move my father's body up to Burlington, Vt., from Boston where he died [in an elevator accident, one of the earliest in Boston history]. The Levin family settled in Burlington on their arrival in the U.S.A. from Russia. After the funeral my mother decided to move the family from Boston to New York as her family all lived in N.Y., and being she was left practically penniless, she would have to de-pend on her family to help us get along.

Although I was only twelve I immediately became aware of the urgent

need for money, so I got a job delivering milk and rolls for a bakery every morn-ing. I started delivering at six A.M. and finished at 7:45 A.M. I did not get cash but was paid off in rolls and buns, enough to take care of our needs for most of the day.

After school I found a job at a hand laundry delivering finished work. I

pushed a box truck from 3:30 P.M. until 6 P.M. daily and from 9 A.M. to 1 P.M. on Saturday. For this my pay (if I remember correctly) was $2.50 a week plus tips, and as mostly all of the deliveries were C.O.D. and I had to collect for the week, there was usually a nickel or a dime added as a tip for me so I averaged about $5.00 a week to bring home to Mom. This was a big help as this was in the days when a dollar was a dollar (1914-1915).

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Realizing the necessity for helping the family to get along I decided to go to work as soon as I finished public school even though I liked school and would of liked to go on to high school.

One of my uncles was the manager of a haberdashery store, one of a chain of seven stores, and he persuaded my mother to make me take a job in the store that he managed. I was hired as an errand boy and stock clerk. My uncle told me to observe the way he and the other salesmen waited on customers, as he wanted me to become a salesman after about nine months. At busy times I would wait on customers, and as I knew the stock very well I seemed to do quite well, or so my uncle and the other salesmen told me.

Now in those days five of the stores stayed open until 10 P.M., and an

opening became available for a so-called relief salesman. This was the man who would relieve the day salesman at six P.M. My uncle told me to ask the big boss for the job and he would help me get it, as it meant a good increase in pay and a step up the ladder. I did so and was given the job.

I did this for about a year and a half, but I began to dislike the work very

much because of the inactivity. Just standing around waiting for customers to come in became very boring and I began to dislike the hours — working at night meant that I had very little time to see my friends. So I decided to quit and also made up my mind never to work in a retail store again.

My mother tried very hard to make me change my mind as my uncle kept telling her that I was liked by the management and that I was becoming a good salesman, but I just could not see myself standing around brushing neckties and piling up socks, waiting for customers, so finally I quit.

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World War I was on and there was a shortage of help. The papers had many columns of Help Wanted ads, and I answered one that wanted a strong young man to work as an order picker for a large importer of notions and novelties. When I answered the ad and presented myself to apply for the job I was given an application blank to fill out. The man who gave me the blank told me that his name was Mr. Haggerty, and he was a pleasant man. One of the questions asked was what church do you belong to. I filled this blank in with the name of my synagogue (Temple Beth Sholem).

When he went over my application blank, Mr. H. told me he was sorry but

they did not hire anyone of the Jewish faith. He quickly told me that this was not of his making but, as he put it, this was the policy of the Old Man. Upon my question as to who the Old Man was, he said that this was his boss. I asked if I could speak to him. He said to me that in as much as I was the only answer they got to their ad in two days and as I looked like a nice strong boy, he would go in and see. When he came out of the office he beckoned me to follow him in.

Mr. Hague, the owner, was really an old man and asked to see my appli-

cation blank. After reading same he told me what Mr. H. told me, that no one of the Jewish faith worked in his place and that I would not be happy there. I told him I was anxious to get the job because of our financial situation at home, and I also told him that I had nothing against anyone because of their religion and I did not intend to go around telling everyone that I was a Jew. He started to smile and said that he liked my guts and that he would hire me, but I was to keep quiet if any discussion on religion came up and not to get offended if anyone made a remark against the Jews. He hinted that I could pass as a French boy and he told Mr. H. that he should introduce me as Charles LeVine not Levin.

I must say that I never had any trouble with the rest of the help. We got to be quite friendly, and one of the boys, an Italian boy who lived in the same

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neighborhood that I did [Harlem] got to be one of my best friends. His name was Frank Donelli. It wasn't too long before they all got to know that I was Jewish and it made no difference in our friendship.

When I was being interviewed by the Old Man (everyone called him that), I had told him about my mother being a widow and that if he hired me I would give him a great effort to do more work than anyone else doing the same job, and I believe this was the argument that won him over (he was Scotch). I tried my utmost to give him a good day's work and I was told by Mr. H. (the manager) that he was pleased with my work and that I was picking more orders daily than the other two order pickers. I soon found out that the Old Man knew because I got three increases in my salary during the first year — each one of the first two for $1.50 and the third one for $2.00. Mr. Hague always swore me to secrecy and

•

I never told the other boys of my good fortune.

After I had been working there for about three years, one of the firm's

salesmen approached me and advised me that he was severing his relations with the firm and going into business for himself, and that he wanted me to leave my job and take one with him. He offered me more money and the chance to be a traveling salesman, and also said that I would be a jack-of-all-trades at the be-ginning, do stock work, pick and pack orders, but in a short time I would become a salesman. He promised me a small interest in the business in a few years if we made progress. This appealed to me very much and I decided to go with him.

My friend Frank and I continued good friends and used to see a lot of each other evenings and weekends. One Sunday we were invited to a friend's bunga-low at Coney Island for a social gathering, and at this party I was introduced to

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a beautiful girl and I fell for her like a ton of bricks.

