EAST TEXAS UNFILTERED w/J. Chad Parker: Featuring Harley Hooper

Harley Hooper joins East Texas UNFILTERED w/J. Chad Parker for a real conversation about business, style, and building a name in Tyler. Harley has been part of the local clothing scene for more than 40 years. In this episode, he shares how he got started and how people came to know him simply as Harley.

The episode also looks at what it takes to last in one town for decades. Harley talks about relationships, reputation, and why being friendly matters in business. He explains how trust and personal connection helped turn his name into something people across Tyler still remember.

This episode is full of honest stories and hard earned lessons. Harley talks about weathering storms and staying in the game through the ups and downs. It is a strong East Texas conversation with a guest who has left a lasting mark on Tyler.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

And he said, look, you got anything I can do? He said, I'm dark straight.

SPEAKER_04 0:04

Did he know anything about the clothing business?

SPEAKER_02 0:05

He had been in business and asked him, Would you want to run the Dallas store? He said, heck yeah. We were selling clothes like crazy and things were rockin'. And I went down there one day and I said, Hey, where's the money? I was about to say that. And he started crying. He was a gambler. No, he he got divorced. He could have had all this. He was a rotor. He got in with the cowboys. He was spending money. Your money. Yeah. I called New York. They flew down the next day and shut him down. He came to the store and he said, Well, it's not as bad as you think. I said, Well, how bad is that? And he told me, and I went, how can you say that's not bad? He said, Well, and then you owe us this.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_04 0:49

Welcome to another episode of East Texas Unfiltered. I'm your host, J. Chad Parker. Today we're going to talk to someone who's been influential in the style in Tyler for the last 40 plus years. He came here quite a while ago. He's weathered the storm, and he's still here. Many of you will know him by his first name only. Harley, thank you for being here. Thank you, Chad.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

I appreciate you having me. This is going to be fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:15

Well, it's going to be interesting because, you know, uh everybody knows you as a first name, Harley. I mean, ever they know you as Harley Hooper, but they know you as Harley, right? That's right. Because people find you uh friendly. And and, you know, when you feel like you know someone, you call people by their first name.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Yeah. Let me tell you how that name happened on this store. Um, years ago, when I opened my first door in 1979, um I was very modest and still am. But at that time, I didn't think I wanted my name on this door because I thought that was a little aggressive at that time. And I was 30 years old. So when I met your friend and mine, Bridget, she said, What are you calling this thing Suit Club, J. Curl, all this stuff? And everybody comes to Harley's. She called Hurst Bridget's. Oh, yeah. And and when we got together, she said, This is Bull. We got to change the name. It's got to be Harley's. And it it was so easy because people were already coming to Harley's because they were coming, a lot of them come and see me. Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

I mean, that's you know, the clothing, before we get into your life a little bit, the clothing is really a lot about relationships, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Oh. We sell service and friendship and relationships. And there's all kinds of slogans out there like, you know, a good salesman can make a living, but you make a fortune with relationships. Now I'm not saying I've made a fortune, but it we've made a fortune of good friends with these relationships.

SPEAKER_04 2:52

People enjoy, you know, doing business with people that they like and that make them feel good, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Chad, let me let me give you a little insight on what's happened the last five to seven years. If you look at the stores, the big box stores, Nordstrom's closing in the galleria now. They're closing their store. What's happened with these stores is they once had the same philosophy that we did. And I'm not saying we're cooler, smarter, any of those things. I'm just saying we never got off of the theory that friendship and service was the thing that was going to take us where we wanted to go. These other stores, big box stores and so on and so forth, they have kind of they kind of moved to this I don't nothing wrong with the internet, but kind of moved to the internet. Online sales. Online sales. No personal service. No personal service. And they dressed, they come to work in shorts or cotton pants and a t-shirt. They were a casual salesman. Exactly. And what's happened with this is that the people that are spending the money at this level of people that are looking at clothes like we have, they want to be taken care of, not only taken care of, but they want to see what they're gonna look like.

SPEAKER_04 4:16

And that also includes, you know, the way that it fits. Exactly. Right. I mean, you can't buy something online and get it in the mail, put it on, and expect it to fit you perfectly.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

We made a big we made a big step about, and I know you know this because we've talked about it, but about eight months ago, we took a leap. We had good alteration people, and we did have a good tailor for quite some time. But she got oh it's getting hard. Less people are doing that as a trade. No, it's uh it's a it's a dying trade. But we found one and we hired her, we're paying big bucks for her, but she changed the dynamics of how things fit in our store. And speed, probably. She's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 5:01

Well, you know, that's certainly a service that, you know, the big box and and the internet can't offer, which is someone to, you know, tailor your stuff, you come back and say, yeah, this is good, or oh, maybe it needs a little bit more and get it done, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:15

We we tailor everything and then we have everyone basically try it back on. We we want them to go out the way we want them to go out. Not a lot of these guys and and they're all tied up in their professions and things, they don't really care as much as we do. But if we send them out looking like we want them to look, um, we're gonna get feedback. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. I mean, it's uh it's indirect marketing, if you will. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Exactly. You walk into a party and your perfection and I'm looking good. You're looking good. People are going, hey, where'd you get that? Yeah, they're gonna say something to you about it. Hey, that's a good thing. That looks a good jacket. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 5:55

Speaking of this jacket, I did get this at Harley's full disclosure. That's a great jacket. You know, a salesperson, uh, a person in retail, I mean, they have to be they have to have a certain demeanor. You know, I mean, they have to be nice, you have to take criticism, you have to hear things that aren't true that, you know, and and keep smiling, right? Right. And you seem to have the perfect personality for over 40 years that we've known you here to just kind of, you know, always be upbeat. Where does that come from?

SPEAKER_02 6:28

You know, uh uh very humble background. Uh my family uh were farmers in Oklahoma. So, you know, I didn't have new shirts.

SPEAKER_04 6:38

Your dad wasn't showing you the latest shirts.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

I was not showing me. If yeah, you know, I I could show you a picture sometime uh the all three boys and no one not one of us had a shirt on. We had uh Levi's and rolled up pants. We you know, nothing was ever fitted. Where were you in Oklahoma? Where did you grow up? We grew up right on the Red River. Um it it was about if you if the crow flies, it was about fifteen miles from Wichita Falls, straight north, and then forty miles from Lawton, Oklahoma. So we were just across the river. We were a mile and maybe a mile and a quarter from the river. I mean, we were what was called river rats. We were right there on the river.

SPEAKER_04 7:19

Did you graduate from high school at that in that time?

SPEAKER_02 7:21

I graduated from a high school that had 108 kids. And in the now that's not my class. I had twenty-five in my class. The top three grades had a hundred and eight. No, the top four grades had a hundred and eight. And um, you know, back then, you know, dad said, uh You know, you need to go to college. Of course, I was going to college because I was getting the heck out of there.

SPEAKER_04 7:45

That was a way out.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yeah, that was a way out. And so he said, Go get your teaching certificate and you can always fall back on teaching. Well, this was in the 60s. So, you know, uh that was a very common thing for people because there wasn't there was a shortage of teachers back then. And so I went to the city. Yeah, I mean, you got three months off. I mean we didn't know anything about that, but we we did that. So got to college and uh found out real quick that teaching was probably not what I was gonna do, and uh changed my major business and uh had to work. So I got a job in a men's clothing store because I idolized clothes. Well, I just had a passion for it because I never had clothes. I mean, we had hand-me-down, hand-me-down, hand me down. So um, where was this that you went to college? It was in Duran, Oklahoma, Southeastern State University, and it's a small about 4,000 kids. It's actually business and aviation was what it was. Uh, was there a men's clothing store there? There was a small store there, and it was had been there for thirty something years at the time. I interviewed four times for the job, and the guy told me the first three times that he didn't need me, you know, trying to, you know, it wasn't like today. If someone caught, you know, walked into our store dressed the way you're dressed, I'd hire him before he got out the door. But back then, there were probably five to seven kids, you know, trying to get that job. So we had to campaign for that job. And I had to go back and back and back. And it just so happened the guy that worked in the store for the four years before I took the job, he ended up being my roommate and one of my best friends. So he was promoting me all that time, trying to get me the job. Well, I finally got the job, worked five years in the store, and then um ended up in Sherman, Texas. Guy comes in, he says, um, you know, I'd really like for you to work in our store, because there wasn't as that many guys with, you know any really fashion sense, right?

SPEAKER_04 10:02

I mean, that's kind of a skill you develop, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:04

It is. Is it well you have to study. I mean, and I still study. To this day, I look at what's happening in the European and Canadian market almost every day, and just to make sure that we're not slipping in any way, shape, or form. So if you don't study the market that you're dealing with, then you're gonna slip real quick. Because it is a it's not as easy as everyone thinks it is, because through You just go to a magical buyer, you buy all the good stuff, bring it back to Tyler, put it in the store.

SPEAKER_04 10:38

That's not how it works.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Go to market? Yeah, we go to markets. And actually, two years ago we made a big jump because I've always wanted to go to Italy, to the market in Italy. And so um we'd had a we'd had a good run, and I told Bridget, I said, let's go to let's go to Florence and go to the market. And she said, I'm on. You know, she'd go anywhere with me at that time.

SPEAKER_04 11:03

And Italy, you know, that's what a bad not a bad gig. Just to go for work.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

I mean, great restaurants and good food. But the the market there is the key market in the world. I mean, borrow none. So um what you see there is what's gonna happen here for the next three years. I mean, it's you get a look ahead of time. Way, way ahead of time. You know what's coming. Yeah. We knew what was happening. Now that was two years ago. We'll we'll go back next year. We didn't go this year. We'll go back next year and get another, you know, shot for the next three years. But they're always 18 to two years ahead of us.

