News
Sunday Vol 1.
Extra Credit with DJ Zimmie
How to Build a Second Act Business with your kid
We we're recently interviewed by Market Place Money's Chris Farrell for a piece he put together entitled "how to build a second act business with your millennial kid". The article touched on some interesting points and was featured on Time.com and Next Avenue.
“It’s awesome working with my dad,” says Case Bloom, 30. The feeling is mutual, says his father, David, 58: “We are good complements to one another.”
From ‘You’ to ‘We’
The Blooms, and their business manufacturing highly-crafted messenger bags targeted at the DJ market, are a prime example. Before opening shop, David had spent his career in bag design and was director of travel products for Coach in New York City before he lost that job. When Case was in college in Nashville, studying business, he’d offer pointers to help his dad’s venture. “His logo was so bad. Horrible,” laughs Case. “I’d tell him, ‘You’re doing it wrong. Do it like this.’”
Eventually, Case says, it became “We should do it this way. The business happened organically.” Today, father and son each own half of the company, which has seven employees. David handles design and product development; Case is in charge of anything to do with the brand image and online sales. He’s also the one making frequent runs to Home Depot for the business’s factory and to the Post Office for shipments. “I have a different set of skills than my father,” says Case, who is also a part-time DJ.
When Kinship Is Friendship
One reason for the growing second-act-plus-child trend: surveys repeatedly show that today’s young adults generally get along well with their parents—and vice versa. “The key is an attitudinal shift in the relations between generations,” says Steve King, founder of Emergent Research, a consulting firm focused on the small business economy. “Boomers are close to their kids and the kids are close to their parents.”
Take Amanda Bates, a Gen X’er, and her mother Kit Seay, co-owners of Tiny Pies in Austin, Texas. “We’ve always had a close relationship, feeding off one another, finishing each other’s sentences,” says Kit, 73. They’d long wanted to do something together.
Several years ago, Amanda got the idea for making handheld pies from her son’s desire to take pie to school. So she and her mother began selling small pies, based on family recipes, in local farmers markets. They now sell them throughout the state, mostly through specialty stores, and opened a retail storefront at their wholesale facility in March 2014. Kit focuses on the creative and catering side of the business; Amanda’s in charge of the basics of running an enterprise. “The trust is there,” says Kit. Amanda agrees. “Yes, the trust is there. If she says something will get done, it will.”
Teaching Your Child Trust
Trust and complementary skills are also themes for Lee Lipton, 59, and his son Max, 25, and their Benny’s On the Beachrestaurant in Lake Worth, Fla.
Lee, the restaurant’s principal owner, came out of the clothing manufacturing business, moving to Florida after the Calvin Klein outerwear line he ran with a few partners was sold. He bought Benny’s a year ago. Max, who’d wanted to get into the food business, is one partner; the other is chef Jeremy Hanlon. Lee’s the deal maker, Max manages the restaurant and executive chef Hanlon handles the kitchen. “The three of us trust each other incredibly and when one person feels strongly about something we tend to do it that way,” Lee says. “Very rarely after talking do we disagree, and that format was identical to my past partners. I want to teach Max and Jeremy that closeness.”
For second-act family businesses, creating boundaries between work and home is advisable, but easier to say than do. Speaking about her current relationship with her mom, Amanda Bates says: “We used to go out together and have fun, go to garage sales, that kind of thing. Now, when we get together, the business always come up. Even at family dinners, we end up talking business.”
The Win-Win of Multigenerational Businesses
But in the end, it’s family that makes these businesses succeed.
Bianca Alicea, 26, and her mom Alana, 46, started tchotchke-maker Chubby Chico Charms. in North Providence, R.I. with $500 and less than 100 charm designs at their dining room table in 2005. They now have roughly 25 full-time employees and sell several thousand handmade charms. Alana is the designer; Bianca deals more with payroll and other aspects of the business. “It’s important to remember you are family,” says Bianca. “Things don’t always go according to plan, but at the end of the day you have to see one another as family.”
Intergenerational entrepreneurship, it turns out, can be a win-win for boomers and their kids. For the parents, it’s the answer to the question: What will I do in my Unretirement? For their adult children, working with mom and dad provides them with greater meaning than just picking up a paycheck.