When I escorted her home I noticed that she lived quite close to the build-ing in which my grandfather had his small business, and after visiting her at her home I found out that our families knew each other. In fact her mother and my father lived in the same small shtetl (town) in Russia before they fled to America.

It wasn't long before I realized that I was in love with her and we began to see each other very often. However more about this later on.

I was working at my new job as all-around man with the new firm and af-ter a couple of months I was sent on my first selling trip through New England. My boss furnished me with a list of jobbers to call on. These were the people he sold when working that territory for the old firm. I made it my business to go through the yellow pages in every city and in this way I opened up a few new ac-counts, and I also became friendly with a toy salesman and a hosiery salesman who gave me some leads. After I had made a few trips with good results my boss told me that he was very pleased to see that I had opened up so many new ac-counts. During the first year I also called on the jobbing trade in N.Y.C., Brook-lyn, and Yonkers between the trips to New England, and I was getting good training.

After the first year, during which time the business had gotten off to a

good start, Mr. S. [Louis Silverman?] asked me to take on another territory, the coal-mine region of Pennsylvania., which included such cities as Scranton, Wilkes Barre, Harrisburg, Lancaster, and about eight other small cities in the state. Using the same tactics that I used in New England and with hard and

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sincere work, I was able to open up many accounts and to please Mr. S. with the results of each trip.

Because of the results of the first two years, Mr. S. decided to bring his brother in to cover Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and surrounding towns, and his brother-in-law to cover the midwest. When the next year ended I asked Mr. S. for a small share in the business as promised, but instead he gave me a raise and said we would see what progress we made in the coming year and then discuss it.

At the end of two years I had saved enough money to buy my sweetheart an engagement ring. During the first year and a half we were engaged, I worked hard and saved every penny I could as I was looking forward to my marriage and I began to think that Mr. S. would not keep his promise.

When I approached him again regarding a share in the business, he made

some excuse and told me that his brother-in-law and he had some kind of a dis-agreement and that his brother-in-law was leaving and he wanted me to cover the midwest in addition to the territories I was already covering. He said I would get a $15.00 weekly salary increase, and althoügh this does not sound like much today, this was about fifty years ago and it was a substantial increase. This meant that I would make two trips of two weeks each and a trip of three

weeks in the midwest. The money interested me and I agreed. Between trips I would spend one week at home during which time I called on the trade in N.Y. and also consulted with Mr. S. on the buying. I became friendly with the sales-men who sold him — these friendships came in very handy later on.

I was successful in the midwest, worked hard, opened many new accounts and kept most of the old ones. As I was now making enough to get married and still continue to help my mother, my sweety and I were married on May 23rd, 1924. My wife of course knew of my ambitions and encouraged me greatly, and

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as Mr. S. gave me another raise when I got married, we started to save regu-larly.

At the end of the year Mr. S. gave me the same run-around when I men-tioned a share in the business. When I began making my trip that year I began to question my customers regarding their opinions, should I go into business for myself, would they help me by giving me some preference. Most of them encour-aged me and several suggested going in as a partner with me. Knowing it would take quite some time to accumulate enough money to start, I gave a lot of serious thought to their offers.

The following June (1925) my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and we were both very happy. Knowing that it would require money to raise a fam-ily, I became more imbued with the dream of my own business, and now believ-ing that Mr. S. would never give me a share in the business, I discussed the mat-ter again with Mr. P., a good customer of mine. He seemed to be a fine person and I had made a good friend of him in the years I had been selling him. He of-fered to put up twenty thousand dollars but there was one hitch to his offer, he wanted me to take his son as my partner and I did not think as highly of the son.

My wife and I had many discussions and she wisely told me to think the

matter over very carefully as I then was making a good salary and we were liv-ing very comfortably. She said that the decision was up to me and she felt that regardless of what I decided she was not worried about my keeping a roof over our heads, as seeing what a hard worker I was, she felt that I would always be able to make a living selling something. That was the only go ahead I needed, and on my next two trips I told most of my customers of my plans and they all

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encouraged me.

When I told my mother of my plans about going in with a partner who would put up most of the money, she suggested that I go in with one of my brothers instead. She argued that I would have to be on the road most of the time and how would I know how honest and capable the partner was. I began to think she was correct and then felt I only had one brother who would be right for me. This was one of my younger brothers, Ike, who was a college graduate, an accountant, and was at that time working as a bookkeeper in a large silk-import house.

The reasons I decided on him were two-fold. My older brother [Ben] was

married and already had a family, and I felt that the new business could not af-ford a drawing account for two families, as we were starting on a shoestring. Ike was living home with Mom and would not have to draw as much, and also and very important, he could do all the paper work — ordering in the goods I sold as I sent in the orders, also making up all of the invoices and seeing that the orders were filled, packed and shipped. After forty years of a happy partnership this proved to be a wise move.

The first year was tough but with the help of God and many of our cus-tomers who made it their business to pay our bills promptly, we pulled through. How we did it seems like a miracle to me, as we only sold to the wholesale trade and we had started the business with very little money ($4000). I sometimes think now that we were foolish to attempt it but hard work and good luck pulled us through.

Now many of the breaks we got began. After we had been in business

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about three years — we were still a small firm but were growing slowly — a man walked into our place and offered us the agency for a display card of razor blades called American Eagle Blades. I told him we did not handle blades but he told me that Gillette's patent had just expired and that he was the first one to come out with a double-edged Gillette-type blade at a cheap price. Someone had told him that we were a couple of hustlers and all that he wanted was for us to take some sample cards and blades and see if our trade could use them. He would supply us with any we sold promptly upon our ordering them. I don't remember the cost and selling price now but I do remember that the profit margin was much greater than we were making on the notion items that we were selling. I took the samples along on a trip that I started right after his visit to us. As most of our customers sold to stationery stores, drugstores, candy stores, and 5 & 1O ct stores, I felt that I would be able to interest them in handling blades.