SPEAKER_04 11:44

So you get this job in Sherman, and I'm assuming when you talk to the person that's interviewing you, you're you you know, you're able to put different colors and patterns together, and you've kind of got something that's what you're using to interview your for your the job, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

Um We've got time for this. I'm gonna tell you. Oh, yeah, we got plenty of time. So I I got the job or they hired me. Um I was a little pushback. They were they were a very aggressive type men's store. They had five stores. They had two in Tulsa, one in Dallas, and one in Sherman, one in Oatmonge, Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_04 12:24

Aggressive, meaning their business model, they were growing too fast.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

They were more aggressive in the style of salesmanship that they used. So the president of the company was a graduate of Austin College. Okay. Brilliant guy. Right. That's in Sherman. That's in Sherman. And that's a very prestigious college college. And he was uh he was a very sharp guy, and we interviewed and talked for probably two hours, and he said, Um, tell you what, we're gonna hire you. And I said, Well, Mike, I'm not sure I'm ready to do this. He said, You need to give this a shot. He said, Harley, this is something he said, you do not have to sell like we do. He said, You can sell like in whatever you do. Did you have another job at the time? I was working in the I just graduated, so I was still in the clothing store in in Durant. Okay, so you So I moved from that store to Sherman, Texas, and he said, Here's the deal. If you're half as good, now this is I'm not bragging, but he said, This is half if you're half as good as we think you are, you'll have a key to the store in one year. Well, eight months later, he c'est to the store. Which means you're gonna run it exclusively for I ran it exclusively for ten years for him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:42

And you were about how how old were you? Twenty two. Twenty-three, yeah. Twenty-three. Right out of college. Right out of college. All right, so uh you get off to a pretty good start. You know, you're thirty-three, you've ran this men's store, you've learned the business. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

I learned uh a totally different side of the business. And they were very aggressive, but they had great taste and they they studied the market. But it was basically coming from we went to New York twice a year for a week. We didn't go to Europe and all that, but we went to New York twice a year for a week, and then we went to Dallas to every market, which were four at that time. So the New York markets, you know, back in the 70s, they campaigned for us. I mean, we get off the plane, they'd pick us up. I mean, they treated us they wanted distribution. They wanted us in and you know, the send us to show and stuff like that. That all stopped in the 90s. It ended really in the late 80s. But long story short, um we I'd got into the store in Sherman, I was we had three kids working there, okay? And um they hated me. You know, I was assistant manager and they they didn't like me being there because I was basically the same age as they were. And so I took it real cool, real slow. I straightened shirts and changed tags and did everything that they were doing. And one day, you know, they're not talking to me. So one day I see this gentleman, a black gentleman at the window. He's looking in the window and he's picking his teeth because he had been down to wise cafeteria having lunch, and it was 2 30 in the afternoon. And um they they're watching me, the kids. And so they're going, if he walks in here, we're going the back. Because they're not gonna pay that much attention to it had nothing to do with color. He just felt like he couldn't buy it. Yeah, he was in overalls and combat. Right, he's not gonna buy something. It's too expensive. He's not our guy. Right. So he did. He came in the store, had a straw hat, overalls, and he walks in the store and they ran to the back, three of them. They're behind the curtains, watching me. So I greet him. Hey, how you doing? Saw you walk, you know, looking in the windows or anything I can help you with. He said, Well, son, he said, There's a pair of shoes in there I'd like to kind of look at. I said, You got it. Which ones? He said, Well, any of them. They're all three colors in there. I said, Okay. So I went, I said, You're talking about the patent leather Villary shoe. He said, Yeah, that's it. Uh and I looked down at his foot. It was about this long. Fourteen. Fourteen. And it was about that wide. And I was going, Ah, what size shoe you wear? And he said, What size do you have? And I said, Well, I have a twelve. That's as big as we used to carry. And he said, Um, I think I can wear that. I said, You do? So I went to the back, pulled a shoe, came out, gave him one of those long shoe spins, and he pushed this foot into this shoe, and it was rolling over the side, and I went, Um, are you okay? And he said, Yeah, I think it'll be fine. Uh huh. And I said, You're kidding. Are you okay with that? He said, Yeah. So what colors do you have? So I went to the back. We'd just gotten a fill-in the week before on those shoes, and there were five colors. So these kids are laughing. I can hear them in the background. So I laid them all out and fanned all five pairs out, and they were all colored, you know, brown, black, white, green, burgundy. And uh he I said, What colors do you think you like? He said, What color do you like? And I said, Well, uh, you know, I take the course, I've been there two weeks, I take the course of least resistance, and I say, Well, the ones that we're selling is probably the black and brown. He said, I don't like the black and brown. I like the maroon and the green. I said, Well, okay, we'll do the maroon and green. What are you gonna wear it with? Yeah, I said, You need anything to wear it with. He said, No, I just need the shoes. He said, but I'll take them all. I said, all five pair? And I could hear the kids in the back gulp for air. Cause they were$125 apiece in 1973. Okay. And they were about to miss a good sale and commission. They missed a big sale and commission. So he said, Yeah, I'll take them all. So I said, You're you want them all. So instantly I go into a defensive mode, because I've known he'd been there two weeks. You know, we didn't have credit cards. We had checks and cash. Right. And I'm going to How are you going to pay for this son? Sir? Exactly. I said, because I'm thinking, if he pulls a checkbook out, I don't know who this man is. Uh it wouldn't matter who he was. I couldn't I wouldn't know who he was. And so he said, uh I said, Well, how do you want to take care of this? He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a row. Yeah. I mean a large row. And I instantly go into curious. I go, No one has that much money. I'd never seen that much money. We start to the cash stand. I'm behind the cash stand writing the ticket up for these six pair of shoes. And and I I said, Well, what have you been doing today? And he said, Son, he said, I've been down to that Lincoln Mercury place on 75. I came here to buy a Cartier Lincoln for my wife. And I said, You're kidding? He said, No. He said, It's our anniversary. He said, Son, I got there at 10.45 and it was, he said, I stayed till one o'clock and no one waited on me. He said, You really don't think I need five pairs of patent leather shoes, do you? They probably don't fit. I said, Whoa, I can't do this. Because it it my heart broke for him, basically, and he said, You're gonna do it. He said, I'm gonna take the shoes. So I said, Well, do you still want the car? And he said, Not from that car. I won't name your name, but I said, Not from that dealership. And I said, Well, I got a buddy in Duran, Oklahoma that is uh graduated with me and he's assistant manager at a shop there and they they carry Lincoln. If I could get help you get the car, would you he said, Yeah, I'll buy the car. I said, You know where Duran is? And he looked at me and said, uh, yeah, I'm from Cartwright, Oklahoma. I said, You are? He was living on oil land. No, there was a barbecue joint. It's the only thing in Cartwright, Oklahoma, but he had people coming from Dallas, uh, all over the country to eat his barbecue. And I he was smiling and I said, There's not much in Cartwright. I said, Except for Poe Sam's barbecue. And he said, I'm Poe Sam. And those kids learned the lesson of their life because you don't judge a book by discover.

SPEAKER_04 21:06

We've heard that, you know, and you never know when it's gonna pop out like that. But you know, that says something about you, you know, that you would uh uh perceive that to be happening and understand what that man was you know, I mean, he wouldn't keep looking or come in if he wasn't, you know, interested in something, right? Exactly. You know, did you get that from your parents? Did you get that uh just did you have a less than stellar childhood and develop it on your own? You know, where do you think that came from, that empathy?

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Well, we had we all three boys, um we had a we were very fortunate in the parents that we had because my dad was probably one of the most you know, everything was done on a handshake. He had a very minimal education, but he was a farmer. But everything he did, he did on a handshake. Handshake and he lived up to that handshake. Um I I've seen him lose money and lose time helping other people because of his handshake. And they didn't honor the handshake. Well, they honored the handshake, but he offered to do something that took a lot more time than he thought. But he never never complained about it. So I'd I give Dad credit for a lot of that constitution that was built because he was he was a man of few words, but the few words that he said were always factual, you know, in his mind.

SPEAKER_04 22:37

Well you mentioned your parents, so I'm assuming that your mother had some influence, and I would suspect that she was sweet, tender, loving. Otherwise, you'd be more like me.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Well, your mother's sweet and understanding you shouldn't say that, but bottom line is she was she was a great mediator. You know, Dad was super tough. I mean, the first time I ever saw Usually that's the case. No. In my family, that was completely opposite. Okay, uh right the opposite. Well, it can happen either way, but I'll never forget it. I was thirty-two years old before I ever told Dad I thought he was wrong. And I thought his false teeth was gonna fly out of his mouth because we were s I'd gone home to visit, and you know, I'm working, I don't, you know, never use them anyway, but and I said something to him and he was grinding on this deal, and I said, Dad, that's just that's just not the case. And I thought I thought he was his teeth were gonna fly out of his head because he was so s shocked that I would say that. But he gained some respect for me for that, and of course, we never didn't have a good relationship. We always had a great relationship, but he he was he was he he he had a narrow path, but he was solid in that narrow path, if you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_04 24:01

Aaron Powell You know, after you you've worked and ran the store for uh ten years in Sherman, uh are you more uh middle class than your parents? Are your parents poor? I mean, how are are they proud of you? Have you moved to a level at age 33, you know, that they can look at?

SPEAKER_02 24:19

My dad was so proud of me. Um yeah, I mean, it was it was crazy. I mean, my parents were, you know, we didn't have much. I mean, we didn't have new cars and all that kind of stuff. We had granddad's car when he got tired of it or whatever, but uh we didn't know that much about status because we lived on a farm and all the other kids they weren't much different than we were. I mean to be.

SPEAKER_04 24:48

JB said we didn't know we were poor. No, we did not know. In Oak, Arkansas, everybody around us was the same way.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

They were all the same. But you know, they were they were great people. It it just that we didn't have a lot of money. You know, we didn't have any money, but whatever.

SPEAKER_04 25:04

But you you were happy, you know, it seems like we didn't know. And you get to this point and what year is this after you've been there ten years and you're thirty-three years of age there in Sherman?

SPEAKER_02 25:15

Well, here's the deal. I was twenty-three and actually I was actually twenty-two, and I opened my first store in 79. So i it wasn't quite 10 years.

SPEAKER_04 25:30

Yeah, we're just trying to get some ballparks.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

But I was in Sherman when I opened the store because I came. Let me give you a little history about Tyler.

SPEAKER_04 25:44

Um, how and why you left Sherman and opened your first store in Tyler, Texas. Got it. That right? That's what you tell us how that all unfolds in it, I guess in 1979?

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Well, here it was in 1968, I met a guy uh from Tyler named George O. J. His dad, his dad, the family was a very It was the Toyota dealership. They owned the Toyota dealership, and back then it was Toyota and O'smobile. Right. And um actually they I think they had Mercedes in the 70s, but that's when that happened. But long and short, George O. J., I met him um um at a bar. You want to know how I met him?

SPEAKER_04 26:31

I mean, you know, j everybody knows that uh because he used to come over to my house. Okay. Um, you know, in those years. I mean, everybody knows he liked to party.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Yeah, he was great. He uh I was some kids have picked me up for uh to join a fraternity because I was you know, I've I worked in this clothing store, so they picked me up to be in a fraternity and and I was going to a meeting one night and in my little apartment complex, uh this brand new Oldsmobile cutlass was parked parallel behind my car. And I went, What the heck? What's a the car's running windows down. He was in there. He wasn't in there. He was going up the steps across the apartment complex with something in his hand. A bottle in a bag. And I said, uh, hey buddy. And he said, Yeah. And I said, Is this your car? And he said, Yeah. He said, I'll be right back. Well, right back to him is about an hour and fifteen minutes, because I didn't wait that long. I waited about 15 minutes, so I just got in the car and backed it up, moved my car out and left. Well, the next day I'm walking across campus, and here comes this real cool looking dude in a trench coat and da-da-da-da-da. And I passed him, I said, hello. Did he go to Southeastern Oklahoma? Yeah. He he had been to Texas and then. Yeah, I mean, I I knew he was a big Texas fan, you know, like a lot of people in Tyler. He had been to Texas and his grandparents lived in Durant and you know, at Southeastern. So he went down there and and went to school there. So he's walking across campus and I g I said hello to him, and he turns around and says, Hey. And I said, Yeah. He said, Are you Harley? And I said, Yeah. He said, Man, I'm George OJ. Well, that handshake changed my life. And I mean that sincerely. We were unseparable for two years until he went off to Vietnam. But we were unseparable.

