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| Our History |
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My grandfather was entrepreneurial. In 1918, at age 22, he left his position selling passementerie (trimmings) for the August Small Company. He crossed out the name August Small on the swatch cards he carried, wrote in the name Hornick, and booked orders that day. With a $500 guarantee provided by a friend, he was able to rent a small loft on Worth Street, here in New York City. The Louis Hornick Company was born.
In the 1930's, my grandfather brought over knitting machines from Europe and started manufacturing "Net Curtains" which he sold to jobbers. He sold these curtains to the big retail chain, Kresge, which required him to occasionally take the overnight train to Detroit. How honored he was that the buyer would always send a car to pick him up from the station...indeed, times have changed! It was also at this time that he began calling on JCPenney, Sears and WT Grant.
In the early 1940's my grandfather suffered a debilitating stroke. Because we were manufacturing camouflage netting for the government, my father, M.J. Hornick, was called upon to come out of the Army for a year to run the business. Once he steadied our course, he went back into the Service, leaving my grandmother, Anna, to run the show. People have forgotten the important roles in industry that many women played during World War II, when they were forced to take the reins of business, allowing their husbands and sons to fight for their country.
My grandfather died in 1946, not quite 50 years old. My father, M.J. Hornick, had just come out of the Army and decided to immediately implement his Wharton Business School thesis, "The Inefficiencies of Manufacturing in New York City in a Multi-Storied Building", and relocate within 50 miles of New York City.
He chose Haverstraw, New York, and purchased 50 Acres from the Peck family, who had owned the land since 1660. The Peck's were awarded a land grant from Charles II of England. Haverstraw is where Major Andre was captured and where Benedict Arnold embarked to England after his notorious betrayal.
By the way, when the Dutch explorer, Henry Hudson, sailed up the Hudson and reached Haverstraw, he saw that the river widens to over 5 miles. He thought that surely he had discovered the long sought Northwest Passage to India!
Getting back to 1950, there was no Palisades parkway, no Thruway and no Tappan Zee Bridge. Haverstraw was a sleepy community that had once been the largest brick-producing town in the United States. My father opened the factory on June 1, 1949. On June 2nd he was married. My father had built many fine relationships with the leaders of the American Retail Industry. To the point when, in 1963, we were looking at boarding schools, dad persuaded Mr. J. C. Penney to give me an interview. He was on the board of the Hill School. I was, of course, in awe during the interview. He was a kind and warm gentleman. Needless to say, it was a positive recommendation, and the school welcomed me. Yet, I went to Suffield Academy in Suffield, CT, where I served as a Trustee for 10 years.
Under my father's leadership, the business grew rapidly from 1952-1980. Many of our curtains were seen on prominent TV shows and in movies. In that period, six additions were made to the original building in Haverstraw. Since the day I turned 16, I worked in the factory on all of my vacations and holidays. During my summers at the factory, I met many of the buyers and merchandise managers in the industry when they came to tour our facilities.
In 1972, I graduated Wharton and came into the business full time. I became President in 1982.
Dad died June 1, 1988. It was exactly 39 years from the day he opened the Haverstraw factory. From 1988-2000, our business focused on and invested in Associate Education & Training, deploying Six Sigma Problem-Solving Techniques, developing High Powered Teams, Capital Investment, and Information Systems.
We now compete in a hyper-competitive, global marketplace. Therefore, since 2000, our business has gone global. We source our greige goods for dyeing and printing from Pakistan and India, rather than the USA. We have a strategic business partnership with Nishat Mills in Pakistan. Our Product Development and Design Department creates product all over the world, as opposed to just Haverstraw, New York, and has an office in Shanghai. Counter- intuitively, we intend to retain our manufacturing capabilities and capacity in Haverstraw, albeit on a much smaller scale, to provide our customers with the security of seamless supply at world-class prices and quality.
LOUIS HORNICK II
CEO
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