Chapter 7

There's an old saying, and that is, whenever life is going good, wait for the other foot to fall. But I get ahead of myself.

Isaac grew like, well, he grew like a new born boy- rapidly. We completed some minor renovations on the new house, and moved in when he was six months of age. We had converted the second largest bedroom into a gender-neutral baby nursery. It was a beautiful room for its purpose, with wall done in sunny landscapes, hand painted by a local Reading artist of impressive talent. The room was the only carpeted room in the entire house, a soft carpet of the highest quality in a green grassy color.

Money was tight, as it always is when the economy gets tight. But this was our child, and in his babyhood, he was going to get nothing but the best, just like our other children. When he grew up enough to move into his own room and sleep in a bed without needing toddler bars, it would change. But for now, he was going to get his silver spoon.

I had it all mapped out in my head. Its sort of an old trend that proves itself time and time again. The first generation starts a business and prospers. The second generation expands it manifold, and the third generation drops the ball. I would deal with the third generation when the time came, but Issac was going to be integrated into this business from when he was old enough to manage it. He was my first born son- he would end up being the head of the family after his mother died- presumably many years after I did.

But he wasn't going to walk in at the top- thats a recipe for disaster. He was going to start off on the sales floor, where he would be taught how to sell. Then he would be taken through the purchasing department, where he would learn how to buy. Then he would work his way through management. I wanted him to understand the full operation and its organization- both to show him how we do things, and to give him the opportunity to ask me why we do things.

Always listen to questions about why you do things. There may be a really good reason why you do something an employee finds counterintuitive. There may be a really stupid reason why you do it that way. There may be an inconvenient reason why you do it that way- for example, a lot of Philadelphia businesses do things in certain ways to deal with the crime and corruption rife in that city, and don't have a choice. And more often than it should be, there is no reason why you do something that way except thats how you've always done it because you were not paying attention and didn't realize you were being stupid.

Some thoughts at the time made me decide that I wanted to move my business in other directions. All of my stores had been made in downtown stores, but we had been operating on a purely discount model. We had an unprofessional name, "Josh's Best Value Clothing Emporium", and if this business was going to last for the long haul, we needed to reorganize things. I decided to tie it in with our intended downtown Reading flagship.

I wanted the Colonial Trust Building, a former bank. It was a huge building, 9 stories tall, with a 25 foot first floor. Its total size was in excess of 56,000 square feet. Not only was it absolutely huge, it was located at the intersection of Penn Street (the main east-west street) and 5th St (the main north- south street). It was an impressive Italianate building in brick and marble, a true stunner. It was a hell of a building to use as a flagship store, one of the taller buildings in Reading, and the tallest on Penn Street.

It was a fairly empty building at the time, with a small store occupying the first floor at a considerable rent, and a few offices here and there occupying the other 8 floors. And I had found out, from a friend, that the present owner was having some trouble making payments on it.

While my company was expanding mightily and in good health for the most part, cash is always at a crunch in an expanding retail business. But I had been smart. By this point I had six locations and a warehouse that I owned outright, worth a total of about a million bucks in real estate. We were doing about $7 million in revenue, and a net income of $1,000,000. We were in generally strong shape, and the expansions had been doing well.

After talking to the bank, and proving to them we really didn't need their money, we got a pre-approval for a loan of $1.5 million to be paid off over 10 years, at a good interest rate. I wasn't expecting it to take 10 years, but it is always wise to prepare for the eventuality of things not going perfectly.

Then I went to the man who owned the Colonial Trust Building at 449 Penn Street, and offered him $900,000 for the building. He was interested, because he was having trouble with making the payments. But the problem was he owed a little over $975k on it. I agreed to a price of a flat million, giving him $25k for his pocket. We concluded the deal in early May, and work started. I wanted the store and everything else to be done in time for the 2009 Christmas season.

Not all that much had to be done, overall. We took the first three floors of the building for our store. It was going to come in with a total company rebranding. We were going to use the first floor as a regular price, fashion oriented, high-quality clothing company, to be branded Weisenstein & Son Clothiers, Inc., or W&S Clothiers. W&S had a double meaning, actually. Weisentein & Son or Weisenstein & Shomani, take your pick.

It was a large deal for several reasons. First of all, we had tenants who needed to be moved around double quick. We took a short term lease on a vacant building two stores down from our original store, and quickly moved our retail operation in there, on a temporary basis. This was essential to allow the existing retailer in our first floor to move into our old building. The store was a quarter the size, but they didn't need more than that- and it had 1/5th the rent.

The office tenants on the top two floors were re-located as per their preference either into other offices at the Colonial Trust Building, or to offices in our old building. Our offices had come to encompass the entire office floor of our original location, and had become very crowded. We relocated our office staff, which was getting bigger with this change, to the top two floors of the Colonial Trust Building.

I got a huge corner office overlooking the intersection, and Yaz was getting the opposite corner, because when she turned 16 and could legally work, she'd become the official Vice-President of W&S Clothier, Inc. of Reading, PA. Shekiah, her mother, would eventually get a much larger apartment on the top floor of the building, in the more modern expansion added in the early 70s. But that could wait for the rest of the work to take place.