SPEAKER_04 28:38

I forgot that. He did go to Vietnam.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

He went to Vietnam. He uh went to I think he went to Officer Canada school. Well he he went to Vietnam as an officer, I know that, because he was he had a he had a nice role over there. Did he go into the country of Vietnam? Yeah, he was in Saigon. He he drove either the general, he was a driver for either the general or one of the real high echelon. He was always sliding into a cushion.

SPEAKER_04 29:10

I mean, look, you could not not like him. No, loved him. Anybody who ever was around him, he always made you feel good. He's great. He was always in a good mood. He'd great.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

But anyway, yeah, he's so he kept talking about Tyler, Texas. And I said, you know, I know about Tyler a little bit, but uh, George, I'm you know, uh he said, you gotta come down there. You just got to come down there. It's the greatest place. And he said, uh he said, don't worry about getting into business. I'll I'll uh my my family knows everyone, and they did. They did. And and he said, My brother-in-law is at People's Bank, which was Sam, Sam Woof.

SPEAKER_04 29:50

And he said is that already his brother-in-law at that time?

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yeah. Yeah, that was they were already married and everything. So anyway, long story short, 'cause um Yeah, that's his sister. Right? Yeah. Carrie. Carrie. Yeah. And then Dee Dee's married to John. John Boothy. Yeah. Okay. Uh, yeah, now you're putting it all together. Yeah, yeah. But it's a great it's a great family. I mean, yeah, it's an unbelievable family. And George was just he was the wild child. He was. But he he had a way about him, and he he was um he said, You gotta come to Tower, the greatest thing ever. So in I was still working for these guys in Sherman, and they said, Well, where do you want to because they were we'd done real well. They want you to open another store? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

For them.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

For them. And so they said, Where would you open this door? Because uh Mike, the guy, the president of the company, was pretty bright, and he said, you know, he could see the writing on the wall. I was either gonna move on or they had to move me up a little bit. And so he said, Does where do you want to go? He said, You want to go to Dallas? I said, No. I said, Let's go to Tyler. So we got in the car and came down to Tyler and we drove down to Chilton. In the Azalea district. Yep. And there's these kids out here selling lemonade and the trees were full, everything's bloomed out. Norman Rockwell moment. Oh, it was unbelievable. I still have a visual of it in my mind. And I said, I'm coming to Tyler, Texas. Couldn't get the money, so I went back. When you say couldn't get the money.

SPEAKER_04 31:37

Well, I didn't have anything to get the money. But your boss, the owner of these stores, did not want to front.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

No. Oh, that was a lot of things. I was leaving the stores. I came in 77 and told him that the money deal came a little later. Um, looked at stores in 77, and then when I opened my first store, I came and couldn't get the money in. Tyler, but I had a guy that had shopped with me for four years in the store, and he had come in at night, because I worked three nights a week. We were in a mall, and he would come in every once a week. And he goes, When are you gonna open your store? And I said, Well, Mike, I don't have any money. He said, All right, get some money. And I said, Well, I'm trying. So this went on for two years. He came in one day or one night with his wife, and he said, Um, all right, how much you need? How much did you need? At that time I needed$150,000 to to get a store open. 79? Uh 7 79. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 32:47

I'm just trying we're trying to, you know, I mean that's a lot of money. Uh, you know, but that that for a clothing store that seems like a lot of money back then to open just to open up. That's what it took.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

Because you just get you a space and then you just have to buy inventory. Well, we got a space, but it was it was a vacant. Well, anyway, I couldn't get the money here because we d I had no reputation here. I had a I had ten years basically. I thought O. J. said he could take care of it. Yeah, it wasn't quite that easy. But it his intentions were good. No question, they were pure No, the intentions were pristine. He just couldn't pull that off. And they said, No, O. J. This is one of your buddies. Yeah, well, not only that, this is your relative, and you can't do this. Yeah. But they said uh when when we were talking about it, they said, Well, what do you have? And I said, Well, I got a car note, I got a uh a house note. And they said, and that's what you have? And I said, You got it. That's what I have. So anyway, that that's why I couldn't get any money. But this guy in Van Alstein, Texas, called him named Mike Hines, he said, How much you need, I'm gonna loan you the money. And I said, Mike, you sure you're gonna do this? He said, uh, you're gonna open your own store. Why why do you think he was motivated to help you? Well, Chad, I treated him just like I treat you. And and I mean I took care of him for four years, he and his wife, and and I worked. And the relationship that's what a good relationship is. The relationship grew, and we don't have enough time in this podcast to tell you that relationship. It never ended. He he had a lot of faith in you. He knew you were gonna be successful, and he liked you. Well, I don't know that he knew I was gonna be successful, but he knew I was gonna take care of him. And when I say that, he had enough faith in my you know, my ability to loan me the money. And it was a family-owned bank, which back in the 70s should be. They could control those loans real easy. Yeah, his dad owned the bank. He was my age exactly. That caught people into trouble in the early 80s. Yeah, big time. Big time, and it got all of us in trouble. But the long story short, he took care of me and and he he was dedicated throughout the rest. And when I got ready to move to Sherman, I mean to Ty from Sherman to Tyler, um, he said, Man, are you sure you want to do that? And I said, Mike, I have to. Sherman just didn't it just doesn't have anything. Sherman is not the spot, is it? It's not the spot. It doesn't have you know, I'd studied the income, I'd studied the demographics of Tyler at that time. Doctors had money. It was built-in shoppers. It was Tyler, Texas, or Midland, and I'd already been close to Midland. So we're out on that. Tyler had green trees and grass. So and money. And when I say money, it's you had old money and you had good incomes. Had lots and lots of old money. So in and and people traveled here, they it was a whole different demographic.

SPEAKER_04 35:58

They were more cosmopolitan for East Texas. Totally. Right? I mean, that's kind of Tyler's reputation. Yeah, very cosmopolitan. You get the money. You get the space. Is this the space on Amherst? Yeah. Where your dad came in. First time I ever met you when I was a kid. I don't know if I was in middle school or early. No, no, no. You were uh you were in ninth grade. All right, that's what I'm saying. I was right there. Yeah. When he would be taking me. And I just still remember you over in that far corner of that strip center. Yeah. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

And you called it Jay Carl's? Yeah. Jay Carl's. Because I remember Jay Carl's. Yeah. You know, again, I didn't want my name on it. All right.

SPEAKER_04 36:37

This is in your shy period where you're not confident enough to be Exactly. Hey, I'm Harley.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

If you put it in those words exactly.

SPEAKER_04 36:44

Yeah, that's right. Hey, Chris, what do we have on that Jay Carl slide? Because it's hard to find old stuff. Uh all right. So we found an old see, old English village. I was right. That's on Amherst. My gosh. Um, here's a sale. 20 to 33.5% off Friday and Saturday only. But Jay Carl's, Harley, tell us where you and why you picked that name.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Well, Jay Carl's, you know, a lot of us have other lives before this life. And when um when I was in Sherman, I met a girl and uh she was a great girl. We're still friends, and uh, she had a little boy. He was 10 months old, and he is still in my life after f 50 years or whatever it is, yeah. And his name was Jesse Carl. All right. And so I pegged that and I said, you know, I'll just name it after you. And I named it Jay Carl's. And uh that's where that name came from.

SPEAKER_04 37:45

And that name, you know, remained for a long time. Yeah. Um you were in that spot in the old English village for about how long before you moved?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Well, it was real strange. We hit town at a very opportune time. There was a lot of money being exchanged around, a lot of building going on. Interest rates were very high, like in the 14s and 15s. Right, they were high. They were very high. But there was a lot of money being spent and there was a lot of money in banks. So when I got to town, there were a number of bankers that saw what we were doing. We had Ralph Lauren. We brought Ralph Lauren to to Tyler. You had it from We were the at J. Carls, we had Ralph Lawrence in S I mean, we had Ralph Lauren in Sherman, so we brought it to Tyler, Texas with us because Ralph was real hard to get back in the eighties. They were very selective about who they gave it. How I got it, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_04 38:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

I did it on my own. The stores that I worked for that had the five stores did not have Ralph Lawrence. Okay. But I was I was bound and determined to get Ralph Lawrence. So I campaigned for it. It was hot. I mean, remember the polo store in Highland Park Village? I mean, it was Stu. You remember Stu? I remember Stu well. I mean, Guy Danielson, I mean he literally led the charger polo back to Tyler. I know. Well, Guy Danielson was actually part owner in that store. In the one on Old English? No. In the one in Dallas, the polo store.

SPEAKER_04 39:22

I did not know that, but that makes sense because my dad and him and Donelson were friends. That's right. My dad was always trying to drag us up to the polo store.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

That's right. And you know, it was it was part of their repertoire. I mean, they loved that store and should. I mean, it's a beautiful store.

SPEAKER_04 39:38

It is. They've moved it. Um you know, it's moved around. I don't even uh know if it's in Highland Park Village anymore. I don't think it is. They took it out of Highland Park and put it on Knox Henderson.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

That's right. I went into that store. And it's pretty cool down there. But why that that store was a landmark in Highland Park Center. I mean, it was it was the I mean there was Dallas Cowboys. It was shopping in there. That's right. People went there. They went to Highland Park Village to go to the Ralph Lawrence store.

SPEAKER_04 40:07

How does r how does Danielson ever get any interest, you know, financial interest in the Ralph Lauren brand store?

SPEAKER_02 40:16

He and I can't remember all the names. There were three guys, three or four guys that that actually promoted Danielson and were in Norman, Oklahoma. Right. I mean, they all all those guys came from. They came from OU. Right. And so the Danielson, I'm pretty sure, worked at Harrels, which Harrels was the store in Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_04 40:41

You think he was in clothing sales in college or medical school? Yes. Okay. And so you'll have that kind of in common, and you're both from Oklahoma?

SPEAKER_02 40:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 40:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

So what happened was, you know, at Harold's, Harold had huge influence in the clothing business all over Oklahoma, all over Texas and Oklahoma. But the bottom line was, is that Harold, I think, pushed those guys a little bit, said if you're going to go do this, this might be what you want to think about or whatever. They may have a different, you know, story about that. But someone put them in contact to bring the Ralph Lawrence store to Highland Park Village. So they got involved in that and got the store to Highland Park. That's how it got too.

SPEAKER_04 41:36

Guy was a doctor when that store opened, wasn't he? He was already practicing in Tyler. Yeah, he's already a doctor.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

So But there was a relationship that carried over from his time at Harold's. I'm pretty sure he had some con you know contacts with that. Someone put those guys together, and I c I I'm not gonna say who they were because I don't know. But anyway, uh guys told me the story. I just don't remember it verbatim. But anyway, they ended up helping or getting that store to Highland Park. Well, the Highland Park store ballooned them. It was like our little polo shop here in Tyler. It went crazy, and that store went double crazy.

SPEAKER_04 42:15

Well, why don't you put that in the wealthiest neighborhood in uh the state of Texas, just about, right? You drop a polo store on the edge of the of where Jerry Jones now lives. Right.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Yeah, right down the street. Actually. Yeah, it wa it it all has some uh connections, but Ralph Lorangot was the thing that kind of put us on the map here, along with Donaldson, your dad, uh Teagarden.

