Firefield

Product type : Accents & Decor Accessories, Home Supplies

Supplier type : Drop Shipper, Manufacturer

Market served : North America

Trade show : NA

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 at 102 Bleeker Street here in New York City. The Louis Hornick Company was born. Growing rapidly, he moved offices to Wooster Street in a lMy ocation now occupied by NYU. In the 1920′s, my grandfather brought over knitting machines from Europe and started manufacturing “Net Curtains” which he sold to jobbers and by 1927, the firm grew too large for the Wooster Street location and moved into three 10,000 sqft lofts at 22 West 21st Street.

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 at 102 Bleeker Street here in New York City. The Louis Hornick Company was born. Growing rapidly, he moved offices to Wooster Street in a lMy ocation now occupied by NYU. In the 1920′s, my grandfather brought over knitting machines from Europe and started manufacturing “Net Curtains” which he sold to jobbers and by 1927, the firm grew too large for the Wooster Street location and moved into three 10,000 sqft lofts at 22 West 21st Street. In the 1930’s, the company sold its curtains to the big “5&10” chain, Kresge, where the business required him to occasionally take the overnight train to Detroit (Kresge later became Kmart) – How honored he was that the buyer would always send a car to pick him up at the station…indeed, times have changed! It was also at this time that the firm began selling JCPenney, Sears and WT Grant. In 1943 my grandfather suffered a debilitating stroke. During wartime, we were manufacturing camouflage netting for the military, and my father, M.J. Hornick, was called upon to come out of the Army for a year to run the business. Once Dad steadied the company, he went back into the Service, leaving my grandmother, Anna, to run the business. People have forgotten the important roles in industry that many women played during World War II, where events required them to take the reins of running a family owned 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. In 1946, there was no Palisades parkway, no Thruway and no Tappan Zee Bridge. Haverstraw, a sleepy community that had once been the largest brick-producing town in the United States, was selected as a site. Located twenty-eight miles north of the George Washington Bridge, its location enabled my father and his team of executives to easily travel to either our newly relocated New York office at 261 Fifth Avenue or the factory in Haverstraw.