My first stop was in Buffalo and I only sold about 25 cards that day. The

next day in Detroit I sold almost 200 cards, and that night I called Ike at his home and we decided that he should make an order for a large quantity but we must have exclusive sales of them. He succeeded in placing an order which called for a substantial amount to be shipped each month for one year and was assured that if our sales exceeded this quantity we could get plenty more.

But we did not know the blade business, and about six months after we

started shipping, the returns and complaints regarding poor quality began to pour in. We called the manufacturer and told him not to ship any more but he said he had a contract and expected us to live up to its terms. The next month he made his regular shipment but on advice of our lawyer we refused to accept it and we held up payments of money due him, saying that the only way we would pay him would be on his accepting our return of all the goods returned to us for credit. After a lot of haggling between our lawyers, he agreed.

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Having had a taste of the blade business and knowing what we could do with it, we started making inquiries and eventually heard that the Segal Lock and Hardware Company had designed its own blade-making machine. We were now very quality conscious and made sure to see the blades made, take samples right off the machine, and test them very carefully. Eventually we gave Segal a large order under our own brand name "Elgin."

The blades were delivered to us each in its wax wrapper and outside paper

folder. We decided to pack them three in a box and 24 boxes on a display card and priced them to sell for ten cents a box. We were very successful with them and really began to make money in our operation. We had to enlarge our ship-ping staff and also hired one of our brothers (Phil) to sell for us, relieving me of some of my territory, and things were looking up.

My dear wife gave birth to our second child, a son. We were both very happy and we decided that the time was coming for me to cut down on my travel-ing.

All this time we only handled staple notions, but as I mentioned before, I had befriended a toy salesman, and one day he came into our place and sug-gested that I go up and speak to his boss, as he thought he had a proposition to offer us. They were a large toy import house and did not want to sell to every jobber in a city. They only selected two or three of the largest and did not call on the others. In those days penny, nickel, and dime toys were very plentiful. They came in mostly from Japan.

I went up to see him and he asked me to add some staple toys to our line. He would sell them to us in case lots only but on a guaranteed basis — any item

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that would not sell could be returned. After going over his line, I picked out about thirty different numbers, and he showed me what he sold them to his cus-tomers for and gave me prices that would enable us to sell them to our jobbers so that they could make a fair profit on them.

This was lucky break number two. We had nothing to lose and it would

not cost us any more to get this additional business. However there was one fly in the ointment — if an item became a so-called hot number, we would not get enough. His jobbing customers had first call, as he made much more profit on them, and we would have to wait until he had a surplus stock and only then would we get some.

It did not take long for us to realize that there was a big field in Japanese

merchandise, especially toys, although we decided not to give up the staple no-tions and stationery items that we were handling. After about eight months of buying our imported goods from others, we decided that I would go to Japan and do some of our own importing.

We went to our bank (Manufacturers Trust) and after a lengthy conversa-

tion with one of their V.P.s we were very encouraged and pleased when he told us the amount they would issue to us on a letter of credit. In my haste to leave we neglected making contact with a trading company that would handle our business when I arrived. As one has to buy through them on a commission basis, their job is to locate manufacturers, act as interpreters, examine the merchan-dise before shipping, and keep the buyer informed of new items when he is not in Japan.

I applied for a passport and upon its arrival I obtained a visa from the Japanese office in N.Y., and having already taken the shots that were necessary, I left for my trip by train to Seattle and boat from there, as there were no planes over then in 1933.

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Before I left we hired another brother [Ben] to work for us, as I knew that I would have to cut down on my road trips in order to stay in the office and at-tend to the import business.

• After arriving in Yokohama I registered at the Grand Hotel. On the way over I had been studying a little booklet entitled Japanese Conversation, and the first night, after a good dinner in the dining room of the hotel, I thought I would put it to practice and called out to the waiter, "Benjo, please!" I was surprised when most of the guests in the room started laughing. A diner sitting near me saw my perplexity, and realizing I was a newcomer, told me that the men's room was on the upper floor. My face turned red, I am sure, when I told him I wanted my check. The word for check is conjo, not benjo.

The next morning I started calling on the different trading houses whose

names I had heard mentioned when I had visited the different importers in N.Y. These were trading companies who specialized in toys and cheap ceramics, fig-urines, dolls, toy dishes, etc. After spending two days seeing all eight of those whose names I knew, I was right where I started. They all had clients in N.Y. and did not want to take on a competitor of their client.

I returned to the hotel and sat in the lobby and ordered a drink. It was

about four P.M. and there was only one other gentleman there, wearing a Russian-style fur hat. I must have been looking very glum because after about thirty minutes the gent motioned to me to come over to where he was sitting on the other side of the lobby.

After introducing himself to me as a fur buyer from N.Y., he asked me what was troubling me. I explained my predicament and he said it was not a

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bad situation and he thought I would be better off not working with the same agent as one of my competitors. He also noted that they were all Japanese firms and told me that I would be better off if I could get a foreign agent (not Ja-panese) and he warned me to be wary of them.

After a long conversation he gave me the names of five different export houses that he thought might be willing to act as my agent and at least I did not have to worry about their honesty.