SPEAKER_04 42:44

I mean, my dad wasn't buying like Danielson and Donaldson. Well, you know my dad always liked to he loved clothes, he loved to look sharp. I mean, yeah, uh he was always focused on his appearance.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

He was one of those guys. I mean I mean more so thanks to the thing. I mean I mean like Well, Donaldson brought your dad in and then it just ballooned from there, you know, Dr. T Garden and Lundy and all those guys started falling in there. All right. And it it it and then within a year and a half we'd outgrown the store. So that's when we built the store out um, you know, where Susie Robinson was.

SPEAKER_04 43:25

It's where if people who listen to this and aren't from here but know Susan Robinson, you're about to go to that space and occupy that. Yeah. It's already built. No, I built it.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

Okay. I had a guy that promoted us, wanted us to be there, so we he built the store and I put I did the interior. The build out. Yeah, I did the build out.

SPEAKER_04 43:49

They built you have this existing structure and they say if you lease it, you know, you have to build it out. Yes. Right? Because it was very much like a polo store in Dallas.

SPEAKER_02 43:58

It looked really We w we emulated a lot of those stores. I mean, we were good copiers at the time. I mean, we kind of got our own deal going later, but we were copying stores that were successful and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_04 44:10

Aaron Ross Powell Back then, that fifth, the kind of the the the Tyler Smith County is more cosmopolitan, more you know, more like Dallas. And did you find yourself getting a lot of business from the outlying cities? Exactly. Coming in.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

You know, that store was the real door opener for us, uh me at that time. They, you know, it was it was a nice store. It was a nice store. It was a nice store. And and we had Ralph Lauren and we had these lines, and and um uh we had good people. We had Charles Hampton and those guys. Clay Simpson. Clay Simpson, my goodness. I mean, I remembered him from those days. Clay Simpson was um he was awesome.

SPEAKER_04 44:57

There was some other guy, uh Jimmy something or another. Uh we hadn't guys go through either in college or they were always younger, kind of good looking guys.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Yeah, we had some great guys, and and we still have great guys. But the long long and short of it is I guess Clay and Charles were the real they were the real landmarks of the store besides me. And uh, you know, we always had some cute girls working in the lady store and all that.

SPEAKER_04 45:25

I was about to say, people that don't realize you had women's clothing at that time, didn't you? We did.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Uh there was a girl from here. Uh d uh her name was Debbie Harrington at the time. Right. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:39

I live in uh her house. Yeah, yeah, okay right now? Okay. Isn't that or I there's some connection Debbie has with the house that I live in now because they she told me about it. Okay. Yeah. But uh that was Debbie Harrington, would be Debbie Howard. Debbie Howard. Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

So she was in the Well, she came to me and sh she said, uh, if you're gonna do this store, she said, I always wanted to do a ladies' store. And I said, Well, let's get she said, but I can't do it by myself. And she said, uh, would you be interested in doing it with me? Well, at that time there was so much borrowing power, you know, with things with us moving at a fast pace.

SPEAKER_04 46:23

Anytime it's so easy to borrow money, you know there's a bad ending to the story.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

I'm surprised you.

SPEAKER_04 46:30

Yeah, uh I I hope you hadn't been there. No, I have not. And it's one of the reasons I I'll tell you this. I'm very conservative. I pay off everything, okay? Yeah. And I just remember my dad in the 80s and the stories about friends that got caught up. Wow. And you know what I mean? Oh, I know exactly what I mean. Some went to prison, some went completely broke. Yep. And and you know, I mean, he was buying somebody's Rolegs from him. Yep. You know, I just remember how hard that was for some people.

SPEAKER_02 47:01

I would say you could take the bankruptcies from 1986 to 1990 and put those bankruptcies and take the whole history of Tyler, Texas, and probably not top that number. That's how many people went bankrupt. But a lot of those people, and I'm not being critical, were in situations where they could go bankrupt and it didn't change their lives. They were the laws were different.

SPEAKER_04 47:29

Doctors, right. The lawyers were different where you could the the bankruptcy laws have changed. But back then, you could file for bankruptcy eliminate. If you had a good salary, you could just keep on going. You keep on going.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

And the only ones that it really had a big effect on were people like myself that lived on borrowed money. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. The borrowed money bought the clothes that had to get sold. We couldn't go bankrupt.

SPEAKER_04 47:50

I'm not saying I would have. No, I mean we couldn't.

unknown 47:52

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 47:52

Yeah, because I mean you're looking at borrowing money, interest on that money, making a a a decision on inventory that has to be liked by the public and bought with a margin that is whatever that margin is. Right. Right. And then a commission to the salesman that carves that number even smaller. Right. I mean, it it chips awake fast. So you're in the middle of this big bar and you say, okay, Debbie, we'll borrow some more money.

SPEAKER_02 48:18

Let's go borrow money. And we borrowed money and did the store. Well, we ran this door together for about a year and a little over a year. And she was going through some you know, people have things that happen to them in a way.

SPEAKER_04 48:31

Everybody in this city could sit here and say a lot of people that there's ups and downs, there's changes in people's lives that, you know, and yeah, that happens to people and it knocks them off their game temporarily.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

I did. And she said, I I gotta get out. And so I said, No problem. And so I took her out of the deal and I ran this. We'd ran the store. That's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_04 48:52

You brought in Julie Donaldson.

SPEAKER_02 48:53

Yeah. Well, I had Julie Donaldson. Yeah. Golly, that's great. I can't remember.

SPEAKER_04 48:58

I mean, I'm a historian of Tyler. Yeah, yeah. But Ron Donaldson, Julie, there's probably a connection there. Very definite connection. And I remember Julie was sweet. Fabulous. Always fabulous.

SPEAKER_02 49:08

She had the salesperson's. Yeah, she was terrific. She was. Julie was amazing. But in the in those years, you know, every one of those girls worked with us. That one was Sandra. Right. Sarah. Sarah. And Eve um Whitney. Whitney worked. He worked a little later, but all that whole family basically worked in the case. All the kids, all the Donaldson kids worked at J. Carl's at one time.

SPEAKER_04 49:38

Is there any other family in Tyler that can say that? I mean, I don't think there is.

SPEAKER_02 49:43

I don't know. I don't know. But it it was a great time. I mean, there was it was a very educational time, but you know, we made a lot of friends and and uh things were going well.

SPEAKER_04 49:54

Things were going well until eighty-seven. Right. And that was after this tax law that was passed in eighty-six. Yeah. And then it impli it kind of stopped everybody.

SPEAKER_02 50:04

Trevor Burrus, Jr. You you have to understand the oil industry went to crap in a handbasket. And we had so many people that depended on that source of income. And then the a lot of those people, which were young people, but they didn't work and they had income. So that that population almost vanished in our store. So this number that we were kicking Bobo with went to about half that. And with that, you know, comes people looking for money. And it gets really difficult because it can happen so fast.

SPEAKER_04 50:44

I mean, the people saying demands on you to repay loans.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:50

Right? Yeah. You know, it's funny, what you mentioned, it brought to mind a couple of podcasts that we've had, uh, including one with Scott Martinez, Tyler Economic Development Council. Uh, you mentioned George Auger was pivotal in your life, but this crash that you're talking about led to Tom Mullins coming and forming the Tyler Economic Development Council in 1989 with the sole purpose and mission to diversify away from the oil and gas industry in Tyler. I remember every bit of that. Right?

SPEAKER_02 51:21

Tom Mullins was amazing.

SPEAKER_04 51:22

But you just described how it could be feast or famine if the economy had did not spread out, right?

SPEAKER_02 51:30

Exactly. It was it was it you know, it didn't diversify until the nineties. Right it didn't it didn't happen overnight. We didn't have the medical industry and so on and so on and so on. Right, no.

SPEAKER_04 51:43

But that was a goal. They were purposefully intentionally trying to get that here.

SPEAKER_02 51:47

That's right. And it it it was really a tough time. Matter of fact, we went broke, I mean debt broke. Yeah, I mean, because Jay Croll's ends at some point. It closed in nineteen um let me think about it. Was it eighty eight? So that store we opened out there in eighty-three and we closed it in eighty-eight. There's a lot in between there, but the bottom line was it was basically because of the whole economic structure of East Texas was a direct effect on I mean, we didn't do a lot different. We just didn't have we just didn't have the business. And and of course banks were looking to us to pay the loans, and it was we didn't go bankrupt. We didn't do anything, we paid them off.

SPEAKER_04 52:36

But uh you couldn't keep going with the payments that you owed, I guess from credit, the lease, with the margins of the people that were coming into shop after that. Yeah, right? It was just really a numbers game, right?

SPEAKER_02 52:53

It was a numbers game. And and it happened to a lot of people. It did happen to a lot of people. It happened to lumber yards. Yeah. It happened to not just retail stores like mine. But it you know, going out of business was the only reason I went out of business was to regroup. Is to regroup. Right. Because I never ever planned on staying out of the business. I just had to get out of debt.

SPEAKER_04 53:20

And to get out of debt, you have to sometimes you have to make some serious decisions, and that was when I'm so you get out of debt, I'm assuming, before we go to um you know, another era called the suit club era, right? And uh, you know, w when when we talk about how difficult it is to get out of debt and the money that has to be made, we have to look at the prices of the clothing to see where the money would come from. Right. And when we look at suits that are$299 for a suit, I mean, one must wonder how many suits have to be sold.

SPEAKER_02 53:56

But Chad, if you'll remember, when that all happened, everyone were there was the the guys in Dallas promoting, there was the men warehouse, everything was promotional. Everything. Everything went promotional. The only ones that weren't promotional was Neiman Marcus and the polo shop. When you say promotional, you mean uh marketing a discount. Discount. That's right. And so Clay Simpson and I sat down at our breakf my breakfast room table and I said, Clay, we're gonna address this. Clay went with you to the suit club. Yeah. Right? Yeah, Clay's he he's he was right there.

SPEAKER_04 54:33

Yeah, I know. I mean I you speak fondly of him, and I do remember him at the Suit Club. He was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 54:38

When did the Suit Club open, Harley? We opened that in 1990. We were we weren't close, but um maybe six months, three to six months, we had to regroup and find inventory. The way I did it, we didn't we didn't have any credit, you know, at that time. And you're looked you're looked at as a poor credit risk.

SPEAKER_04 55:06

I'm a very poor credit risk. Right. I mean, just not being ugly, but No, you're not being ugly, you're being honest. And it's it's a it's a barrier that you've got to figure out to get back in business. Right.

SPEAKER_02 55:15

So I gotta figure out how to get back in business. So I go to New York, spend a week up there. I go to every one of my major manufacturers, and I said, Look, guys, y'all are having trouble shipping people. I know you are, because all my friends are in the same ship that I'm on. And uh, here's how I want to do it. I'm gonna start a new company called the Suit Club, and it's gonna be promotional because I got to live through this promotional age. I gotta figure out how to get through it. But I'm gonna have better goods, but you're gonna I'm gonna do it on consignment. I can't get credit, you can't give me credit, but you're gonna give me inventory out of this warehouse full of inventory that you have. That you're not moving anyway. But you're not moving anyway. You're pretty bright. And and uh you're gonna give me that inventory, and I'm gonna pay you every week for what I sell.