Chris Farrell is senior economics contributor for American Public Media’s Marketplace and author of the new bookUnretirement: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and The Good Life. He writes twice a month about the personal finance and entrepreneurial start-up implications of Unretirement, and the lessons people learn as they search for meaning and income. Send your queries to him at cfarrell@mpr.org or @cfarrellecon on Twitter.
Tucker & Bloom Interview with Native Magazine
We we're recently interviewed by Nashville based Native Magazine about the founding of our company, the development of it, and the difficulty the interviewer, Jon, had finding our facility.
Little Big Things The Mix Tape
My friends Personify, Froz One, and I recently made a mix to highlight some of the records we've been playing at our monthly "Little Big Things" party here in Philadelphia. The result is an eclectic mix of 7 inch funk, soul, disco, and boogie. Enjoy- Case
The Little Big Things Crew brings you their first release: Little BIG Things - The Mix Tape, an all 7-inch mix of funk, soul, disco and boogie tunes mixed, cut and scraped by Philadelphia crate diggers Personify, FROZ1 and Case Bloom. We dug deep in our collections to compile a mix guaranteed to have your deck on blast from start to finish. Little records - BIG TUNES. Bang it loud and enjoy. And next time you're in Philly, be sure to check out The Little Big Things Crew at The Trestle Inn's Souled Out every 2nd Friday for the best whiskey sours in the city, Go-Go dancers, and the illest funk, soul, disco, boogie and latin 45s.
Little BIG Things - The Mix Tape Track List:
1.) Sisters Love - Now Is The Time
2.) Rudy Love & The Love Family - Does Your Mama Know
3.) The Turtles - Buzz Saw
4.) Jimmy Norman - Gangster of Love Part 1
5.) Chuck Womack and The Sweet Souls - Ham Hocks and Beans
6.) B.E.H. - In the Middle of Blind Alley My Mind's Playing Tricks on Me (Little Big Things Edit)
7.) Mocambo Allstars - The Next Message (Kenny Dope Mix)
8.) Lee Fields - I’m The Man
9.) Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Band - What Can You Bring Me
10.) The Meters - People Say
11.) Lou Courtney - Hot Butter N' All Part 1
12.) The Herb Johnson Settlement - Damph F'aint
13.) Jimmy Jones - Time and Changes
14.) Bernard Wright - Chillin' Out
15.) Crown Heights Affair - Move Your Body and Soul
16.) Brother to Brother - In The Bottle
17.) Joe Bataan - The Bottle (La Botella)
18.) Gil Scott Heron - New World Revolution
19.) Kool & The Gang - Caribbean Festival (Disco Version)
20.) Bobby Hebb - Sunny '76
21.) Crown Heights Affair - Dreaming on a Dream
22.) Freeez - Southern Freeez
23.) Secret Weapon - Must Be The Music Instrumental
24.) Skyy - Here's To You
25.) D-Train - You're the One for Me
26.) Donald Byrd - Think Twice
27.) The S.S.O. Orchestra - Faded Lady Instrumental
28.) George McRae - Look at You
29.) Gwen McRae - Funky Sensation
30.) Linda Clifford - Runaway Love
31.) Universal Robot Band - Dance and Shake Your Tambourine
32.) Ronnie Laws - Always There
33.) Weldon Irvine - I Love You
Traveling In Nicaragua
Traveling In Nicaragua
When you mention to most people that you are going on a trip to Nicaragua they tend to be confused. It just isn’t a place you hear about these days. Why would you somewhere that recently ended a civil war and is run by a political machine? I’ll tell you why. Nicaragua is a tropical paradise. Sandwiched in between Honduras and Costa Rica, in Nicaragua you can pick coconuts right off the tree, teeter around volcano craters while smoking Cuban Cigars, surf, lay on the beach, drink rum all day in hammocks, and buy more Cumbia CD’s for a quarter than you can cram in your luggage. Thats right. Paradise, and it isn’t that dangerous if you know what to look out for. I wrote this not as a guide to the country or even a real review of where to go. Instead look at this as a snapshot of some of the places I visited, and a short list of things to avoid. Even paradise has its pitfalls and be very aware some of the pitfalls in Nicaragua are very deep (see volcano below). – Case Bloom
The Volcano Concepcion
Managua
The countries capital is Managua, a city that sprawls in the view of active volcano’s, and lies along a major fault line. Declared capital in 1852 and essentially destroyed in an 1931 earthquake, Managua has had its share of natural disasters in a relatively brief period. In the 1970’s after a large earthquake hit and flattened the city center, everyone relocated and rebuild further from the fault line. The resulting “new city” was laid out in a way that is so confusing it only makes sence to natives. In Managua, pot holed streets wind through crowded neighborhoods, and all is done seemingly without organization. There are no street names or addresses in Nicaragua (Managua included). None. In Managua everything is identified through a coordinate system that uses “towards the lake”, “away from the lake”, the direction the sun rises East aka “up”, and the direction it sets West aka “down” as indicators. Your hotel may lie one and a half blocks down and two blocks towards the lake. This whole system raises another issue. Managuans use landmarks instead of addresses to identify places, and often times these landmarks are no longer around. Your hotel may be by “the big tree”, or down the street from a particular business that closed years ago. As long as it is (or was) a commonly recognized place, it may potentially enter the directional lexicon. Needless to say getting around Managua requires a keen sence of adventure, a compass, and a guide.