The next morning I started to call on them. The first three told me that

they had no interest in popular-priced toys or notions. However the fourth one on the list, Berrick & Co., told me that they also would be greenhorns in toys but that they had just hired a man with lots of experience in toys and general mer-chandise and would I please speak to him.

I sat down in a little private office with Mr. Rooke, and when he heard of

the type of merchandise I was looking for, he became enthused and told me he would be able to find a very good line of popular toys. I was impressed with his enthusiasm and made an appointment to meet the next morning at nine with the V.P. of the firm, a Mr. Mendelson, to talk terms.

When I returned to the hotel I discussed the situation with my new friend,

the fur buyer. He said I should by all means do everything I could to connect with them, first because they were very strong financially and were an honest house with a very good reputation, and second because Mr. Mendelson was one of the most influential Americans in Japan at that time. (This was proven to me later on in the trip when a few of us buyers went to the racetrack one Sunday afternoon. The feature race was the Prince Chichibua Handicap, and as the band struck up the national anthem, the Prince and Mr. Mendelson walked down the grandstand steps arm in arm and the crowd broke out with shouts of Banzai.)

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When I met Mr. Mendelson the next morning we had no trouble in coming to terms. I knew what commission my competitors were paying and he asked for the same. We also agreed to my being the only toy house they would handle for the first year if I did all my toy-buying through them. I agreed to this because Mr. Rooke impressed me very much. When I finished with Mr. M. by noon, we went out for a quick lunch and then to Tokyo to visit two toymakers with whom he had made appointments by phone while I was discussing terms with Mr. M. My first purchases in Japan were made that afternoon.

Now to get back to Ike in N.Y., and back to blades and one of the biggest breaks we got. We had started a subsidiary concern called the General Blade Corp., and we were doing a nice job with our Elgin blades made for us by Segal. But the quality of the blades began to get poor — not real bad, but not as good as they had been at first. About two weeks before I returned from Japan, Ike was visited by a gentleman who told him that he had been informed we were doing a good job with blades, and that he had a blade that someone could make a fortune with if properly presented.

Gillette, the giant of the industry, had come out with a so-called Blue

Blade, and he showed Ike that it was actually a white blade with lacquer on it and that the color could be scraped off with an ordinary pen knife. He told Ike that his blades were leather-honed and actually blue — the steel was originally white but turned blue after it was annealed. Ike went out to the factory in New Jersey to get samples right from production, and after giving them out for test-ing, the results were all the same — everyone said that they got the smoothest shave they ever had.

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Ike decided to place an order, and they offered him the exclusive sale of their blue blades for six months if we would place an order for one million blades to be delivered in bulk. That is, each blade in a wax wrapper and then in a printed paper wrapper, packed loose two hundred in a box. We were to do our own packing. Ike ordered boxes and decided on the name — Stetson Tru Blu. He had the name copyrighted and waited for deliveries to begin.

On my return from Japan we worked out a promotional deal to push the

blades. It consisted of ten blades, a tube of shaving cream, a styptic pencil, and a so-called blade sharpener, which was a metal handle that held two glass marbles pressed together. Rubbing the blade between the marbles after a few shaves would straighten out the edge. We decided to put an ad in the Billboard maga-zine, offering the deal to so-called coupon workers, of whom there were many in all parts of the country. The coupon worker would print up his own mail-box stuffer, offering the $2.00 value for only $1.00 if the coupon was presented at a certain local store.

As stated before, the blades were delivered to us in bulk and we had six

girls to pack them five each in a box. After the first day's shipment was packed, we found an overshipment of approximately 15%. We thought the girls were not counting them right and told them to slow up a little, but the next few days showed the same overshipment.

We called up the factory and told them what was happening, and they said we should get girls who could count up to five. But when we checked many boxes from each girl we could not find any with less than five blades. We kept a record of each day's overshipment.

After about a month they found out what was wrong. They used a weigh-ing machine to count the blades complete in their wrappers, but the blades on the counter side of the scale had a much heavier wax paper than was used in

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packing our blades. We told them how many blades they had overshipped but they refused to bill us for them and were thankful we were so honest.

Our first advertisement in Billboard brought in so many orders and also enquiries from wholesalers throughout the country that we increased our order to two million blades and they increased the exclusivity period to a year. When our contract with Segal expired, we switched our Elgin blade to the Jersey fac-tory and soon ordered a new brand to be made up for us called Doublekeen.

Merchandise purchased in Japan began to arrive and business increased. The following will give you an idea of how the Japanese business mind worked in those days. One item that came in was a bisque doll. The order called for an eight-inch doll but the dolls actually were only six-and-a-half inches. I wrote to Mr. Rooke and complained, and he wrote back that he would try to get me a credit of $1.00 a gross on the 200 gr. that were shipped — which was the differ-ence between what we would be able to get for the 6 1/2" doll against the 8". After several letters back and forth, Rooke asked me to wait until I arrived on my next trip and see what I could do with the maker, as he could get nowhere with him.

When I arrived on my second trip we went out to see the doll maker. He

laughed when I asked him to make good the claim. He said that he was a very smart man, getting paid for an 8" doll and delivering a 6 1/2" one. It took about two hours of arguing before he came around to see it our way, and then only af-ter we told him that I could use 1000 gr. of 8" dolls this trip. He finally wrote out a check in yen for the $200 and I wrote out an order for the 1000 gr. — which was canceled a week later after payment was made on the check. This incident

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taught Rooke a good lesson. He would have to be sure his receiving department opened up cases at random for each shipment and examined the contents.