SPEAKER_04 56:08

Trevor Burrus, Jr. But I mean that's genius in a way. I mean, talk about no place to go, right, except for what you just said. And I don't know if somebody else was doing this or you just thought this is the only road I have forward.

SPEAKER_02 56:20

It's the only road I had. And Clay and us up there, we designed the logo and we came up with the name and we put it out there. And and Clay Clay helped me for a long time. But kind of a neat part of this story was that um I mean you're even open on Sunday.

SPEAKER_04 56:40

Yeah, we'd open anytime somebody come. You were working, right? I mean, most time you don't see a a clothing store open Sunday one to five. Right?

SPEAKER_02 56:49

I mean we were we were trying everything to to keep the cash flow going too.

SPEAKER_04 56:53

We're between Jason's Deli and Foley's and you got it. I remember that little spot, it reminded me of Amherst. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 57:00

Like you'd gone full circle back to the beginning. It couldn't be it couldn't be further ahead back in there than that spot. You weren't getting much roof advertising. Well there's none. There is there was Bill Dickens, and he tried an Oxford clothing store here when things were really great in the 70s. And Bill was a great salesman and a good merchant, but Oxford clothing at that time was thirty five hundred to five thousand dollars. So that's back in the seventies. For a suit? For a suit. Okay, and that's a far cry from 299. Yeah. So he closed that store, and that was the only store that was finished out that I could just slide in. And so I slid into that. Probably didn't have a lease. Well, I had a lease, but I took it on an annual lease and I had a year there, and then um a g a person that has passed away came to me and promoted this place where we were across the street with the suit club. But the suit club, what was interesting, uh Where was this place across the street? Well, where where I was on O'Bullard and next to Brookshers. Oh, you're talking where I was 15 years.

SPEAKER_04 58:15

Did Suit Club move again? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

Well the Suit Club moved over there and we were there for 15 years before Bridget and I built the shop.

SPEAKER_04 58:22

Right, but I'm trying to visualize this place, and this was in the place that there's a salon or something right where is it? Brookshers and Shiloh.

SPEAKER_02 58:31

Well, okay. Um it's on the it's right on that corner, right behind that building. Used to be the dry cleaners. That next building. There was a little restaurant there, a little crab house or something like that. Breakers. Breakers, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:45

But next to Breakers, that's where the suit club went. Yeah. That's where we went.

SPEAKER_02 58:49

All right.

SPEAKER_04 58:50

And we stayed there for 15 years. And you say you referenced somebody that passed away. Did they help you in some way?

SPEAKER_02 58:56

Well, the the the real estate guy did. Um, he came to me and he said, You need a bigger place and you need to get out of this corner. And I said, Well, it's gonna be tough. Uh he said, Well, I think I can help you, and he did. And um I'm embarrassed, I can't think of his name. Uh, but he's the one that promoted that space, and we ended up moving over there, and I went in and painted at night and got it all slicked up a little bit because it was an auto shop, you know, because that's what he did, a BMW aftermarkets auto shop. Harwood. Yeah. Kind of well, he did mufflers and stuff like that. There were brake pads everywhere. But anyway, long story short.

SPEAKER_04 59:38

Yeah, kind of yeah. I'm just trying to I'm trying to jolt the name out of the guy that I'm trying to think. But if you think of it, you can say but if not, it's okay. Yeah. You know, what I wanted to ask you that I didn't, did Bridget ever work at J. Carl's?

SPEAKER_02 59:51

Yeah. She didn't work at J. Carl's, but when we had the lady store, she ran the lady store after Debbie left. Is she the lady that ran it you're talking about? Well, Debbie opened it, and then Bridget came on. I hired I hired Bridget. She was at um Mary V's, and Bridget came out one day. We already knew each other pretty well, and she came out one day and she said, Okay, uh uh no, she went to work for Marsha Wells uh at the at the end of the shopping center where we were, and uh she came to me one day and she said, You know, I'm thinking about making a move. Would you be interested in putting me in this store? And I said, eh, you know, I'm not gonna give between women and da-da-da-da, because Marsha was friends. She said, Well, I'm either going to Mary V's or coming here. And I said, Well, you're coming here. And that's where it all started. So that was 1987.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:51

All right. So 1987, for the viewers, Bridget is Bridget Manzell. For those that don't know, Bridget Manzell and I went to Andy Woods, uh Hubbard, and Robert E. Lee our entire time. Uh I can remember her mom, Pat, dropping off John Paul, and Bridget. And so that's how long I've known her. 1987 was the year uh after we got out of high school. Yep. And so Bridget went immediately into retail clothing, I'm assuming. Oh, she was already in it. We're gonna have her on this show at some point in the future, but uh because people know her store, I'm sure. If they know Bridget's, they now know the connection between you and Bridget.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:28

Yeah. She was amazing. She's uh she was the best at everything that we did in the retail business. I mean, she was amazing. And she was she started working in the retail Probably in high school. She worked at uh Leon's the shoe store next door to where my store was. That's how I met her. Okay. And she was they put her in a pressing room or steam room, and she got out of that and then did lingerie and all this, and they put her on the floor. But she was a high school or she was a high school kid. And then when she graduated, y'all graduated in eighty six. Yes. And then two years later, she went to work at at our store or a year and a half later. She gets there and it survives and then it closes. Well, she yeah, but it didn't close in eighty-eight. She was there a year or so, so we we were closer to ninety because we we started the suit club in ninety, so it had to be eighty.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:29

I mean, I know it's been a lot of a long time. That's a long time. Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to get general benchmark, not old you to the date.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:35

Yeah, we're real close. Yeah. All right. And so uh but we got to be good friends in the eighties, and she ran the store and she was she was awesome in the store. And and the ladies' store did real well. We just we just couldn't keep it all glued together.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:54

Because women are good customers in Tyler. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And we know that from the success Bridget had at her first store over there in Berkfield Center. Right. Because when the suit club emerges, you know, Bridget's she's not in the suit club. No. So she's gotta do something else, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:12

And so she came to me in 1992, and we were still friends. And y'all weren't together? No, we were not together. Okay. We were only together in the 80s, late 80s. Spoiler alert, eventually Harley and Bridget get married and are together to this day. No, we weren't married in the eighties, though. We were good friends in the 80s. And so uh she came to me in 1992 and said, Okay, I'm opening my own store. I said, Great. And uh so it was a good store. I always promoted her. She was so good at it. And so I helped her with her open to buys and stuff like that, and we got her in the store. And that was where, you know, she was on Burkfield down that area. Right there on Broadway. So she did that store. And then lucky enough for me, life as it is. Um The Suit Club did well. Suit Club did well. Well, we stayed in business, let's put it like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:06

Okay. Well, and back then, uh climbing out of the early nineties, that was a good thing. That was a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:12

For retail. It was. I mean, we had to stay in business, and the only way to stay in business was to come up with some avenue to sell merchandise. And it really it was pretty much about discount, but we had better goods. We we had You had a better discounted item. We had a we had a better discount item. We actually had Burberry and things like that. That were hung up in a warehouse somewhere. Hung up in a warehouse. And we were getting that stuff and promoting it. Now it wasn't like we were giving it away, don't get me wrong. No, no, I mean you still had to make a profit. And you had to pay back the guys on consignment. We had to pay back everybody you know we owed money to. But the bottom line was it worked. And we so with that suit club concept, all my buddies started calling me, going, Hey, what the heck are you doing? And I said, Well, I'm trying to stay alive. And they go, Well, we need your help to, or we need tell us what you're doing. So I put uh David Schellenberger in college station. He get he jumped on and he started his suit club. And then we had Dr. Bourne, James Bourne in Midland, he started his suit club.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:20

When you say they started them, have you have you monetized this for yourself in a franchise? Are you a part of the deal? What's going on?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:27

These guys were all such good friends. You just helped them. I just helped them. I mean, we just kind of put them in, helped them get get the same concept working in their stores. And the I mean, to this day, two or three of 'em, two of 'em are still suit clubs.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:43

But I mean, would you run the suits through your shop to them and and and make them a little bit of a markup?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:49

I took 'em to New York and introduced them to the people that we were doing business with and those guys made their own determination whether they wanted to do business with these guys. But they were all good guys. They all had the same business philosophy. So really we just kind of we used the suit club when I say used, we we tied all of our stores together for buying power. Okay. I knew because there has to be an angle here, and we've just come to it. Yeah. We we volume discount. Volume discount. And so not only did we get help from the these people, but we started buying our own goods. You could get away from the discounted.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:31

We started moving away from that. You could get a name brand. Yeah. So the Suit Club was kind of it was getting watered down with better product.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:39

It just kept it we kept moving to a better place. And as we moved to that better place, we got away from the discounts and we got away from the, you know, the consignment goods. We started buying our own goods. But we did it as a group. We all went to market together. We all did it as a group. And we stayed that group for quite some time. What happened was during after I got or after we got the five stores together and everybody's kind of breathing a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:15

Is this joint credit at this point? No. We don't have any credit. Okay. I was wondering if you guys had built a history with these five stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:23

They were they were basically looking at me, but I didn't have any money, but I had set the deal up and the people knew all of these guys. These look these guys are all reputable guys. They just you know they were all in Texas and Texas stunk at that time. So after we got the suit club kind of cranked up, there was a another phase to this. A guy from New York found out about the suit club and he said, What are you doing? That's my trademark.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:56

And I said, What? No. I was I was anticipating somebody called you and go, hey, I've got this suit club name trademarked or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

No, no, he calls me and he says, What are you doing? And I said, Well I'm trying to stay alive, you know. And he said, Well, you're doing what we do. And I said, Well, what do you do? He said, We finance stores like yours. He said, Um, I'm gonna come out there and see it. I said, Well now look, I'm kinda okay with what we're doing. He said, Well, you're not okay, because we have access to everything. And he and they did. They already had like 17 stores that they did this with. He was from Miami but lived in New York, and so they he flew out. And so he told me the concept, and it it was pretty it was a it kept us alive. He got a he got a percentage. Okay. How does he win? He gets a percentage of everything that we sell. It's his money instead of bank money. It's his money instead of bank money, and he gets a percentage of gross sales. It's kind of like a sh a financial shark type thing, but he would be a loan shark. He had all the inventory. There was no knee kneecap breaking or anything. He had money from Washington, these real estate people funded him. So he he he could buy anything. So we g we didn't have to worry about buying new lines and getting back into business. We just had to pay for it. So all five stores, he's he came for a week. I took him to three out of five, I didn't go to Midland, and we got to the airport. He's fixing to get on a plane. We hadn't talked about whether he was gonna do it, whether he wasn't gonna do it. And I said, Well, what do you think? He said, I'll do your store and college station. I said, Nah, Dale, it's not gonna work.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:59

I said, Why do you care at this point?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:01

Because these guys are friends.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:03

But I mean, it's one thing to be friends, and I have friends. It's another thing that, you know, these stores stand alone based on the people that are in them and the markets, right? Yeah. So why would you jeopardize capital for guys in other places?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:15

