Oprah would have liked Mollye Lilienfeld, a ground-breaking, self-made woman who, like herself, succeeded against all odds. The two never met, but Ms. Lilienfeld's 75-year-old family business--now Shavel Home Products of Princeton--is grappling with the fall-out generated by the Queen of Daytime Talk TV's mere mention of one of Shavel's product.
"The phone turned red; it turned blue; it turned every color," Matty Shavel, Ms. Lilienfeld's son-in-law and business successor, said of the torrent of calls that followed Ms. Winfrey's October pronouncement that she will only sleep on "T-shirt sheets."
Oprah did not mention Shavel. In fact, the "T-shirt sheet" purveyor she plugged was tiny Shabby Chic of California. No matter. Shavel, whose primary line is flannel, had, absolutely by chance, just shopped an adult-size version of its knitted crib sheet around to its major clients--department stores like Macy's and big-box specialty retailers like Bed, Bath & Beyond. When Oprah-hypnotized consumers started clamoring for "T-shirt sheets" (really just a bigger version of the knitted sheets their babies had been sleeping on), retail buyers thought "Shavel!"
Douglas Shavel--who, with his brother, Jon, grew up immersed in the textile industry and now helps his father run Shavel--is responsible for this phenomenon.
"In August 1996, Douglas brought Jon and me a jersey knit sheet set made out of baby bedding," Matty, seated in his office surrounded by family photos, recalled.
Douglas was shot down. "We took one look and said, 'Oh, Douglas, forget the whole thing!" the patriarch recounted.
But, he continued, "Douglas is 6-foot-2; he has a booming voice."
Douglas wore his father and brother down. They agreed to shop the sheets to their customers--linen and bedding buyers with whom the family had long-standing relationships. There wasn't a lot of enthusiasm, but the stores agreed to accept a small number of sheet sets as a test.
"Then in October, Oprah--bless her heart!--holds up a sheet and says, 'This is 100 percent cotton jersey and this is all I sleep on,' " Matty described that out-of-the-blue golden moment for his company.
And, what's more, due to Douglas' recent give-knitted-sheets-a-try campaign, "There was nobody in our industry who didn't think it was Shavel," whose sheets had Oprah all atwitter, said Matty. He characterized the buzz that swept through the retail community as, '''Oh, that's what Shavel showed us!'"
And the scramble to produce enough sheets to meet exploding demand was on.
Crib sheets have long been made of knitted fabric, but the knitting sets (loom-like machines which spin the sheets) are baby-sized.
"There is only one manufacturer making the larger looms needed to produce adult sheet sets," explained Jon "and they are working as hard and fast as they can to meet demand." Shavel, the only company that both manufactures and markets the sheets, has "increased manufacturing capacity three times since October," and is "adding machines every month," according to Jon.
Describing demand, Matty who is reluctant to mention numbers ("Our competitors will read this") thrusts not one, but both hands straight up in the air using double steeply-ascending arcs to describe consumer demand that still astonishes him.
"This is my 46th year in the business, but last September if you had told me this would happen, I would have ask you to take a sobriety test," he summed up.
Now there is a question of what Oprah-induced demand-run-wild will do to the company Mollye Lilienfeld founded in 1922 to help keep her family of once aristocratic Austrian immigrants afloat on New York City's Lower East Side.
Speaking with tremendous affection of his mother-in-law, Matty recounted how her parents, once wealthy landowners, were forced from their homeland by a pogrom, arriving penniless and bewildered in New York.
Educated people--"Her mother spoke 12 languages; her father spoke 14"--the elder Lilienfeld's lacked one skill, "the ability to make a living," said the elder Mr. Shavel.
Mollye Lilienfeld had no similar problem. Jumping in to save her parents and brother from hunger, the young woman sewed bedspreads. But she knew that , in the 1920's, a woman alone had no entree into the world of commerce. So she hired a front man, Charlie Tuck.
"Two years later, she owed him so much in commissions that , rather than pay him, she decided to marry him," her son-in-law and grandson said in unison, smiling at the often-told family lore.
So Mollye Lilienfeld and Charlie Tuck became partners in marriage, raising three children, and in business, though Mollye retained control of the enterprise, keeping it in her name. "They had a sum of money," Matty said of the newlyweds, "and had to decide whether to hire a lawyer and incorporate, or to buy fabric."
No real contest. "'The government doesn't open our factory; it doesn't sell our bedspreads. Why do we need the government?'" Matty intoned, giving voice to his in-laws' hard-scrabble reasoning process.
The business grew, occupying a floor uptown on Irving place, selling to every chain in the country, and providing funds to educate Mollye's brothers (one became a dentist, another chair of Boston College's physics department, and a third consul general to the Court of St. James). During Mollye Lilienfeld's life, she never incorporated.
Mollye died in the late 1950's signing over the company to Charlie on her deathbed, and he carried on until his death a decade later, heading up the company and remaining president of the Allied Linens and Domestics Association long after glaucoma left him blind.
"He was everyone's friend; he could sell you anything; he went all over the city speaking Damon Runyon," Matty and Jon remembered, putting gravel into their voice to give life to Charlie's conversations with clients, old friends all.
In one story, they tell of Charlie bargaining with a client. In answer to a question on the wholesale price of a bedspread, they delight in recalling Charlie saying, "If I would sell it to you, which I wouldn't, I would want $12." To which the client would reply--in the same conversation, year after year--"I don't want it, but if I would, I would never pay more than $9."
In another story, Shavel, elder and younger, vied to add details to the picture of Charlie addressing 2,500 members of his trade association, all of whom knew he was blind. To hide the blindness that was common knowledge, Charlie carefully took his glasses out of his breast pocket and polished them as he stood at the podium," said Matty, adding "and then he took out his speech and smoothed out the pages."
"He even turned the pages," Jon interjected.
Both men describe how Charlie, speech ended, extended a hand and addressed personal comments to industry leaders seated on the stage in carefully prearranged positions, which allowed their blind leader, and good friend, to know just who was seated where.
In a decade where it's common to start a firm with the sole thought of growing it to the point it will attract a buyer, the Shavels--reveling in their company's rich past--are determined not to let Oprah-business, welcome as it is, change what they are. They are trying to strike a balance: to be a big enough player to avoid being overwhelmed by giant competitors, and a small enough player to retain the feel of a family business.
Matty, age 72, stated his projected retirement date as "never." Jon said of running a family-owned home textile company, "It's a wonderful life." He obviously loves the stories, the people, the work. He and his brother, who, as children, spent weeks at at time at the Commodore Hotel during trade events, constantly run into vendors and clients they have known forever; with whom their family has sparred in ritualistic fondness for three generations.
Jon said he and his brother know plenty of people their age--mid 30's-- who have sold businesses and now play golf. But he wants no part of it. So now he, his father and brother need to steer their ship--suddenly turned into a rocket by Oprah--through the shoals of explosive growth, keeping it intact so that they may one day be able to offer their children the chance to be the fourth generation to run a cherished family-owned business.