Another very interesting incident happened because of my first trip to Japan. I bought a two-section toy telescope, nickel plated, which opened up to about three inches and that really magnified. We packed them a dozen on a card that could be hung up for display. This item proved to be a very good seller. I was the only importer who had bought them, and when we could not fill some orders from jobbers because we could not get them fast enough, these jobbers called up our competitors and asked if they had them, and in this way our com-petitors were made aware of this item.

Before I left on my second trip, Ike and I decided that I must look for a

better telescope to retail for the same price (10g), one that would be three sec-tions instead of two and would open up to four inches. Our reasoning was that every one of our competitors must have picked up a sample of the first one and most of them would buy them.

On my arriving in Japan I spent two days making the rounds of possible

makers of this item, but all quoted prices too high. We asked them to study it and see if they could possibly make it out of a different tubing. It looked like a hopeless case, but the day before I was to sail (no planes yet), one of the makers came into the office with a made-up sample, the exact size but instead of nickel plated he had made it out of a tin-plated material.

He gave me a price that was close to what I could pay for them. After very

little negotiating we arrived at a price suitable for both. I gave him an order for 2000 gross, and he agreed to give Levin Bros. an exclusive on this item in the U.S.A. for six months. We explained to him very thoroughly the need for having it exclusive, what exclusive meant, and that we could only buy this amount because we had exclusivity. He called his factory and had his son bring his chop

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(glass signature stamp) and a contract was drawn up in which he agreed to all of our terms and which he stamped with his signature.

The popular-priced-thy importers had an organization known as the Allied Importers Association that held meetings every Thursday night in the Flatiron Building. About three months after I had placed the order for the telescopes, our president got up at one of the meetings, and before the entire membership asked me if I wanted to give him an order for a three-section four-inch telescope, which he knew I had purchased on an exclusive basis in Japan but he had 300 gross on a boat arriving in a few days. He laughed and explained that after my boat sailed, the maker came into the office from which he bought and pulled out my order and asked him what exclusive meant. He answered that Levin Bros. was on 23rd Street so he could not sell anyone else there, but being as he was on Broadway, the maker could sell to him. He then offered him a few sen more so as to get the first shipments. Then another member got up and told the same story. You can imagine how I felt.

The next morning when we opened our place, we found a cable had been

slipped under our door during the night. After deciphering, it read as follows, quote, #3371 telescopes first shipment in our go-down (warehouse), do not look satisfactory, mailing sample box for your approval before we ship and pay for them, end quote. Rooke had learned his lesson.

Upon reading the cable I turned to Ike and said that God was watching

over us. Needless to say, we decided to cancel, and when the sample box arrived we did so. The fault was that the three sections did not fit tightly when ex-tended, and the end section bent down so that one could not see any object looked at. A few months later I found out that both of the competitors who were so unethical had to sell the telescopes out as Christmas stocking fillers at a great loss.

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Our blade business was going very nicely and again God was watching over us — several packages of our Doublekeen blades were picked up in a store by Consumers Research magazine, and for two years in a row they rated them the best blades they could find after testing all of the advertised brands. Orders came in from all over the country by the hundreds, all with checks enclosed, as C.R. had mentioned the retail price. We were not allowed to mention C.R. in our advertising catalogues or in any flyer. However our salesmen could show the ratings when they called on wholesalers, and needless to say it helped them open many accounts.

After several more years in the blade business we finally went out, be-cause of the extensive advertising campaigns of the many blades that came on the market and because we did not have our own factory.

Business was going along very nicely in our toy and notion departments when World War Two started. We had a rather large inventory but we knew it would not last very long.

Again God was watching over us. A friend of ours introduced us to a gen-

tleman, Mr. Lewis, who was selling molds used in making plastic items by the injection molding method. We had a long session with him. He explained to us that he knew all there was to know about running an injection molding factory and that all he lacked was money. We knew that we would have to look for new sources of merchandise and finally decided to finance a factory. We ordered two

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eight-ounce and one four-ounce molding machines, grinding machines, and molds to make combs of all kinds, toys, whistles, household items, etc.

We agreed to give Mr. [Sidney] Lewis a one-third interest in the factory [Advance Molding Co.], which was located near Levin Bros. so as to make it easy to deliver finished goods to us. Our contract with him was that he could solicit private customers but that at least 50% of his output was to be sold to us at a stipulated mark-up. This arrangement worked very nicely, and it was not long before we put in more machines and many new molds, and the factory worked around the clock.

We also got a terrific break in our source of material, acetate and poly-

styrene. Mr. Lewis had become friendly with one of the large dealers in scrap material, and when virgin material became rationed and scarce, this man sup-plied us with reground material right through the entire shortage and we were able to work steadily through the war years.

We remained partners with Mr. Lewis for about fifteen years after the end of World War Two and we then sold our interest to him with a stipulation that we would continue to have our molded products made in his factory.

Another interesting break occurred right after the war. One of the items that we were making in our plastics factory was a round two-part container about the size of a quarter but thicker, into which we put a small pair of glass dice before sealing it and attaching it to a keychain. These dice were made in Czechoslovakia and we purchased them from an importer in N.Y., one of our competitors. The item proved to be a very big seller and we had to reorder the dice quite often. Every few orders he jacked up the price a few cents a gross, and

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he also told us his stock was running low. Ike and I thought it would be advis-able that I make a trip to Czecho and see if I could buy a good quantity of dice.