These guys these guys got on board with the suit club concept because of me.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:22

All right. They got on board. So how did they help you to create this loyalty that I can see that's coming out of you? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:28

Well, we we just we had been friends fifteen years before that, before we all went broke, basically. You know, we'd been friends back in the in the 70s. So they all were in the I know how it sounds too.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:44

I'm wondering like why couldn't that store that didn't get credit from this guy from Miami and New York just go get their own at this point or stay on the consignment model. Well, here's the deal.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

He got on the plane. I said, I'm not gonna do it unless you do all of them. I mean, you're a card player. Well, I was Hugh Buffing. You didn't even have a hand. I had a straight I had no hand. You didn't have a hand, the guy finally said, Fine, call me. I gotta I gotta deuce and a king or something, you know. I mean and so he got on the plane, left, and called me back. It was less than two weeks later. He had his main guy who I'd met, he called back and said, We're gonna do all of. And so they did all the stores. And we st we did all those stores stayed in business with him for almost ten years. And then when I came out of it in nineteen ninety-nine You came out of that financial I came out of all of it. I mean, my life, you know, I mean, I paid off all the loans that I business loans and everything, the mistakes that I had made, it took me nine years, and I paid um I paid one of the things that they wanted, the big New York group wanted, they wanted a Dallas store. They like big cities and they wanted to be in Dallas. So my banker in Van Alsteen, Texas, loaned me, which I didn't have anything again, enough money to put in a store. And they this is where friendships didn't work out. A friend of mine That's why I'd cautioned you about the other stores. Yeah. The friend a good friend of mine, and um God rest his soul, he came Do we know him? Huh? Who is he? You don't know him. Oh he was he was from Sherman. And he came to me and he said, Look, you got anything I can do? And I said, uh I said, It's a tough time. He said, I know, but man, I'm he said, I'm dire straight. Did he know anything about the clothing business? He had been in business. He he had worked for me at one time. And I said, Would you want to run the Dallas store? He said, Heck yeah, I'll run the Dallas store. So I put him in that store, borrowed the money to do it, and little did I know, we were selling clothes like crazy. We were on Preston Road in Alpha. I mean, right there in the heart of things. Yeah. Uh, you know, in s in uh kind of North Dallas, and things were rocking. And I went down there one day and I said, Hey, where's the money? I was about to say that. And he started crying. He was a gambler. He was a captain. He got divorced and he could have had all those problems. But he he he rolled he was a roller. He got in with the cowboys and did some shows and did some stuff like that, and he was spending money. Your money? Yeah. So I called New York and they said, uh-oh. So they flew down the next day and shut him down, took all of his merchandise, boxed it up, sent it back to New York. Then the guy that helped me get into business with these guys, he came to the store and he said, Well, it's not as bad as you think. And I said, Well, how bad is it? And he told me, and I went, How can you say that's not bad? He said, Well, he said, You have this much in reserve. He said, So we're taking that, because we had to set up a reserve account for every and then you owe us this. So nine years from that day, I paid it all off.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:21

All right. What I hear is a man who's in debt from people from New York, he's also, for some reason, very motivated to pay these people back. There's also links to uh organized crime and the garment district, and so one has to worry uh, you know, before the crackdowns in New York, you know, um, you wonder if, you know, you had that fear in any way, not knowing anything, whether or not the people that wanted their money uh, you know, might be more insistent than the local bankers. Here's the thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:56

These guys really were they were quite motivated, but they had the money and they they weren't bad people. The guy I actually worked with, um, we're still friends, uh, actually to to make a full circle. Yes, let's connect the dots, huh? I loaned him some money to help him. He has his own stores in Manhattan now. And um he was having some trouble six months. You loaned him money. I loaned him money. I mean, you just got all you just got all the time. Don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't that kind it wasn't big money. Okay, good.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:32

It was little money. Because I mean, it sounds like 1990. When Y2K doesn't crash the cash registers, I mean, you're in the clear finally for once in all in all 15 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:43

It really kind of I had to pay these guys off. My bank was involved, the guy that put me in business. He was the guy, you know, every attorney friend that I had said declare bankruptcy, you don't have a choice. And I said, I said, guys, I think everybody does it. That's what they said. They did. They said everyone does it. And so there was a guy I'll tell you the guy's name, Roger Sanders in Sherman, Texas. He's a good attorney. He's about he's probably retired. But he called me every name in the book, said, You're stupid, you're this, you're that, and he said, declare bank. I said, Roger, I can't. I might the banker that put me in business is the one I owe the most money to. And he said, You'll never get it done. I said, I will. And he said, You can't, not with the way business is now, and da da da. I said, Roger, watch me. He said, How long do you think it'll take? I said, Oh, I'll be out in five years, just like doing a jail sentence, I'll be out in five years. And he said, No way. And so he agreed to take care of Dallas and work those things out that that guy had done. And then I started paying, went to the guy that took me to the cleaners, found him in Dallas. We'd been friends for 25 years, found him in the World Trade Center, and I said, Can we talk? And he said, Yeah. I said, uh where? He said in the bathroom. So we went to the restaurant and I said, Larry, we've been friends for 25 years. We can't let this kill this friendship. So here's what I'm gonna do. If you'll pay me$200 a month until you get back on your feet where you can help me pay this off, I will never say a word. You know how many I got? None? None. So I did it, I'm not bragging, but I did it myself, and uh we finished it up in 1999, and that's when Bridget and I started our lives, you know, pretty much. When did you get married to Bridget? In nineteen ninety-nine. All right.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:04

Things changed dramatically. Before we jump and go forward from 2000, I want to ask you about your perspective. You know, um I lived in a neighborhood in a cul-de-sac where uh one of my best friends, Vance Hughes, his dad, Cliff Hughes, was what's known as a traveling salesman.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:20

Right? He carried suits in the back of his car. I remember seeing it. Yeah. And we saw a dramatic impact at one point where that job was almost like a travel agent where it disappeared. Yeah. And it did.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:35

I mean that it got too expensive for what they were, you know, for how they were doing it. You know, you they'd go store to store to store. Discounts. Discount. Right? Yeah. Discounts killed the traveling salesman. It killed that guy.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:50

It really did. Well, I think people listen to this can see how difficult um it was to navigate from the early 80s to the end of the 90s. And, you know, thankfully for you, you did that. Uh, you thrived, you met Brid or you knew Bridget, but you got married. Uh, and then how is it that, you know, the concept of Harley's, you know, you finally did you build confidence from surviving the bankruptcy so that you would then call something Harley's instead of the suit club or somebody else's?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:20

Now, uh Bridget was the instigator of Harley's It's like my wife. They always push us to do things that we don't want to do. Why in the world are you calling this a suit club? It's not the suit club, it's Harley's. And she said, uh, and so she kept pounding that into me. She said, people come to Harley's, they don't come to the suit club, they come to Harley's. Get rid of that name. And I said, Okay, okay. So we did, and that was kind of how that all started. But uh You moved in when? Uh we built this building in 2006. We moved in in 2007, but the life teaming changing uh, you know, you know, I'd already been through H E L.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:05

So in 1999, what did Winston Churchill say about when in hell? He said, just keep going.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:13

You know, I'll be honest with you. Um one thing that I can say to all the young people and people that have ambition, you can't ever say I might not make it. You can't ever even think it. You can't even let it cross your mind. That's one thing that I never, ever, ever said or thought about. But it takes time.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:59

You know, paying everybody back. Was that basically to save your your retail life? That is, if you didn't do that, you'd never have credit, you'd never be in the business, or was it just simply an echo of what your father was like that, you know, you said you'd do something. It was the latter. Had nothing to do with that other thing. Yeah, you know, that is a lot of people um the harder it gets, you know, um, the harder that is to stick with.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:26

Yeah. Well, don't get me wrong, I'm not a superstar about, but I I mean I always thought you were a moral pillar of the community. Well, you know, I've always tried to follow your lead home. I want to rethink that, but long story short, it it was really it was from in here is what made me pay those I didn't have to pay them back. Right. I know you I could've I could have I could have figured out an easy way. I could have figured it out. But there wasn't there was no easy way out. And uh I got I gotta tell you this. You know, I tell people I've told a couple people this, but after that Dallas deal fell apart and I owed all this money, well the attorney in Dallas it was uh kind of working me through this where, you know, it wasn't I wasn't gonna spend time he was working out, you know, radio advertising and stuff like that, which we did. We agreed to pay a certain amount to all these people, which we didn't have to, but we did. But there were a few people that were upset about that whole thing because they didn't know me and didn't know Tyler. They just knew him and how he had kind of taken them for a ride. And so um if there was a I drive by that store and if there's a white constable's car there, I'd drive home. There was a lot of mornings I couldn't address him. It was just that tough. But he'd come in at 5 30 and go, Mr. Hooper, I'm so sorry. I said, You're doing your job. Just keep doing your job. But he I said some mornings, and it wasn't every day or anything, but I said, some days I just can't deal with that. And he said, I get it. He said, You don't mind me coming in at 5 30. I said, Not at all. I said, the end of the day, you're fine. And it didn't happen but a couple of times. But he, you know, he was such a nice man, and there were just days like that that you would just go, ho cow, I can't do this today. But I went to work, kept smiling, and and it worked out. I mean, it just did. I know I'm so lucky, Chad.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:40

I'm thankful for you. I really am, I know. I mean, because I just remember all of that at a time when I was in my twenties, thirties, and um my dad talked about it a lot, and he hurt for the people that it affected because you know, being a lawyer, it really didn't aff, you know, it didn't affect him like that. Yeah. You but let's go let's get to the, you know, the Bridget Manzell uh marriage, you know, would bring with it, you know, a lot of attention when when Johnny goes to Texas AM, right? Um what I remember about that is my whole family was tailgating Texas Texas AM game. I think Johnny was there on a football visit and I saw you and Bridget. You know, I mean I look back in my mind, you know, when I've seen you, and you know, I didn't know him. I had heard he was a Kerrville Tyvey, he was an excellent player, you know, and then all of that after that blew up. Really, my only question is not personal. It's really more what was it like, you know, for y'all to be a part of something like that where someone, you know, really just exploded in the national consciousness? I'll be honest with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:50

Chad, that was the most fun two years of my adult life. When he beat Alabama? Oh my gosh. We went to every game. Uh we happened to have some good friends, and we were fortunate enough they had a they had a plane, and we went to every game. And those Aggies, man, they're they're faithful. Oh my gosh. And I mean, every game was just uh unbelievable. I mean, it it was the most fun. And and hey, i you know Johnny made the game fun. I mean I watched Johnny.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:26

You're a quarterback, you know. I watched AM every Saturday that Johnny played, and I had walked on and been on the Texas Longhorns.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:35

That's how exciting it was at the time. Well I knew you were a great player. Well, I don't know about that. I mean occupied a position.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:42

Give yourself a little credit because I followed you too. But Johnny, um, you know, i it was a tough life for Johnny. We went to and w I don't want to get into that, but I'm not trying to get into personally. No, I don't I don't mean that. I like your experience. It's my experience was is watching this young guy, and and we would go to lunch on Sunday after a game in college station. Yeah, you'd be mobbed. It was ridiculous. There'd be a line on both sides of the walk where you walked out of a restaurant fifty feet plus every time we walked out. And he just had no privacy whatsoever. I mean, it was crazy. And and you know, I probably I don't know how I would have handled that.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:29

