"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
The way Martin Samowitz sees it, he had 94 very good reasons to stay out of the shoe business and one good reason to get back in.
The 94 reasons are the number of years since he was born in Queens. The one reason to return is the chance to give some of his former employees their jobs back.
Samowitz founded the Marty's Shoes discount shoe chain, opening the first Marty's in Little Ferry in 1974. The chain, which was bought by a private equity firm in 2006, filed for bankruptcy in September. Samowitz is working with former Marty's chief executive officer John Adams to resurrect Marty's Shoes.
Samowitz's first shoe chain, Perry's, died after an ill-advised merger with a conglomerate that went bankrupt. By 1997, Marty's had grown to 70 stores, with sales of more than $70 million, and had made Samowitz a millionaire many times over. Samowitz, then 82, had no children and no heirs and "gifted" the chain by canceling a $5 million debt the company owed him. He then invited 11 managers to become stockholders in the company, and turned the day-to-day operations over to Adams.
In 2006, the stockholders and Samowitz decided to sell the majority stake to private-equity firm J.P. Capital. Part of the payout was withheld in the form of three-year notes, but before those notes could be paid off, Marty's — loaded with debt and facing a slowing economy — went under, liquidating the 47 remaining stores.
[snip]
Q. Why are you going back in business?
We don't have to – I have enough aggravation in Florida with golf and running around. But it's an absolute crime, what happened to the people that were with Marty's Shoes for 20, 25 and 30 years. Now John [Adams] personally tried to hold up the other company, but he was not the boss, he was not the owner, he was not giving directions. He put his own money in, which is lost. He put his own money in because he was trying to save the company for the employees. That was the principal reason.
John came out of the sale with enough money that he could retire, except he was a little too young to retire.
The new company – I was very impressed with them. They were Ivy League graduates. But they were from California. I should have known. When I said to them, "You're moving to New York or New Jersey, right?" he said, "No." I said, "Why not? Who's going to run the company?" He said, "You don't understand, Marty. We do it from the computer." I said to myself, Well, maybe I'm old-fashioned. I'm used to going into a store and patting a stock boy on the back and saying, "Hello. How are you? Good to see you again." But they thought that was totally unnecessary.
Labels: retailing