We also decided to see if I could buy English sewing needles. At this time (1945-1947) needles were very scarce, and our supplier, the distributor for a British needle factory, put us on a quota of 50 gross packs a month. This was just a drop in the bucket as we only sold to wholesalers and by this time had many hundred customers around the U.S.A. There are no sewing needles made here and there is no duty on them because of this. I wonder if the reader realizes what an important necessity needles are, and that billions of them are sold yearly in the U.S.A.

I bought a plane ticket, and when I arrived in London (via Shannon), I

went to the American Embassy and they gave me a list of the ten needle-making factories who had licenses to export. These factories were all located in one city, Redditch, near Manchester. They also told me that I would have to use a ship-ping agent if I succeeded in buying anything. They recommended two, and I made an agreement with the first one I visited. He told me to contact his office in Manchester and they would supply me with a car and driver to visit all the factories.

The next morning we started out early to make the rounds, starting with the largest factory and then the next in size and so on. At every one I got the same story. They all said they were sold out for the next two years. The gentle-men I saw were elderly, dignified, and all said that I was wasting my time.

Again God was watching over us. At the last of the factories a rather

young man came out to see me. He had the same story, all sold out for two years. I practically pleaded with him to sell me some needles. I told him I must now go home a failure and face my boss, whom I had persuaded to let me go to England to get a needle agency (I did not tell him I was a partner in the

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concern). I had brought with me a briefcase filled with nylon hose and chocolate

bars. I asked him if he was married, and when he said yes, I gave him three

pairs of nylons for his wife, and candy bars for his children whom he mentioned.

He told me to go down to the bottom of the hill on which his place was lo-

cated and I would see a white brick building that looked like a church (I later found out it had been one). He told me that it was a needle factory that had only gotten a license to export about six weeks ago. He thought it possible that they might still not be booked up.

It was 4:15 P.M. I thanked him and rushed out to the car and we hurried

down the long hill to the white building. As we pulled up, there was a man standing in front of the entrance with one foot on the running board of his car. I asked him if he was the owner of the plant, he told me he was, and I said that I had flown over to see him as we had heard in N.Y. that he had just received a permit to export. He asked me into his office, and when we were out of hearing of a man to whom he had been talking, he turned to me and said, "Shalom." He told me that the people in Redditch did not know he was Jewish.

When we started talking business he showed me that he had plenty of or-

ders from Holland, Belgium, Africa, etc. However I pointed out to him that it

would be an advantage to him to have a big distributor in the U.S.A. (our busi-

ness card was very impressive looking), and also that we paid in U.S. dollars and

MANUFACTURERS 18 IMPORTERS

890 BROADWAY NEW YORK 3, N. Y. CHARLES LEVIN ORegon 4-2812

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would arrange for payment by letter of credit upon delivery to our shipper. That clinched it, and he accepted an order for 10,000 gross packages, each pack con-taining ten needles. He said it would take a year to complete the order. I of course tried to tell him he could do better but he said he had so many previous orders to fill.

The needles would cost us $3.60 a gross packages and they were selling at

$7.20 a gross in the States at that time. I certainly was elated with my luck and could only hope he would deliver fast. As I left he gave me his phone number in London, where he spent the weekends with his family. I said I would plan my stay on the continent so as to arrive in London on a Friday or Saturday and would contact him on arrival.

I left England for Czechoslovakia and spent two days there. I was able to

buy the glass dice at a very substantial savings and also to get very quick deliv-ery. As Ike and I had discussed another item (a larger container with five poker dice) that we would make if I could bring in the dice at a low price, my order was for a very large quantity. Also I was able to order specific dark colors that would enhance the items.

I then went on to Paris for three days* and back to London. On my arrival

I contacted the owner of the needle factory and invited him and his wife out to dinner at a dine and dance club, as he had told me they both loved dancing. I waited until almost midnight before I brought up the subject of needles and asked about delivery dates. He told me not to worry, that a shipment of 2000 gross packages was already on a Cunard liner that had left for the States two

• This reference to Paris is a crossed-out amendment in the early draft, which is also the source of the "two days" spent in Czechoslovakia. The notebook speaks less specifically of "almost a week on the continent." I suspect Paris was on the itinerary, and that given its reputation and the reference's deletion, any business done there was of the monkey variety. I include the reference to suggest possible aspects to Dad's travels unreported in this memoir. I remember a photo of him seated on the floor at an all-male dinner party, some Japanese, some Americans, all beaming and in kimonos, and in the background a number of geisha girls. He insisted that they were only there to serve dinner, which seems culturally unlikely.

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days ago. They were made for an Australian customer but he had decided to ship them to us so we could get started with his brand distribution and also be-cause he wanted the dollar payment.

I left London to fly home a very happy man.

Several weeks after my return, Ike and I decided that I should go to Japan, as they had started shipping cheap toys again now that World War Two was over. Upon my arrival there I contacted Mr. Rooke*, who had been in the English army and had been sent back to Japan to be the purchasing agent for the British P.X. stores. He had remained there after being released from the service and had gone into business with a young Japanese man who had been his assistant before the war, as Berrick & Co. had been bombed out and the two owners had not returned to Japan. Rooke had written me of his intentions and had advised me very strongly to come over as the prospects for getting some good items were very bright.

When I visited their office I noticed that it was not very large and that

they had a small staff, but knowing of their ability and ambitions I decided to buy through them, though not exclusively. I promised to give them most of my business and would only buy from others items that they could not supply. They were very pleased with this agreement, and on their part promised me that they would not sell any cheap toys to other American importers. This agreement worked out very well for both parties, and the Empire Trading Company, which is what they called themselves, grew to be a very large agency with clients all over the world.

