I'm watching "City Slickers", a movie about dealing with aging, although in this case the age being reached is 40 (not 65 with which I have to deal). This was Billy Crystal's funniest movie. There is a scene where Crystal and his two friends are riding along and one of them asks the other two to tell him what was the best day of their lives, not counting the day their children were born. I got to thinking about how I would answer the question.
In 1990 I left a pretty good job to take a chance of opening my own garment manufacturing business. I had no where near enough money to do it on my own, but I knew that I did generate enough sales to support a business. I found someone, Mitchell Dobies, with an existing company who was willing to be my partner and to supply me with the necessary support to operate. When I told my daughter that I was leaving the company that I had been working for she was very unhappy, until, that is, I told her that I was planning on naming the company after her. Then it was OK. Her name is Michele, with one L and I called the company Wonell. My deal with Mitchell entitled me to 50% of the profits. The only downside was that he was only willing to invest $50,000. He said that once he reached that point, he would go no further. Right after we started two of the buyers with whom I had done a lot of business were transferred. They had committed to giving me a substantial amount of business, but once they were transferred, all promises were void. Four or five months later I had gone through the $50,000, and Mitchell came to me and said that I could continue to use his office space and my desk, while I looked for a job somewhere else, but that he was no longer going to pay me. I decided that since I had just shipped some test orders and was expecting them to do well, that I would wait it out. About 3 weeks later I got the greatest call of my life. I had shipped 400 dozen of a pull on pant to WalMart. The call was from the buyer and the question she asked literally turned my life around. The question was, "How many pants can you get me and how quickly can you get them to me. I don't remember the exact number, but I probably told her That within 3-4 weeks I could get her somewhere around 240,000 pieces. She took the 240,000 and gave me a future order for 500,000 more for about 6 weeks later. That same afternoon, the large size buyer, having heard from her Missy counterpart how good my pants were selling, called and ordered 300,000 pieces more, in large sizes. That came to about $4,000,000 in orders, which ultimately led to a $20,000,000 a year business with Walmart.
That Friday I did get paid.