I that's what I say. You can't really judge people because this is the kind of experience that you do not know what you would do. You look back and say, Golly, I wouldn't have done that or I would have done that, but you really don't know. You know, and Johnny was kind of I mean, he's kind of the cracking the damn on the NIL money stuff now.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:48

Right? I mean, yeah. In a different era, um, he would have made a lot of money. But that is an interesting thing. You know, it's a Tyler connection, uh, it's an East Texas connection to the show. Um now, you and uh you I don't know if you built this strip center that you occupy now, whether or not uh how that all works. And I'm not asking you to get into your your financial background. Um but we know you get into a restaurant. Yeah. That was different. Uh I mean, like, hey, let's try two of the hardest things there is to survive.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:25

Well, retail, try to be a restaurant. Restaurant. Retail's hard, but restaurants are tougher. Uh what happened was is that I talked Bridget into moving out to South Tower, coming from Bergfell Shopping Center to South Tower, you know, where she was. You know. Two heads are better than one. Yeah. I said, Bridget, you and I need to put our stores together. And so I put the word out to two or three of my friends, real estate people, and um that we wanted to find a piece of property we could build our stores on, just our stores. We the intention was just the stores. Didn't you so you wanted to find a developer that would buy the land and build it out for you? We were gonna buy the land and build our store. Okay. We had we'd done pretty well. What about all the rest? Well, the all the rest came from the realtor that came to me. He c he said uh found the land. I said where? Jimmy Lynn's old land. Yeah. Right. It wasn't Jimmy Lynn's. Not then, but in the past. Didn't he have that Mardi Gras way back when you're talking about it? Oh no, that was next door. That that was next door where the taco bueno is. Oh yeah. It's right next door. Because it was uh Tracy's hadn't Tracy's the one that did it first and then that Mardi Gras deal. Yeah. That was a toughie I mean, golly, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:42

In the neighborhood, I mean it was a bunch of bands and loud. I mean, I couldn't imagine what that neighborhood. The neighborhood hated. Oh, they hated it.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:48

Yeah, they hated it. And that was one of the biggest problems we had getting our center put together. But anyway, so we bought uh this person said there's a piece of land, the bank's in trouble, and it was Jacksonville Savings Alone at the time, or Franklin Bank. And they're fixing to do this. If you want it, there's a piece of land right here in front of them that you can buy. So I said, let's go look at it. So we went and looked at it. We drove on it. I'd never paid any attention to the ball. It was right down from your place. It was it was right there. And so we looked at it, drove it, he was in a truck, pick up, so we drove through it, got out, looked around, and I said, All right. How far is it go back? He said, Behind that tree line. And I said, Well, what do they want for it? He he said, buy it. I said, Okay. So I wrote him a check for a you know a deposit. And we got that land bought. And so Bridget and I um we got Fitzpatrick and and Mike um to look at it, and so they started doing some plans on it. Did you give them a concept?

SPEAKER_04 1:29:59

Yes. As to when we were looking at this, it was so unique as a as a strip center type piece of construction, you know, we didn't really have this before.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:10

What we did is we loved the Mediterranean type looks. So we we love the Bellagio in Vegas. Right. I mean So we go out there and we take pictures of all the I mean, nothing's original with us. No, but I mean you know, the curved windows. Yeah, we took all the pictures of the of the stores and things that we loved, and we brought them back, gave them to Mike, and Mike took them and he did a illustration of it, and he said, What do you think? And Bridget goes, Love it, but you need to raise the height three feet. And she started putting some dimension to it, and he said, Those are expensive m moves, head-ons, and she said, I don't care, we're gonna do it. And so we started making these changes. Well, we owned that piece of property, so it was too big just for our two stores. So Right, because you just come off the street for a little bit. So we went ahead and developed the to the end, to the bakery. We built those. Okay. And then uh the piece of property behind us came up. It was a separate piece of property, and it was large enough to put another ten thousand square feet on that is the the stores across the back. Right. Yeah. Did you all end up buying that? We bought that piece of property and built that, and then the piece of property on the other side of it, the bank came to me and said, We're gonna sell that piece of property behind us, and it was just woods at that time. And what's on there now? Uh COM, which is dermatology associates. And it was large enough for 10,000 feet, so we did that. And then Prosperity took over the bank or bought that bank. And you know that little I don't know if you remember that bank building, but it was an ugly little bank building. Is it where the grotas?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:14

It was 5,800 square feet, and it was a just an ugly little 1970s red bank. So I called Kevin, my L-Tyfe, my neighbor and friend, I said, What'd I do? He said, buy it. He said, You gotta have it. He said, To finish the shopping center, you gotta have it. He said, They'll probably want more than you'll want to spend on it, but buy it. And and I'll I'll just be honest with you, I'll tell you what I said. I said, Kevin, are you there if I need you? He said, Yeah, but you don't. He's so he's such a good friend. Yeah, I know. He said, You don't need me.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:51

He'd scoop it up though.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:52

Yeah, he would have scooped it up if you couldn't handle it.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:57

That's why he told you to buy it. I'm not gonna comment on that. He knew he had a good friend there that had it. You know, I mean I'm not saying that because Kevin has uh made all the right moves himself. He's very, very and he's helped Tyler. Yeah. You know, all joking aside, you know, medical school wouldn't be here without him. Uh there's a lot of stuff Kevin half cent sales tax, city improvements. I mean Kevin has been I'm not related to Kevin. Um he didn't ask me to shout him out.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:22

He's not related either, but I wished I were. He's he's a jewel. So anyway, we end up in with big space with that bank building. So we go, we can't make it work. We're already paying way too much money for this property and that bank bill and we've got to blow it up. So we took it from 5,800 square feet and blew it up to 9,500 square feet. We took in the drive-in, you know, the drive-through bank, and that's where Villaggio is. Okay. And then we went to Dakotas and Linda and we talked to Lynn and Steve, and they said, Well, we're definitely gonna move somewhere. And we showed them the plants.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:00

Because they were in Jimmy Lynn's old place. They had bought it from him.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:03

That's right. Right. So And that wasn't a very big place at all. No, no, no. And it was really hard to get to and all that. So they said, Yeah, uh, we'll do that. And so they took um, I don't know, 5,000 feet of it, and that left us about they took 5,200 and built a beautiful restaurant, and then we kept the 3,800, and so we put it out on the market, and we had beer stores, taco stands, I mean, er nothing that fit the shopping center.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:37

Right. I mean, because that's the one thing, you know, you say, okay, well, some people might say, or the codas might complain, hey, why there's two restaurants side by side, right? It had to it had to complement the codes. Right. You did not want the wrong tenant.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:52

Yeah. It was it would have ruined the whole thing. And we wanted the right tenant, but we wanted a more casual dining and we went to be a little more daytime type dining, you know, pizza and all this sort of thing. And maybe a little, you know, cost friendlier. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Cost friendlier, right.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:08

All the above. I mean, you have a history of discounted. Yeah. I know how.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:12

And so anyway. Um So that's how the restaurant came about. Well, I went to Bridget, I said, Bridget, we're not getting the right people. And she said, You need it, attendant. What are you going to do? And I said, Well, let me do this. And uh we get it when it starts making money, we'll sell it. Are you listening? When it starts making money.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:40

Before uh recently, well, I owned it for nine years. That tells you how long make money. Scott, uh right. Scott took it over. Yeah. Uh and he's doing a great job. But you know, now he knows that business though. He he gets it. FDs, hobbies, twelve, three palms.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:57

I mean, he knows how to run it. He gets it. He gets it. He's a better operator than I ever even thought about being. He's done a fabulous job. And I'm I'm my hat's off to that guy. I mean, he's he's Well, at least you sold it when it was making money. Yeah, I did. It made money the last year before I sold it. But he bought it and uh and's doing a great job. And then I don't know if you know this, but um I don't even know if we should talk about this, but a month ago I sold the shopping center.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:27

I didn't know that, but I'm happy for you, especially if you made a profit. We did good. Okay. Yeah, I was just like, 'cause I mean look, and Tyler, you know, uh nobody should root against anybody. Well, when I say we did good, we we did what we needed to do, you know. Oh, yeah. Well, that's I mean, that's that's the reason that you take risks. That's the reason you build this and take a chance, right? With the hope is someday that you'll somehow reap the profit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:53

Especially if you want to slow down. Yeah. Now all you have to do is focus on your store, right? Yeah. And that's it. Mrs. Harley Hooper. I'm sorry, that'd be Bridget. Bridget, we've talked about her store, but she has a great uh uh probably one of the best, you know, female clothing stores, and it's right next door to Harley's.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:11

Yeah, she's she's done a terrific job. She's got great taste, she's a great salesperson. She gets she gets it. We can see the two stores connected.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:19

Yeah. I just don't like your parking because you gave it up to some open area instead of parking spaces. I know. You know what I mean? Like over there, you can't park. Well, you can always park, see where those cows are, pull up in there. Okay. There's no there's no painted spaces. We're not going to put any paint up, but all our friends know that they can park there. And now, you know, I don't know what your financing situation is and how you've come full circle, but it seems like you've kind of got your process or your systems in place now.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:49

It it's a lot different life than I had 25, 35 years ago. Yeah. Um we've been very blessed, and Bridget's been a major part of that blessing. When I say that, I mean talking about financial blessing. I mean, she's a she's been a rock star. She's a good earner. She's a rock star. I mean, I mean, she's the homemaker, huh? Until yeah. You're not necessarily the breadwinner. Yeah, she she she really there were some uh years right after we got married that she kicked my bubbo. You know, I mean, she was that good. She's a hard worker.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:25

She's a very hard worker. She has, you know, treated this retail, I mean, just like her family, her child, or whatever you want to call it. She's worked in it steadily all these years.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:37

All these years. She never she's has an incredible work ethic, which is what my dad taught me and her dad taught her. Yeah, Paul, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:38:47

Yeah. Yeah, Paul. I mean, knowing Paul, that's why she was working in high school.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:54

Give her an allowance. I mean, Paul, come on. Jeez.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:56

I mean, y'all got money.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:57

Let her finish high school.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:58

No. Uh, but you know, she has a uh a wonderful spirit, she's always upbeats, she's friendly. I mean, if you know her, great partner. You know, my son even goes in there and buys stuff for his uh fiance, and you know, it's because he feels comfortable and she acts like she knows you.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:15

Um boy, she knows me. That's why she's not as nice to me. But yeah, I can't say enough about her. She's she's a rock star. Um you know, it is um I love learning these stories because you know, we look at how full circle you've come. Right? I mean, look where you are today, look where you started, look where you were at the point, a low point at discounted financing and clothing. And now that takes us to, you know, trips to Italy, trying to time the next in the latest and greatest fashion from Europe. Um and I mean that's I mean that's gotta be, you know, rewarding for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:53

Well, let me first say this. Everyone has a story. You know, um I mean anyone that stays the course is gonna have a story because it all is not good. It's gonna end up one way or the other. It's gonna be there's gonna be, but um when you asked me to do this, I didn't know you were gonna flatter me like you have. And to be quite honest with you, that's I'm so appreciative for you to have me on, but that's really not what I came to talk about was was my success.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:26

Well, you know, my shows and the guests I have on, I've said this before. There's a very interesting story in every person, it's just up to me to get it out and find what it is. And the things that we've highlighted about you that are all positive, it's not flattery. It's just the facts at different times, you know, that are highlighted brighter than back when you uh, you know, a guy was driving around looking for your assets. I mean, right. But it's part of the I mean, I guess growth. I mean, you're in a good place, aren't you? Great. I mean Yeah.

unknown 1:41:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:05

I mean great place. Your health seems good. I mean you look good.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:09

Yeah, I'd uh I'll tell you, it w it was kind of funny. Um I went out of physical every six months. Now, when you hit this age, you have to go off it. And my doctor sat in there and he goes, Uh, you thinking about retiring? I said, Absolutely not. He said, Good. A lot of people go down. He said, Harley, he said, with the lifestyle that you've led and working like you have, he said it would not be good for you. And I said, You're telling me everything I want to hear. Because that's exactly I don't want to quit. I'm not going to quit. If you enjoy it, which is I love it. I don't go to work thinking I'm going to work. You love clothes, though, right? Here's the deal. Clothes are a big part of it, but here's the deal, a major part of it. But I'm at 85% of my lifelong friends in that store. Now why would I ever want to not be in that store?