• Dad always spoke of him as "Rookie," and with evident affection. I recall him sending pack-ages of hard-to-get personal items to Rookie during the war.

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After World War Two the Japanese began to do business in a much more honest way. They would not try to ship you any item that was not exactly like the original sample, and they stopped showing orders to our competitors in order to sell them the same item. I would make it a rule after looking over their sam-ples in Empire's office to ask to see their factories, and in many plants I would notice items being made or packed that they had not shown me. In most cases I could even recognize the competitor for whom they were being packed by the la-bels on the boxes, and if I liked the item I could persuade them to sell me some. However in some cases they would not sell them to me as they had an exclusive arrangement.

I always treated my makers and suppliers as my equals — did not look

down on them and talk brusquely to them — and became quite friendly with most of them and their families also, as in many cases the factory and home were in the same building This paid off handsomely because during my many buying trips to Japan, many a so-called hot item was shown to me first, and in some cases I was able to get exclusivity for at least a one-year period.

When I returned after my spring trip in 1947, my daughter was married to a fine young man, and my wife and I were very happy and of course so was the married couple.

On my fall trip to the Orient in 1947, again God was watching over me. I

took a train to Seattle and from there a four-motored plane to Honolulu, Wake,

and then to Japan. Things went smoothly until we left Wake. When we were

about 250 miles out, one of the motors on the left side of the plane caught on fire.

The first the passengers knew of it was when the captain announced it

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over the loudspeaker. He asked us to remove all sharp things from our pockets and also to put a pillow between our thighs and the seatbelt. He told us that we were going to go down to 300 feet above sea level and that it might be necessary to ditch the plane, and if so the pillows would break the shock. He also ex-plained what procedure we should follow if we had to land in the Pacific. He told us he thought we could return to Wake, and that there were two Coast Guard planes on their way with lifeboats attached to their undercarriages that would be dropped to us if we landed in the deep.

Thank the good Lord we made it back to Wake. Firefighting apparatus

met us and began to pour foam on the burning motor, and we had to leave the plane by the chute used in an emergency. Among the passengers on the plane was the head man of the Buddhist churches in Japan. Through a Japanese passenger who acted as an interpreter, he asked us all to gather together and say a prayer of thanks to whatever God we believed in. Believe me, I thanked God with all my heart. After a few minutes of prayer he took off a lei which had been given to him when he boarded the plane in Honolulu. It was made of pack-ages of Lifesaver mints all strung together, and he tore it apart and gave us each a package. We finished our flight to Japan in a plane that was sent to Wake from Honolulu.

After working in Japan for two weeks, I left via Pan Am for Hong Kong. Upon arriving there I checked into the Peninsula Hotel and decided to rest the balance of the day, as I was unable to fall asleep on the overnight trip and was exhausted from the two hard weeks' work in Japan.

The next morning I started to visit several export agents with whom we had corresponded. I spent two days doing this, and after discussing my wants and lis-tening to their offerings, I decided to do business with the largest concern, Li & Fung Ltd. They impressed me very much — they had a large staff, most of whom

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spoke English, and tremendous sample rooms.

Now you must remember that I was a partner in a plastic factory, and Hong Kong was producing almost only plastic items in our line then. (Later on they be-came very strong on metal items.) Having some knowledge of the automatic machines used in injection molding in the U.S.A., I was amazed at the obsolete type of hand-operated machines that were being used in almost all of the factories we visited. The reason they were able to produce cheaply, beside the cheap labor, was the great difference in the cost of the molds. They could make them for one tenth of the cost in the States and for some reason or other they could produce them in one twentieth of the time. When it came to items that needed any decorat-ing or assembly work we could not compete with them no-how — labor there was so cheap and plentiful.

My first trip to Hong Kong was quite successful. I was able to buy many new toy items to add to our line — amongst them a popular-priced chess set which proved to be a tremendous seller. Deliveries from H.K. were much faster and in larger quantities than from Japan, and reorders of merchandise came quickly.

On my second trip to Hong Kong I had the good fortune to be introduced by my agent to a young man who had just started a factory in which he was making aluminum rings with artificial stones. His older brother, the owner of the H.K. Aluminum Manufacturing Co. (they made pots, pans, percolators, etc.), was allowing him to use half a floor of their building rent-free to start his busi-ness. His brother gave him the scrap he needed for almost nothing and also financed his purchases of rhinestones from Austria and Czechoslovakia. Fur-thermore he had the use of the company's mold-making department.

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I spent an entire day discussing business with him and going over several catalogues of ring makers from the States and Great Britain. After picking out about eighteen rings for him to figure out prices on, we made an appointment to meet in my agent's office two days later.

The next day I spent the morning going around to the department stores and jewelers, and I bought about six rings that I thought I would like to copy.

You must imagine my surprise when on the following afternoon he showed me two finished rings from the eighteen that I liked in the catalogues. When I asked him how he made them so fast, he told me that the mold maker worked on them for a full day and half the night so that he could show me something.

When he quoted me prices on the two finished rings and the other ones

selected, I knew I had hit on a terrific 100 item. After discussing production and deciding on the color of stones to be used, and which rings would be anodized in gold and which would be silver, I.picked out ten rings from the catalogues and four of the ones I had bought. He agreed to give us an exclusive for the U.S.A, and I gave him an order for 7500 gross. This was accomplished with the help of Mr. Fung personally. He called up the senior brother, and after a long conversa-tion with him, I was given the exclusivity.

