Across the Globe: A Conversation with Gary Holcomb

Transcript

Ernestine: 0:00

welcome to Bon Vivant Chic Life. Well lived the podcast. For anyone who wants to cut through today's noise and just listen for a few minutes to meaningful conversations on the human experience and the power of connectedness. I'm your host Ernestine Morgan, an advocate for kindness with a passion for showcasing human interest stories that matter. Today I'm excited to be sitting with my friend and neighbor, Gary Holcomb. Gary is a native Floridian entrepreneur, family man, and although he is retired from his role as president of Dandee International, he still has his hands in other endeavors. Gary, thanks for sitting down with me today.

Gary: 0:42

I'm happy to be here with you. Ernie,

Ernestine: 0:44

can you share a little about where you grew up and what life was like?

Gary: 0:48

I grew up in, an area outside of Miami, Florida called, Hial. It was a new development in the, early, fifties, late forties. It was an interesting place. Kids would, stay together. We'd all ride their bikes all around the city. For. Tens of locks and we, had our dogs running with us. It was a different attitude back then. The only rule was you had to be home by dark. Or you'd be in trouble and, we, walked to school, elementary school, we walked to junior high. The older children were paid, a quarter a week. By the parents in the block to walk the younger kids to school and make sure they're following the rules. Like no crossing us 27, no swimming in the Miami Canal. Back then we had, no air conditioning. The TV with black and white. We had, a two bedroom. One bath house and the road was a gravel road. They didn't always pave the roads back then it was just tar with gravel on it. In fact, it stayed that way in front of our house until I graduated from high school. If you were allowed to stay up, to maybe watch, something special like a gun smoke on Sunday night or something western the rifleman. I can see all those I want now. On all the reruns That's right. On tv. Yeah. cause they're all still very popular. Coming back to whole new generations of people. My father ran the largest store, a Kresge in the city of Hialeah that Kresge turned out to be Kmart. Eventually. It used to be fun. Santa Claus would come to that store. The Easter Bunny would come to that store and, you would get to, pick a colorful chick for 5 cents. When we needed a haircut, we would ride, for blocks to a guy who, gave it for 95 cents. We had the nickel left over from the dollar our parents had given us, and then we would spend half a day deciding what to spend that nickel on. Because it was a hobby shop next door. And you could get something for a nickel. But you could get a birch beer from Royal Castle. For a nickel. With in a frosty mug. Unbelievable.

Ernestine: 2:43

Some fond memories from back then growing up.

Gary: 2:45

Yep.

Ernestine: 2:45

Who had the biggest influence on you when you were young?

Gary: 2:48

I think, the biggest influence would've been, my uncle, one, I had uncle guy. He was, a director of the water and sewer, the city of Miami. And, he was notorious for working his employees to the bone, very highly respected. My mother was from a family of 11 children. Canova, my, grandmother would say to my, grandfather, who was hard of hearing, do you want to go to bed or what? And he would say, what? And of course then they'd have another kid, so enough with 11 children. But anyway, on Saturday he used to pick me up. And I would ride with him, his old station wagon, I remember. And we would go around to all the aunts and uncles houses and, help them, do repairs. And so I learned a lot about maintenance back then, whether it was doing plumbing repairs or electrical repairs during masonry, with bricks and with cement, and it was, just a great feeling to know that we were helping everyone,

Ernestine: 3:40

aw.

Gary: 3:40

I learned a lot from him. And in fact, he is the one who put me on the, midnight shift of the water and sewer department as a laborer. Which is the lowest category you could be employed by. To, straighten me out from, college had, brought on, some refreshment problems and I was drinking too much. And, I needed to clarify that. And he said, this will clarify you. 'cause he worked the hell out of me. My first job, other than mowing lawns and raking as I found out I could charge an extra dollar I was about, 10. The lawnmower was a push mower. There was no engine on it. You pushed it. I charged $2 for the yard. One lady said to me one day, could you rake that for me? Because the clippings just flipped out the backside. I said, yeah, but I have to charge you something. She said, okay, I'll pay you a dollar more. So then I had a double service. Cutting and raking. But my first real job was in a, factory. A bottling company in town, was called peewee. P-E-E-W-E-E bottling company and they made, six ounce bottles of, flavored water drink,, not carbonated. And the people who owned the company's name were, an upstate New York somewhere and they had franchised one, place in New York. And then they franchised a factory in Hial. This guy had come from up there and he was a big German guy, so I was 12 years old. He paid me 50 cents an hour, and I got all the PeeWee's I could drink while I was in the building. I took 50 pound bags of sugar from Cuba. Up the ladder. To the big, vat on the top and would dump the sugar in. Then I would take a garden hose, and fill it up. It's 50 gallons, fill it up. And then, he would, put in, the, flavoring. Sugar, the flavoring, and I'd stir it with an ore, an actual ore,

Ernestine: 5:19

mm-hmm.