Driving
Driving in Nicaragua is an extreme sport. The roads are in varying degrees of bad, two lanes width, and covered in obstacles. Passing a vehicle in Nicaragua means heading into opposing traffic and praying you live. My cousin once almost killed someone trying to pass another car by making simple mistake, he forgot to look behind him before he veered into oncoming traffic, and simultaneously pushed a car trying to pass him from the rear off the road. The other driver, regained his bearings and followed their car in hot pursuit hurling bottles at them for the next few miles. Lesson learned. Be careful. Did I mention goats? Or horse drawn carts? You’ll figure it out.
The Chicken Bus
If you don’t feel like driving, and trust me you won’t, aside from taking Taxi’s your only option is public transportation. The bus, aka the Chicken Bus, can get you near any destination and costs about what you would expect a bus that carries livestock to cost. Its cheap, crowded, and may be the most exciting bus ride of your life. Let me set the scene for you. Most of these buses in Nicaragua are old United States school buses that have been re-appropriated to carry three times the normal load, decorated with religious symbols and ribbons (for protection), and a large roof top platform for luggage. On the bus vendors walk the isles selling drinks in bags or little snacks, and they hop on and off constantly. The driver has assistants that take fare, open the door for passengers, and climb on to the roof of the speeding bus to dangle items off for exiting persons. That’s right, the bus doesn’t stop. It just pauses while you jump off and run along side to retrieve your bike from the roof, or transfer to another bus in the middle of the street. Who wants to read the news when you could be living it?
Riding the bus.
San Juan Del Sur
A beautiful coastal city on the Pacific ocean San Juan Del Sur is in the South West side of Nicaragua a short distance from the border with Costa Rica. The city, I’m stretching the term here, is set in a bay and surrounded by beautiful green hills. Originally a small fishing town, these days folks come to the area to surf the area beaches. The culture in town is laid back and feels worldly. You can eat really cheap at the market, get a good cup of fresh roasted coffee at El Gato Negro ( a local book store and coffee shop), and take a bumpy bus ride to Maderas to surf. I really don’t have much to say about San Juan Del Sur other than you really can’t go wrong in a place so beautiful.
Every photo i took in San Juan Del Sur looks this good.
Granada
Granada is the countries third largest city, was established in 1524, and is located on the coast of Lake Nicaragua. The streets are well laid out and lined with cool old buildings. Wandering around the city center is a great way to spend some time, and if you tire of it you can hang out in a garden cafe or check out the lake. There are also tons of tours where you can do yoga in the jungle and get in touch with your inner self (if your into that kind of thing). There is an open air market in the center of town, and a bunch of vendors on the street selling all sorts of stuff. As far as I can tell the city is devoid of records. I went everywhere looking to buy “grandes discos” with no luck. All I got were some bootleg Cumbia CDs and a few odd looks. If you have any luck finding records in Granada..or Nicaragua in general please drop me a line.
One of many local churches
A Garden Cafe with hammocks.
Lake Nicaragua
Lake Nicaragua is huge, about 3,000 square miles. Really really large. The largest source of fresh water in Central America. It is so large in fact that it is home to one of the only species of fresh water sharks known to man, a chain of 365 islands (Las Isletas), and Concepcion a huge active volcano plopped in the center on the island of Ometepe. If your in Granada you can charter a boat and take a tour of these islands for a small fee. The islands are pretty small, and have mostly been bought up so that the uber rich could build mansions on them (what’s more plush than owning your own island?). There is even an island with monkeys on it.