I knew that it would be a good line but I never thought it would the

tremendous thing it turned out to be. After we received the advance samples, Ike thought of making a display box to hold six dozen rings. We made up differ-ent assortments — also one display with only wedding rings and one with only engagement rings.

We sent out the sample assortments to our salesmen, and they began to offer them to jobbers all over the country and the orders began to pour in. We cabled to have shipments rushed and cabled large repeat orders. The profit mark-up was a very good one, and our selling prices allowed the jobbers to make

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a good profit too. We also found an outlet for these rings to which we sold thou-sands upon thousands of grosses. This was the vending machine people. They bought them in bulk, a gross to a bag, which was the way we received them from H.K, and for the first two years we couldn't get them fast enough even though they were making fast shipments. We also made up a small clear plastic box in which we put an engagement ring and a wedding ring to retail for 250. We sold thousands of these so-called "motel sets?

Eventually many ring makers started in business in H.K, from whom our competitors bought, but none of them made rings that looked as real, and our line was far superior.

When my son graduated from college I thought he would come into the business but that thought was soon dispelled. While walking home from the synagogue after listening to a Yom Kippur sermon — the text was that on this day one should take inventory of oneself — I suggested we take up the subject of my son's inventory. He stopped me short and said, "Pop, I know what you want, you want me to go into your business."

My answer was, "What's wrong with that?" I asked him why he didn't

want to go into a good well-established business and told him he could be an asset to it. He said he did not like it. I told him that all of the good things that I had been able to give him — the camps he had gone to, private school, college, etc. — had been made possible by the money I made in the business.

He said he wanted to be a writer, and I asked him if he knew how many writers make a good living. He told me he did not want to be a starving writer and asked me to carry him for two years to give him a chance to see if he could

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make a go of it. If he couldn't he would then come into the business. After I tried to persuade him to change his mind and when I saw how sincere he was, I finally agreed. We shook hands on it and said we would make note of the date and in two years we would take inventory again.*

The first year he wrote five television plays and sold them all," and they

were liked by the public and the television companies. I began to realize he was lost to the business. He has written many books and several plays and he has made my wife and I very proud of him, not only because he has been so successful but because he is the same loving son now as he has always been. His success did not go to his head.

My wife and I have much to be thankful for in our daughter also — happily

married, mother of two wonderful children who I feel sure will give my daughter and son-in-law much happiness — "with God's help." Both children are now in college, the boy at Union College and the girl at Skidmore, and both proving to be good students.

My son has three lovely sons, and we look to the future with great hopes for them. The oldest is nine years old the day this sentence is written (Nov. 9th,

1970).

My wife during all these years was a wonderful mate. It was her work that developed two such wonderful children as I was away on business so much, and to her I must say thank you, thank you, thank you.

During the later years (1950) we decided to build a summer home and we found a plot that we liked very much at Lake Mahopac, N.Y. — 100 feet of lake front and about the last buildable plot on this beautiful lake, which is only 52 miles from downtown N.Y. and within commuting distance.

The house we built was planned with retirement in view. My wife and I

• The notebook version stops here. The rest of this transcript is of the early draft only. ** No, three of the five were sold.

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have all our requirements on the walk-in level. The upstairs has three bedrooms

and one large bathroom for the use of the children. The lower level, which leads

out to the lawn down to the lake, has a large playroom and bar and a large bed-

room.

My son-in-law supervised the construction, and we built it with all the

necessary requirements for year-round living. We are living here now and I

must say we both enjoy and love it very much. It is also enjoyed by both our

children, who come up to spend many happy weekends and holidays with us.

Now to get back to the business. When I knew that my son would not be

joining me in it, I decided that I would have to try and get someone to help me in making my trips to the Far East and maybe eventually taking over. When I ap-proached the subject with my two younger brothers [Phil and Sid], who were on our selling staff, they said they were happy where they were and did not want to make any change.

My brother and partner Ike was too valuable a man running the financial

end of the business and could not be spared for a six-week leave twice a year. We

therefore decided to hire a young man to go with me and learn the buying end of

the business.

We were successful in finding a presentable young man, and he spent

about two months in the N.Y. showroom acquainting himself with the toy line and

then we left on our first trip together.

I told him to just sit in on every meeting with salesmen and to accompany

me to the different factories and listen to my method of bargaining — and I must

say here that buying in Japan and Hong Kong involved a great deal of

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bargaining. The Japanese in those days had no set prices. For example, we would visit a factory that made only two or three items and would meet one of our competitors in the office working with the maker. We would wait outside or in another room, and when our competitor left we would go in and find all three items on a table. When I would pick up one of the toys and ask the price, the maker would not quote without a long session with his abacus. Now he had just quoted on the same item ten minutes ago, but what he was doing was figuring out how much he thought I could pay and would in almost all cases ask much more than he would finally accept. It took a few years to teach some of them that it would be to their advantage to have a set price for an importer who sold to jobbers and a different price for chain stores.

I tried for three years to make a good buyer out of this young man but I was not satisfied with him. I did not think he could do a good job if on his own, and when I arrived home from one of our trips (about 1961), I discussed with my brother the subject of selling the business.

The plastic molding business was sold to our partner and we began to look for a buyer for Levin Bros. Import Co.

[Some time in the mid-1960's, Levin Brothers was sold to a subsidiary of Ideal Toys. The brothers were all to stay on, but six months after the sale, the buyer closed the place, which was then located at 5 West 22nd Street, and relocated it in their larger operation in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. The Levin brothers then went their various ways.]