Gary: 5:20

And then, while I was up there, I would make sure the caps for the bottle. Then I had to run down the ladder and there was a giant cleaning ring that rotate a giant machine, and I would have to pull the bugs and cigarette butts out of the bottles and put 'em upside down

Ernestine: 5:34

on

Gary: 5:34

the cleaning rack so it could blow the citric acid up into it, which cleaned it. And then I had to keep the citric acid trough filled so it could keep dumping it in. With the water in the mix, it would come around to his side, this giant wheel, and as the machine would cap the peewees, it would get higher pitched every time I would go. Boom, boom, and then he would cover his eyes and he would yell, protect yourself. And it would hit the cap and explode. Oh my goodness. And glass would go everywhere. So we tried to just shake out the big chunks from the bottles and then start to process again. So that was my first real job. 50 cents an hour. I did it after school, and in the summer for two years

Ernestine: 6:15

dandy International became a very successful business, the leader in designing, manufacturing and supplier of seasonal plush and decor, as well as a market leader in animated plush animals and pet toys. What were some of the most rewarding moments in helping that company grow and succeed?

Gary: 6:34

The most rewarding moments always if you're in sales and marketing is, when you get the deal. When you get the bid, the order. I can remember the first a hundred thousand dollars order I got that was like unbelievable to me. I was so proud of myself. We went from, a domestic corporation. Importing products, putting 'em in a warehouse in New Jersey, and then trying to get people to buy 'em. We changed that philosophy into a direct import company where we pre-sold the products at a discounted price to large retailers, and limited ourselves to large retailers who could work with us on production runs 20,000, 30,000 pieces on an item. So that eliminated a lot of the smaller traffic where we'd have to spend a lot of time and money. cause it took just as much effort on the preparation and design and manufacturing side on a small account as you put in for a big account, once you get the order. It was a discussion of getting rid of the warehouse. Philosophy and just working solely with direct import customers, which cuts your accounts down from like 300 to 30 which was a scary thing to do for most people in business because they had worked so many years to create this, but, it wasn't going anywhere we could see. We did make the move. And I'll never forget, Margaret my wife, wanted us to, still maintain another showroom in New York when my goal was to eliminate the showroom in New York, we were getting out of the toy Fair. This is like unheard of with major companies back then. And I remember the Hasbro executive saying to me, we wish we had the guts to do this years ago. And you did it? Because it was the direction being a Florida boy, she wanted me to look at this space across the street in New York. So I stopped the car there on the curb. I jumped out, I ran across the street to write the, number down of the for lease sign so that I could contact the people. Ran back to my car. And I had already got $150 ticket. I said, welcome to New York business. It's a little different than living and working in Florida, that's when we started, the direct import and, it came on board very quickly. In fact, the customer give you an idea. The customers, most of the customers we worked with back then aren't even in existence now. TGY and Zers and just Woolworth's. These were big names back in those days. And Eckard Corporation, right? Ecker Corporation, Yes. But, we had switched them to our program eventually. And did very well for them. Walmart, to give you an idea of the relationship, Kmart was the biggest in the nation. Kmart, eventually, threatened me, that if we sold this other company from Arkansas, which was Walmart, who had 47 stores when they came to us asked us if we would support them and do a Christmas bear. Like we were doing for Kmart, a different design. Oh bear. But they didn't want any competition so they threatened me that they'd kill our business so I talked to Margaret about it, and she said, what do you wanna do? I said, I think we should go for it. These people are strong. They're gonna grow. It was massive. Massive. And so we went from 47 stores with them till actually the other day, Doug McMillan gave us a tour of, the new campus there. Mm-hmm. Campus is 350. Acres.

Ernestine: 9:34

Wow.

Gary: 9:34

A heck of a home office, huh? The health club for employees only on the campus is a million square feet. It's massive. You just can't imagine everything they've put in this facility.

Ernestine: 9:45

While at Dandy International, you spent many years traveling the world, but you also lived in Hong Kong. Yeah. So what was that like as a Florida boy? How did you navigate the Asian culture? 'cause that has to have been a culture shock for you.