SPEAKER_04 1:42:07

Well, if you li you're personable and you like to have interaction with people. And so this has been great for you when we got past all the rough times. Yeah. Right? I mean made it a lot better. Now it's a lot easier. Yeah. Um but you know, clothes clothing makes people feel good about themselves. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:26

At some level. You know, let's talk about clothes real quick and then I'll get out of your hair. No, here's the deal. We did study after study after study about appearance. We had a a study group from Baylor do a in-depth study about what if how did these young people go in for interviews and how does it make a difference? It came back, it was much more black and white than I ever thought it would be. The guy that's dressed inappropriately going in for an interview. He's not getting the job. It takes twenty-five minutes to get back where the guy that was dressed properly for the interview was with the person that he's interviewing with. So a lot of people don't have twenty-five minutes to catch up. You know what I mean? Because he's gotta build he's gotta build this rapport because he's not he's not suited for the case.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:32

You've got to be super cool or super in need if you're gonna look crappy when you get interviewed. You gotta be you gotta be a rock star. I mean, people do judge a book by their cover, uh at least initially.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:43

It's gonna happen. I mean, it's it's not it's inherent. It's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:47

You get better dressed, better looking people generally fare better.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:51

Yeah. Right? Well, they get respect, they get better service. There's a number of things that happen just automatically. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:00

And and we're not and I'm not promoting everybody change their We're not we're not writing the book on whether that should be the case, but that is the case.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:09

Well, if you remember when it all started to to deteriorate in the nineties when they said, Okay, we're gonna do dress down Friday because all these guys want to be kind of more casual on Friday. Well, the dress down Friday was originally set up. I mean, what they're thought of dress down Friday, and they had a little booklet that said it's a navy blazer and a polo shirt or a button-down or something, open collar, pair of khakis, and a pair of regular, you know, slip-on shoes. Well, they took that and took it to shorts, t-shirt. You know, I went into a bank, and this is a true story, uh with a f I went in and saw a friend. Howie Alexander. I went into this bank, aren't I? It could be. But I went in to to check and uh I needed some things, and I went in to have a visit with him in the 90s. He has his feet on the desk, pair of tennis shoes, pair of khaki pants, and a polo shirt. And I'm going, I'm fixed to tell you my financial needs. And you know, it it was totally um it I told him I came for some something else and I left. But bottom line is the professionalism, you need to dress for your profession. You know, if you depending on what that is. Yeah, uh according to what that is. I mean, if you can't go into an industrial place wearing suits and coats and ties on a daily basis, but people that are in your business, my business, and businesses like ours, we're suited for those people because we take care of that guy and we make sure he's right for that occasion.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:56

Everybody has abandoned you on this because if you think about it, if you go to church, any church, and you walk in there and look on Sunday, you will rarely see a man in a suit and tie anymore, right? I mean it's it's been a cultural shift, right? That's right. And so that's another challenge for Harley for the, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:18

Well, here's here's what's really unique. Of course, um the stores that have closed have changed our dynamics on the And created more opportunity for you. Exactly. We're selling more clothing today than we have ever sold. Once we got the riffraff out of here. Now I didn't say that.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:39

Well, I mean, you're competing with very few, and I'm not saying riff ref, because I had a good friend, my dad did, Paul Chance, you know, that he hung in the he hung in the game for a while, right? And Charles was over there.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:51

He was a good merchant.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:52

He did a good job. Yeah, he was a good merchant. But now you're talking about Dillards, right? Which a different game. I mean you take here here's the thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:01

I'm a Harley man. Yeah. I'm a Dillard's man. Yeah. There's no ring. But bottom line to the whole deal is that in in truth, um, you know, it has come full circle, but people still want to look good and their wives want them to look good. Here's the you know what's happened in the formal wear business. You know, we're selling more tuxedos than we've ever sold in the history of the store. You used to rent them. We used to rent a lot. You don't rent them anymore, do you? We we still rent them, but we sell more tuxedos than we ever have. And the reason these girls are smarter and smarter and smarter, they're going, I have to do black tie because if I don't, all my relatives and friends are gonna show up in a sport coat, pair of pants, and a boot and a hat, probably, at my wedding, and that's not the pictures I want to take through life with me. So they do it black tie just to push you into wearing either a tuxedo or a suit, because that's the image they want if they're gonna spend$150,000 on a wedding. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:48:09

Oh yeah. Um I I've just participated in one you know, kind of like that. That was black tie. My oldest son got married. Uh Chris, I don't know if uh towards the end here if we've got that old slide of Harley and is looking good towards the end. One more? All right, let's go with Ask Harley. Ask Harley's a little bit of a social media thing that you've done where uh you answer the anticipated questions kind of like you just did. Yeah. On the tugs, right? Um and people that follow you, they can follow you on social media on Instagram.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:42

It's real easy. Yeah. Follow us on Instagram. You can all they have to do um is I'll give them a web page, anything that they want. But the bottom line to that is is that what that's set up to do, we have people call us all the time. Okay, Harley, this is I'm doing this. Is this okay to to wear? And we shoot them totally straight on everything that we tell them. We don't flower coat it or anything. We just tell them exactly the way we see it. And we're not going to send them out there looking at the R.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:17

You got tired of answering the same question over and over. Yeah. So you just made made this. But uh people can easily find you. I don't know what your website domain, if it's Harley's dot com or something like it, but I know if you type in Harley's Men. Harley. Harley'sformen.com. All right. Yeah. And then they can follow you on Facebook and Instagram, which I think would be uh advisable because I've known you to have had some pretty darn good sales through the year where there's a discount of, you know, 50, 60, I mean pr a pretty good percentage.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:50

You know, um we have two annual sales a year, and we do that uh inside the store, and then we do one warehouse sale. A year. And the warehouse cell, if you're really wan if you really want to take advantage of the situation, that's right. I mean, I've killed you in there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:11

I've killed you with Samuelson jackets and suits that for some reason you couldn't get rid of. Let me tell you though, it's because you you know you're never going to sell every piece. I mean, you you you buy what's perfect if you bought everything and sold everything. There's no perfect buyer out there. And there's no perfect market out there. So the market keeps moving a little bit. Well, you you keep you're there's gonna be a sale.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:38

You got a little waste and and you try to get rid of it in a sale. And so for the people that watch this and say, there's no way that I could ever walk into Harley's and buy anything from him. It's too expensive. You would tell them, well, uh you should come look first and see if that's true, and maybe it isn't, or hunt down one of these these sales.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:59

Yeah, and I mean, we don't take offense to that. We uh we love people that come to those sales. And trust me, I mean, we need those people just like we need you and other people that that pay retail.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:12

I realized, you know, my place in Dallas. Okay, right up the street, Stanley Korshack. Yeah. Okay, I go in there. Now I was complaining about your prices, but once I went up there, I came back and I was saying, hey, these are bargains. Let me have this, that, and the other. And so, you know, uh when you get some perspective on nice clothing for what we for what we we try to keep it literally in bounds.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:40

Let's put it like that. We don't just go completely out of bounds. You know, we open, we have an$800 suit, and we sell the doo-doo out of those suits. And the reason we do is we have a young guy that it it looks great on, it's a great suit and it fits, and then we have a mature guy your age and even my age that goes, Hey, go wear this thing to my son's wedding or my daughter's wedding, and then it's over. I'm not doing this again. And so he's looking for that suit. So we always have that suit. And we we just seem to sell that suit as a twenty-two hundred dollar suit.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:17

Well, nobody's better at you at, you know, the easy sell as to the post the hard sale. People who've been in your store like me, they know you. You know, you listen to what they want and don't try to sell them something, the most expensive thing that's in there that they don't you know they won't want because they'll be mad at you when it's over. No, we listen real close to what they want because we want them to come back. Now you've got a family connection to the store in addition to Bridget. Carson, right? Yeah. Carson's doing a fabulous job. I mean, because, you know, um I've seen him in the last several times and he's helped me. He's um and so, you know, uh you got some other guys in there that have been in there for a while. I know you've had different people that rolled over through the years, but um Carson I can't say enough about Chad.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:05

He's he you know, if you start talking about your kid though, they everybody goes Vang Vang. But he he's uh he came on board, graduated um from AM in 18, came to work, and he's been there and and he's studied and paid attention, but he is I don't know where he came from. His mother and and uh Bridget had done a magnificent job with him because he is a very good person.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:36

That's what I say about my kids. I say, well, yeah, Rebecca and Angie, you know, they did a fine job. Everybody compliments me on what a great guy. They did a great job. Uh but Carson, you know, I'm a I'm a crappy customer. I've always said this to you when I said, I'm a terrible customer. I don't like to try things on. I don't know if I want to shop that day. Yeah. But Carson, you know, uh I've really found him to be pleasant and really made me want to buy stuff. And I mean, that's a goal mine.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:04

This is so funny. Uh, and this is true. At market, uh, your name came up a couple times. It's so funny. He said, now, Chad, Chad are like that right there. I mean, he he he remembers everything that y'all did. I mean, he he he gets a big kick out of it. Well, I mean, I'll buy a lot when I come in. Oh, he thinks Feaster Bomb. Feaster famine with me, though. Yeah, yeah. You're not you don't lose that Chad are like that. I won't keep it. And it was from that. It was from that person that you're wearing right there, that coat.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:38

Well, having your son work for you like I do with me now. Uh doing well with your business uh and your wife and everything's going good for you. I couldn't be happier for you. Um and I appreciate you you know coming here and telling us your story today, Harley. You're the best, Chad.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:57

I appreciate you having me. I had no idea we were gonna stay here this long, but I'm okay with that. You listening to what my story is, but thank you very much. Appreciate it very much.