The ground floor was going to be the first and flagship store of our higher end brand, W&S Clothier. The ground floor was originally the flagship location of the Colonial Trust Bank, and had the grandeur that went along with that. We using the entire bank floor for that brand of our stores. Escalators were being put in to be accessed through the entrance to the bank's vault, with the original vault door staying as a showpiece.

The second and third floor of the building was going to be converted into the flagship location of our discount brand, to be called W&S Discount Vault, a name that would be applied to all of our stores. So W&S Clothier would occupy five floors of the building- the first three and the top two, while renting out office space on the other four.

There were plans for other things, but the money wasn't available for immediate implementation. We had plans to fully renovate the middle floors to make them more attractive to office leasing. We had plans to extend the higher end brand to Pottsville and Lancaster, before continuing our company's plans to expand its overall business model.

Work started afoot, and on November 15th, it was done. We undertook a huge operation staffing, setting up, and stocking the store. Our temporary location was closed down November 20th, and on November 25th, huge signage was installed on the buildings roof, proclaiming W&S Clothier protruding proud from her roof, with a smaller sign saying, "of Reading, PA" below it on the buildings rail. We did it in a simple Times New Roman font. On top of it was our logo, a line art of the Reading Pagoda.

At the street level was a sign above the door saying the same thing. Signs in the windows proclaimed the reopening of "Josh's Best Value Clothing Emporium" under its new name.

Everything was covered up and hidden by cloth. Television and Radio commercial's were aired up to Thanksgiving Day hinting at a new bargain and a new statement of fashion to be opening in downtown Reading.

On Thanksgiving Day we ran advertisements hyping up our grand new store, to open at midnight that night. This was the first time I ever ran a Black Friday early open special. We were giving out free coffee mugs with our new logo on it to the first 2000 people to enter the store.

I was nervous and excited. I was pacing around inside my new office. I had mentioned the basics of our plan in brief to Shekiah, and Yaz had talked to her about it in, I assume, grander detail. This was a great moment in our lives. We both wanted Shekiah to be there to watch the grand opening of the store from my private balcony overlooking the store. Shekiah had never been inside up to that point- the elevators had not become operational until just a few days ago. They had been completely replaced.

My office was, well, my office was appropriate for that of a man who had just turned a 6 store discount chain into a six store discount chain with a high-end flagship store taking up one of the largest and most beautiful buildings in Reading. It was the office you would think of being in the corner penthouse office of the Chairman, President, and CEO with a 9-story tall Italianate corporate headquarters. It was, well, lavish.

Shekiah came in and looked around, wheeled over to my desk, and asked Yaz to leave. I was confused, came over, and sat behind my desk.

"Can I ask you a question?" she asked.

"You just did," I smiled, "Want to ask another one?"

"Did you build this to accommodate your growing business," she asked, "Or your growing ego?"

I leaned back in my chair, looking up at the ornate tin ceiling in my office, the fresco in the middle of the room around where the crystal chandelier swayed from the ceiling. If I was an old time smoker, I'd probably be puffing smoke from my cigar into the air.

"Probably both," I admitted.

"But which primarily?" she asked.

I sat stunned, realizing exactly what she was saying was entirely true. I was indeed feeding my ego. But was that a bad thing? Sure, I spent money on a huge self-indulgence. But is it wrong to do that? I mean, I figured, this being one of the grandest and nicest stores in the whole region would get a great deal of customers. And I was setting up a building to allow for longer term growth of my business.

"My ego, probably," I admitted, "But also for social reasons, revitalization reasons, and needed changes in the business."

"Like what?" she asked, still looking pointedly at me.

"Retail is changing," I temporized, "Changing hugely. Look at the scene. All the mid-tiers are dropping like flies. Sears! Sears is on its way out of business. Smaller discount stores are starting to drop, too. The big box stores have hurt themselves by chopping their margins to the bone. Look at Wal-Mart's revenue- then look at its profit! For us to stay in business in the long run we need to become a premier business that specializes in stuff that we can offer at a value, yet make good money on."

"How does this self-memorial help with any of that?" she asked.

"Look at where the money is nowadays," I said, "It's in the outlet stores. The discount arms of high-end brands. I want to tap that. But in order to tap that I have to have a high end brand to present the facade for the low end brand. All of our loyal customers at the old branded stores will remain loyal to us- no reason for them not to. But to bring in additional customers, we need to convince them that W&S Discount Vault is like a Nordstrom Rack or a Neiman Marcus Last Call, rather than a H&M. That means we need to have the Nordstrom, the premium brand, in W&S Clothier."

"Yes, yes," she dismissed, "You've explained that to me many times. But why do you need this huge building, with its riches, its expensiveness?"

"Shock value," I stated, "I need to make a statement of the brand's greatness in order to propel it into the rarified atmosphere's of Bloomingdales, Barney's, Bergdorf Goodman's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom's, or even Lord & Taylor. This building does that. I hope."