Gary: 10:00

In China. Back then, remember Hong Kong was an English colony. Lots of them spoke English there, almost all of them. And of course they educated all the Chinese in English language. So by the time I'm over there and we're working with factories and we're in towns and we have employees that speak Chinese, they also spoke English. So it really was not a language barrier Culture is different, because culture is more, regimented. It's restricted, have to remember those Asian countries, when we first started working there, Korea. Taiwan, China, they're all under martial law. They were open by Nixon but it was all strictly regulated. You had to be out of the restaurant, out of the bar in your hotel room by nine o'clock or 11 o'clock, depending upon the country you were in, workforces were very regimented, everyone was controlled, but everyone wanted to work. Everyone wanted a job and at one point in our business, we had over 50,000 sowers

Ernestine: 10:57

Wow.

Gary: 10:57

That was all in China, and we tried other countries, Philippines, Korea, Singapore. But, nothing worked like, China with its organization. They have a phenomenal, highway system. Their super highway system surpassed the amount of roadways in America with our turnpikes and surpassed it back in the mid seventies, with giant roads. Sometimes I would be on those roads from like 8:00 AM to noon and only see one other car going the other way. And they built these by hand. Like you would build, a concrete patio in your backyard. In the old days, the contractor would come with the barrel.

Ernestine: 11:33

That

Gary: 11:33

would spin on the, on the brace, on the bracket. And you'd put one bag of cement in and that's how they built their interstate system there. All by hand. It would move down as they built it. They would move their tents down on the new section, and then they would live there building the next section. And it was a unbelievable process to see how they did it. But that was 12 inches thick with double rebar, so you could drive any kind of weight over it, and they're still there. Interesting. They have, dinner time. You feed 'em breakfast in factories as well as lunch. And if they're working late dinner, if they're living at the factory, of course you feed 'em dinner, but, it was good. I enjoyed their atmosphere of appreciation for, us as management people or company owners I love have the parties for them, we would do every kind of party we could think of, at least once a month we would have something. In fact, I had the first Easter egg hunt ever in the country. Of China my wife said, nobody's gonna sign up for that. They don't even know what Easter is here. They don't even know what the bunny is except the ones we make I said, they'll sign up because I'm putting numbers on the eggs and spread the word, those numbers. Represented RMB, their dollar. So if it says 10 or five or 20, or some of 'em said a hundred, which would be like half your month's salary, believe me, they're gonna bring their kid to look for that egg. And we had 215 show up, for the first Easter egg hunt. Finding color dye to dye 600 eggs. For the contest for the children was impossible in the country of China. None of my staff in different cities through China could find food coloring. Is that unbelievable? They ask why are Chinese people so healthy? That's one reason., There was absolutely no food coloring or food dye. And they looked at me like I was crazy when I asked to find this. So I ended up having to go to a craft store back in Hong Kong that I got, children's, lead free. Finger paint and thinned it out with water. cause I know there's no lead in it. It would be safe. And we used it and we hid the eggs and we had a great party. So then on that was it? We had Easter parties, Halloween parties, Christmas rice, but they appreciated it all so much.

Ernestine: 13:36

You mentioned Margaret, your wife? Yes. She was a toy designer, or a teddy bear designer?

Gary: 13:41

Her first position, when she went to work for this company, Danee, was she sold product to them because, the original owner, Dan, did products for children and she had developed the luggage line. Which was very popular and strong in America. And manufactured back in Taiwan in those days., And, he bought a little, children's carryon, and, she was there when I came to work with him as a consultant. The product was no good. Korean factories, unbeknownst to me, had dirt floors.

Ernestine: 14:11

You can't

Gary: 14:11

work with soft goods in a facility that has a dirt floor. Because your product's gonna get dirty. It's terrible. I said we have to have some kind of check. We have to have some kind of agent involved to check the quality before they ship it to. New Jersey warehouse. Otherwise you're going to just get nailed with bad quality every time. He agreed. And he said, there's a woman I know who I buy luggage from, children's luggage, and I can get her to go there and work for us to inspect our shipment in Korea before it comes. And that's how I met Margaret when, he hired her to do that, and she became, a designer. And then I said, this is crazy. All the, labor market was moving to Taiwan. Then from Korea, the best market for labor was Japan. Then it moved to Korea. Then from Korea, it moved to Taiwan. Then from Taiwan went to China. That's the philosophy. We followed and I said, why don't we do our own factories? Margaret, you can make factories here in Taiwan. This is your home. She was born and raised there in Taiwan. She said, good idea. So she did. And all of our floors, I remember where Oleum linoleum, that was the big advertisement in America back then. You didn't have just linoleum floors in your mom's kitchen. You had congoleum linoleum. It was like a shiny sealed surface on it. So we made, factories that had that concrete with linoleum on it so that none of the eyes would get scuffed. None of the material could get dirty when customers would come and visit the factories, they would be highly impressed and could see where their quality is coming from,