Check this house out. What is grocery shopping like?
If you are looking at taking a tropical vacation, consider Nicaragua. The country is beautiful, the people are friendly, and traveling on the cheap is easy. If you do make it down there please drop us a line and let us know how the trip went and if this helped out in any way. You can check out the rest of my photos here
Digging For Records In Mississippi
This past weekend my friend Nick and I made the trip from Nashville to Memphis to eat BBQ and dig for records. If you have never been to Memphis, or some how overlooked these activities on your trips to the city, its hard to quantify exactly how much you have been missing. Perhaps this story will help.
Tucker and Bloom Prove E-Commece is the way to go for smart looking bags
Nashville Style in the BAG
David Bloom and his son Case definitely have the best-looking bags in J.J.'s coffee shop on Broadway- this despite the fact that we're surrounded by Vandy students and young professionals with their designer-brand briefcases and laptop totes. Boom's been a "bag nut" for years, and says the first time he ever worked with a hide of leather he felt like he'd been reborn. In the early 70's he befriended a Greek handbag-maker while living in Boston and studied the traditional craft with him and other skilled European artisans there and New York, knowing it was what he was meant to do,
From these experts he learned the fine art of leather-crafting, based on complex European techniques passed down over decades. "I leaned from a lot of the old school guys in the industry in New York" says Bloom. "I worked side by side with the last of a dying breed, many of them survivors of the concentration camps, who do things in a way we don’t in this country today".
His son and business partner Case interrupts, reminding me that true craftsmanship is a fading art, and that the few people who still practice those old skills have an obligation to take back what bags once were from the hands of the mass manufacturers and return them to a level of high craftsmanship and durability. Which s exactly what their company, Tucker & Bloom, aims to do.
Bloom has built a long career on his bag design and construction skills. His first company, Bloom Fine Leather Accessories, produced a much-in-demand roll-top bag that made the New York Times fashion section and sold at Macy's. Henri Bendel, Saks and Neiman Marcus. The small company (Bloom, his wife Dru and one additional employee) eventually closed when the births of their children Case and Maddie meant the couple couldn't keep up with demand. During that period Bloom began working with handbag companies including Etra, Sirco International, L.J. Simone and Ishihara Industries, which held the licenses for Courreges and Valentino. In the 1990's the family moved to Nashville, where Bloom headed the design team for Hartmann Luggage for five years. Independently, he's designed for Valentino and Perry Ellis, at one point moving back to New York to work for Coach, heading their travel line in 2000. Following 9/11 the travel industry slumped, however , and Bloom left Coach.
In 2006, Bloom and his now- grown son decided to give it another go family-style and started Tucker & Bloom (Tucker is Dru Bloom's family name and Case's middle name). Together, they decided to capitalize on David's exceptional design and construction skills and MTSU grad Case's promotional abilities, building a middleman-free business in Nashville. The Key is e-commerce, which allows them to reach out to the community, craftsman to buyer, in the old world tradition-just online instead of in a private atelier.
The target audience for the bags is wide, though common traits are discerning taste and the desire to differentiate themselves from the herd. Bag designs are separated by lifestyle needs – work, leisure or travel. Styles are not gender-specific; there's something to appeal to every customer. Fabrics are both sturdy and attractive, with leather, cotton canvas and ballistic nylon in a wide assortment of colors. Lush trim like calf-skin is obtained as food by-product from the agriculture industry. Checking out the website, you'll find an exciting assortment of messenger bags, laptop cases and other bags suited to all urban and suburban professionals. Neoprene product lines focusing on travel and leisure are expected to be available shortly.
The Blooms are hoping their band becomes something the public is looking for, and there's every reason to believe that's possible. The next step online will allow customers to customize each bag's color and materials. There's no question that e-commerce has changed the way we live and buy, and Tucker & Bloom provide an example of the best sort of e-business. They make cutting edge products available to the public without a middleman, working from a very forward-looking model even as they revisit the old values of craftsmanship and design. No brand name can give you that.
Published in Nashville Lifestyle Magazine June 2008 – By Stephanie Stewart