LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM
Necessity is often the mother of reinvention, Frank Levy learns
Posted July 14, 2015
By Devin Steele
Frank Levy has seen and experienced more in his 80 years than most people.
As a young boy, he escaped Nazi Germany with his family, lived as a refugee in the Middle East and immigrated to the U.S., where he would enjoy a long and successful career in the textile industry. And, through the up-and-down journey of life, one constant has remained: His accent.
Though he has lived in the U.S. for nearly 70 years years, he never lost that distinct accent that one can’t quite make out – even Mikhail Gorbachev.
“Where are you from? Where are you really from?” the former Soviet Union leader asked Levy in 2008 after the World ENERGY GLOBE Award ceremony in Brussels, where a recycling technology Levy helped develop with Sergio Dell'Orco was a finalist in the Earth category.
“I responded by asking, ‘where are you from?’ ” Levy told eTC by phone from his Long Island, N.Y., home last week as was preparing to leave on a business trip to Europe. “He said, ‘I’m from Russia, of course.’ So he knew where he was from but I didn’t know exactly where I was from. Although I feel 100 percent American now, somewhere inside I’m not 100 percent American.”
“Yes, you are,” interjected his wife, Marilyn Gottlieb, who wrote Levy’s biography, “Life With An Accent: One Immigrant’s Quest To Belong,” published in 2013.
“I’m half German, half Israeli – although I never lived in Israel – and half American,” he said. “I know that doesn’t properly add up, but that’s me.”
Frank Levy
Photo by Michael Molinoff
Indeed, that’s Levy – a complex person who, given his experiences, loves everything about this life – and who happens to love the textile industry. He has enjoyed many years of success with the company he owns, Quogue, N.Y.-based Stellamcor, Inc., which was founded by his parents to import textile machines to the U.S. and Canada in 1946. An engineer by training with a child’s fascination for how things work, he has developed numerous patents over the years that have contributed to his success. And, before sustainability was “cool” – say, oh, about 40 years ago – he was working with companies to develop recycling technologies that have also paid dividends for his company.
But Levy’s success has not come without his being faced with the task of having to reinvent himself several times over the years due to political change and global trade shifts.
Getting his foot in the industry door
At age 12 (almost 13), Levy entered America’s shores with his family and would later earn an engineering degree from California State Polytechnic Institute in San Luis Obispo, Calif. His first full-time job was with aircraft builder Rohr Industries in California. While in college, he got his first real taste of the textile industry when his father sent him to work one summer at Bruck Silk Mills in Quebec, Canada. The company was a client of his uncle Herbert, who owned a consulting company.
At Bruck, he worked in a spinning room “as least as big as a football field,” he said. “The experience was unbelievable. I never knew I would like it so much.”
Frank Levy (L) and his partner Sergio Dell'Orco (M) receiving their award as a finalist at the World ENERGY Globe Award ceremony in Brussels in 2008 for recycling technology they developed.
Levy joined his parents’ company in 1965. His father designed a three-month apprenticeship with suppliers in Europe in order to learn about customers, sales and the textile business. He worked short stints with Georg Sahm GmbH & Co. in Germany, Gilbos in Belgium and the Carniti Co. in Italy.
While at Sahm, he was so impressed with its precision winding machines that he ordered six of the machines – without consulting with his father or before any client had ordered one. His father was “furious,” Gottlieb wrote in her husband’s biography, but he believed in the technology.
“I knew that the Caron Spinning Co. in Rochelle, Ill., was looking for such consistency,” Levy was quoted in the book. “They bought all six machines.”
Understanding and believing in technology most likely figured into Levy’s business success in the years to come. In later years, Levy and Dario Carniti, owner of the Carniti Co., sold more than 250 state-of-the-art spinning frames to North Carolina-based Burlington Industries, which would install the machines in five facilities in the U.S. as well as Japan and Germany. And later, through Levy, Carniti bought 500 used carding machines that had been updated at the John D. Hollingsworth on Wheels factory in Greenville, S.C.
An ITMA payoff
Levy’s technological savvy improved by attending ITMAs, the quadrennial international textile machinery exhibitions in Europe. He walked the expansive halls with his parents. At one show, Frank’s father Fritz discovered the Arachne nonwovens machine that was developed by engineers in Czechoslovakia.
Fritz Levy wanted to bring the high-speed machines to America, but at the time Communist countries were not allowed to do business in the U.S. So he contacted Dr. Alois Marek, the sales rep from Investa that sold the Arachne, who agreed to work with him to sell the machines here. He then obtained permission to import the Czech equipment, which he introduced to Beacon Manufacturing Co. in Swannanoa, N.C., the biggest blanket maker in the world. Beacon bought 20 of the machines.
Despite the fact the Communists didn’t allow foreigners to fraternize with the Czechs, Frank Levy later flew to Czechoslovakia to meet with Dr. Marek and visit his home. Levy visited the country on several subsequent occasions, and took Americans with him to tour factories. On one of his trips, he witnessed blending machines that were three times faster and used less space and electricity than traditional machines. So he was able to get special permission from both governments to import and sell the machinery in the U.S.
“It revolutionized the industry,” Levy said in his biography. “We sold many of these open-end spinning machines. Americans opened factories along the rivers up and down the East Coast and created lots of jobs. It was a prosperous time for everyone.”