Ernestine: 15:37

were there pivotal moments or decisions that changed the course of your life?

Gary: 15:42

Certainly there were, accepting the, consulting position, with, Mr. Ranson and, traveling overseas for the first time. To, Korea, to Taiwan, to Japan. China wasn't involved yet, but there was a little operation in Hong Kong that he had started, when I was, 40, I'd given my agency business to my employees, I wanted to just semi-retire. But I kept the consulting contracts I had with different companies. The people that invented WD 40 also got into houseware products and needed to know how to sell them. I help people like that. And he was one of them, wanting advice on how do you deal with a drug chain? How do you deal with a grocery store? What are they looking for, so I kept him at the end and got rid of the rest. I still had to go back overseas, four times a year. And, then he got illness and after about a year and a half, he asked if I would work full-time. And, he tried to make me employee, but I liked the consultant position. I didn't have to answer to anybody, you still had your freedom, but, that worked out. And then I started working full-time, with Margaret. And, learning more and more the integrated business, it was, an experience. 'Cause you have to learn both sides. I'm selling to the buyers. I have to know how to market it to 'em, I have to be able to tell her what product I need, what they're looking for. We can't just design things that are pretty and designers like, Margaret was excellent in marketing as well. That was a pivotal point.

Ernestine: 17:02

What lessons about family and relationships would you pass on to the younger generations?

Gary: 17:08

The biggest thing in reference to family, having the respect and the patience for your parents. There's not a person I know who hasn't lost their parents to say, I wish I spent more time. Everybody thinks that way, and I don't care how bad the relationship was with them. It's still, a tough feeling for them, and, when you give the patience, I can remember being impatient with my father. I worked with my father in business for a while and, took his company to successful heights. And, that's actually the company that I gave away to the employees at the end. When I was, wanting to retire. I would, repeat things to him, we gotta do this, or we gotta do that, and he would say, son. I'm not deaf. I'm just slow. That's the kind of patience you have to have with them as they get older. The other thing is go along with what they want to do. If it's not affecting you in any major way and you can agree with what they want to do. Agree with them. If they want a new car, don't say that car will last 15 years. You'll probably be gone in two years. Don't come with the philosophy. Just do what they want. They want a new car. Get 'em the new car. Help 'em, that's the key.

Ernestine: 18:09

Are there any life lessons you've learned that you wish you knew earlier?

Gary: 18:12

It really is along the same lines. You just have to, see these things as you go. Different people learn things from elders, there's different attitudes from elders. Some elders will, explain things to you. Some elders won't say That's a hot pan. Don't grab the handle on that iron skillet because it's hot. Other elders will just say, give me that skillet. And when you pick it up and go, ow, they say, Hey, it's hot, isn't it? They want a real demonstration of it. Some, teach you by, discussion and warnings and others don't think it works unless you feel the pain. It's, important to, learn from your elders. Believe me, everything we go through as children are growing up. They went through things that were harder, at least in our generations, and, you have to give 'em the respect for being able to come through it,

Ernestine: 18:57

what do you think is the secret to a happy and fulfilling life?

Gary: 19:01

I think, the real secret, for me is, laughing. Laughing a lot. And, making people laugh. Making people enjoy, the times together, even in business, when there would be complicated and serious problem, big money involved. Somebody's gonna have to pay for damages or credits or, something I would try to turn it into some kind of, comical, response. That, would blow everybody away, and then they would say, he's kidding. Okay. And then we would come to a final decision on what to do, but it took the tension off of the meeting. In fact, I actually had lunch yesterday with a gentleman who was executive VP at Ecker Corporation who, one day had a major situation. We had shipped. 350,000 pieces of 15 inch wooden nutcrackers to the Ecker Corporation. They were in stores all around America, Texas, North Carolina, Florida, delaware, everywhere. They started getting, calls from the police departments on burglar alarms going off in the stores. The whole chain was like 250. The first, night they had put the product out on the shelf. They had taken it out of the beautiful color box and set it on the shelf to display it, which is fine, but when you ship products from Asia, they all have to be fumigated so that there's no, weevils bugs of any kind that could come in and hurt our crops or. Any, damage here in America? So everything gets a 10 pound, insecticide container in it. What had happened was the mix of insecticide, solution, this, company used for the extermination, certificate you have to get, was, causing the glue that glue the heads, the arms, the legs of the nutcrackers together to deteriorate. So for 30 something days. On a ship in a container coming from Asia to America, that glue was deteriorating. In those cartons. So when they took it out and set it on the shelf and the air conditioner hit it and it came normalized, boom. The sound of the head falling off hitting the shelf. All of this created the burglar alarms. So they had burglar alarms going off everywhere. It was a major meeting. In this gentleman's office, the buyers were scared to death. Merchandise matter was scared to death and he as the vice president, was responsible. So he was very upset and, he said, what are you gonna do about it, Gary? There's a big meeting in their conference room. And I said, well, actually, tomorrow, we are mailing out to each individual store a packet, of gold labels. The exact number of nutcrackers each store has, and the gold label, will, be adhered to the color carton by your store personality. He said, okay. That's interesting, but what is this label going to say? I said, the label will be clearly printed. Some assembly required No one laughed but me. And then they said, okay, seriously, now what are we gonna do? And I says, why don't you use the super glue in your store? Have the stores glue the arms and heads back on, make sure they're all tight and we'll pay for the. Super glue at retail price, and they said, okay, it's a deal. And that's the kind of situation that, I would, try to turn a little humor into. I think it's the funniest thing when I'm thinking of the line. I know the line. I can't wait to tell you. And I said, I hope he says, what's it gonna say? Because that's his part

Ernestine: 22:10

dandy International's been sold, over five years. However, you haven't really retired because you're involved in some other projects.

Gary: 22:18

We have, the Bon Appetit restaurant I got involved in with a partner there. He is an operational guy. I'm supposed to just be financial person, but, I like to stick my nose in it because I eat in a lot of fine restaurants all around the world. And Bon Appetit is fine dining and we want to keep it elevated And it's been very, good and exciting.

Ernestine: 22:36

What keeps you motivated and inspired? 'Cause you really, at this time in your life, you have a couple of grandkids.

Gary: 22:43

I think it's, just trying to, do things I always wanted to do. A lot of countries we've been to, many times on business we've never explored. Even Japan is one of them. There were a couple of cities there. That we'd never been to before. Europe, Germany and Switzerland getting to see these places as a tourist is fun for me. Where you don't have a specific schedule, and, it works out good.

Ernestine: 23:03

I had a long career in philanthropy, philanthropy means different things to different people. What does philanthropy mean to you?

Gary: 23:12

Philanthropy is almost a status. You work your life, to achieve, a position of success. Where you can help other people. It's, great to do. You can help through, institutions. We like to be supportive of things that, are meaningful to us, health facilities. Of course. We travel, we have places in New York. We have places here. Our home is here. We have, facilities, that we're, close to in Hong Kong. And in Switzerland. When we travel around the world, we have bases that we wanna support and, be mindful of, but, beyond that, I want to, start having the opportunity to, help, people without being limited with, taxation situations and to try to be able to freely give the money to them so that they can use the money, and so we do that with foundation gifts or actually, I want to have, my own that I can, contribute money to. As well as it could collect money, at some point from, outside sources. But the idea is I'd rather give it there than to our government, and I think if more people understood that philosophy, there would be more really. It's important. It's been a great life, when I was 27, I told my mother if I died the next day, I had a great life and no regrets at that point. Everything else was just gravy, Thank you.

Ernestine: 24:27

You for your continued commitment. This has been great. Thanks for sitting down with me, Larry. And I always enjoy our time together, with Margaret. We always laugh so much when we are together, don't we? We really are grateful to call you friend.

Gary: 24:44

Thank you. We feel the same. And we're real happy with you doing the podcast this is terrific. I wanna wish you a lot of luck.

Ernestine: 24:50

Thanks for listening to Bon Vivant Chic life Well Lived. I hope you'll tune in for more meaningful stories on the human experience and share with family and friends. All the episodes are available on Spotify, Buzzsprout, Apple and on my website, bonvivantchic.com. Till next time, remember, every day is a gift. Live it kindness matters.