Life changers
Levy’s life would change in 1966 when his newborn son died from a blockage and his father died of a heart attack. His father left him and his mother as co-owners of Stellamcor.
“(My dad) taught me to be happy with less,” Levy said in the book. “When he died, I felt cheated because I only got to work with him for two years. He knew the textile industry and had so much more to teach me.”
Over the next few years, the business continued to grow, so he moved the company from 43rd Street in New York to Madison Avenue. But in 1978, Carniti, Stellamcor’s largest supplier of spinning machinery, filed for bankruptcy. That’s when Levy’s biggest break emerged.
When one door closes …
Meanwhile, the U.S. had begun diplomatic relations with China and, over the next decade, a major global production shift occurred. The result: Many U.S. textile companies began to close down and eventually stopped buying Stellamcor’s clients’ machines.
Frank Levy is flanked by suppliers Sergio Dell'Orco (L) of Dell'Orco & Villani and Tancredi Bombi of Bombi Meccanica.
“I told the owner, ‘you can’t do that. That’s just an awful thing to do,’ ” Levy said. “And for the first time I realized what landfills were all about. We ended up selling him over $10 million worth of machinery to recycle his product.”
More changes
After Levy’s wife Margit died of breast cancer in 1981, he moved his office from Manhattan to his house in Larchmont, N.Y., so he could be home for his youngest son David after school. Ten years later, he would marry his current wife Marilyn, who he introduced to the textile machinery industry at various international trade shows.
In 1989, the Velvet Revolution ended Communism in Czechoslovakia, which would have a damaging effect on a portion of Stellamcor’s business. With the country embracing a more open and capitalistic atmosphere, private entrepreneurs took over the Investa business and opened a sales office in South Carolina. They gave Levy the option to purchase half of the business, but he declined, and his agency services were no longer needed.
It was time to reinvent himself again. So he began to shift more of his focus back to recycling textile waste, selling even more Italian-made machines.
Ahead of his time
In 2000, Levy received a call from professors at Georgia Tech in Atlanta who had heard that Levy and Dell’Orco were experts in recycling textile waste and used clothing. The professors wanted to know if they were interested in looking at new ways to recycle used carpets. So they were asked to be included as speakers in a conference that included executives from many carpet companies.
“It was the first time we heard the word ‘sustainability,’ even though we had been immersed in recycling materials,” Levy said in the book. “We didn’t know that sustainability was a more politically correct label for the work we had been doing for over 20 years.”
Though adroit in recycling textile waste and clothing, recycling carpet was a different animal altogether. Separating the carpet fiber from the backing was a big challenge.
Intrigued, Levy and Dell’Orco spent six years developing a technology to solve this problem, a technology they would patent, which would land them on the World ENERGY GLOBE Award stage. They created a unique system to separate the nylon fibers from the polypropylene carpet backing and formed a company called Post Consumer Carpet Processing Technologies®. They then contacted entrepreneurs who wanted to recycle post-consumer carpets.
The next year, Interface would sign a nondisclosure agreement, a licensing agreement and contracts with PCC®. Interface soon established its first line in LaGrange, Ga.
Eyeing the competition
In 2005, Levy entertained the idea of his suppliers purchasing machinery made in China. He even made a trip to Qingdao, China, to see what the competition offered, and walked away quite impressed – but with no intention to buy machinery there.
“In comparison to Chinese equipment, Sergio builds machines in Italy that are somewhat of an art,” Levy said in his biography. “Of course, he guarantees his machines and services them when needed.”
And another thing bothered him about doing business with China, as he was quoted in the book: “If all manufacturing, especially for consumer goods, stays in underdeveloped countries where labor is cheaper, it takes away jobs from our people.”
Let the fun continue
Today, Stellamcor continues to sell machinery for many applications and calls on many U.S. textile manufacturers. It represents mostly Italian companies, including Dell’Orco & Villani and Bombi Meccanica.
And Levy, usually accompanied by his wife, continues to travel the world on business. Already this year, he’s been to Europe four times.
Asked if he has any plans to retire, Levy responded: “No, what are you talking about? I love my work and I’ve been very lucky. It’s been fun, you know?”
Accent on fun.
To purchase Levy's biography and learn more about his life, please click here.
Related blog: Levy's bio explores complex layers of past, present
So while China was quietly building its textile production capabilities, Levy added machinery that recycled textiles and textile waste to his equipment offerings. He turned to Carniti’s competitor, Franco Conti of SACFEM in Italy. SACFEM manufactured a 100-inch-wide Garnett machine that opened spun textile waste back into fiber using metal wires. During a visit to Prato outside of Florence to watch the machine in action, Levy spotted a similar machine that was five times faster.
He insisted on meeting with the company that produced that machine and was taken to the Dell’Orco & Villani factory. There, he met Sergio Dell’Orco – and the rest, as they say, is history. Levy forged a friendship and business relationship that has lasted to this day.
Back in New York after the trip, Levy scoured the Davison Textile Blue Book and found dozens of companies that processed textile waste and wrote to them. Soon, a new, successful business line would emerge.
“Everything gets used and reused,” he said. “Even the waste of the waste gets cleaned and opened to make padding to be used under carpets or for heat and sound insulation panels.”
One of those clients that emerged was a company in California that purchased old clothes to sort and disperse to other countries. Unusable pieces – as many as two truckloads per day – were sent to landfills each day.