Artisanal. A Family Thing.

Michael Rogak, Chocolatier

Ask Michael Rogak about the meaning of the word artisanal and he’ll give it to you straight. It’s about making small batches with skilled manual labor. Is that all? Isn’t there a lot more to it than that? After all, there’s a certain aura around the word that makes it seem hip and trendy. Perhaps it’s the whole artisanal way of life? Or maybe marketers have overused the word and made it altogether meaningless. To Mr. Rogak artisanal is simply not enough to breathe life into a business and to keep it going.

Michael Rogak should know. He comes from a family of artisanal candy makers. His grandfather immigrated from Russia to make candy here in Brooklyn back in the 1920s. Later his father got into the business. And when it was Michael’s turn his father made it clear that while he may never become wealthy he’ll always be able to take care of his family. So, back when JoMart Chocolates started in 1946 it wasn’t a money thing. It was a family thing. In fact, Marissa, his daughter, works alongside Michael today and, though he may be enjoying the taste of candy more than anything else right now, it’s likely that little Jake will get into the act one day too.

Years ago it was sad to see the other confectioners - and Brooklyn had many - leaving town. So, when the newcomers started making their way to Brooklyn it was refreshing. The trouble is that in selling the word artisanal as something new and fashionable one may come to doubt that an artisanal business that’s been around as long as JoMart’s can still make anything good. But JoMart isn’t an enormous out-of touch corporation. Look past the word at the artisans themselves and one may find a family like Michael’s preserving a tradition of making candy that continues to delight the neighborhood and beyond. 
 

Lori's Shoes

When I’m in a conversation with Lori, I get the feeling that her mind is on a high speed chase with a gazillion other things. Lori is a serial entrepreneur  with a degree from the Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science. Her first company was Promgirl. Later she started an organic cleaning products company and a wholesale pet products business. Now she owns Neighborhoodies. While Neighborhoodies isn’t her baby, it’s become her shoes. “Taking over someone’s business is like walking in someone else’s shoes. Eventually, they become your own shoes,” says Lori.

When she took over Neighborhoodies, the place was a mess. Literally. She emptied it of three dumpsters of trash, replaced the single phone line with a complete system and revamped the website. When customers drop in off the street, instead of stopping everything there’s a streamlined process to handle requests. Start-ups operate very differently from established businesses. Still, Neighborhoodies is a dynamic company and with Lori at the helm I can’t imagine it getting stale.

Lori’s challenge is to transform her brick and mortar business into an e-commerce enterprise while remaining true to its roots. Neighborhoodies offers a highly specialized service; customizing apparel with appliqué, embroidery and printing. The hoodies themselves are made of organic, recycled material and the inks are non-toxic. Customers include Rachael Ray, Questlove, and Eli Manning as well as the BBC, MTV and Yelp!.

In addition to the DUMBO storefront, now you can design your own hoodie on the Neighborhoodies website with the new Hoodie-O-Matic application. While widening service offerings with options like custom monograms, Lori is progressing on her mission to e-commercialize her business by offering live chat for custom collaborations online. Today Neighborhoodies is Lori’s own pair of highly customized shoes and she wears them well.

We All Wanna Make It

At 145 Front Street in DUMBO shoppers enter a U-shaped corridor lined with vendors selling everything from cupcakes and clothing to jewelry and skincare products. The air inside is charged with a vibe that makes shopping and vending compulsive. Thrust within this multifaceted mix of competitive forces one may find a certain artist peacefully painting on an easel in his glass-fronted studio. Craig Anthony Miller aka “Cam” of reInspire Brooklyn is the self-proclaimed Switzerland in the world that is The Shops.

reInspire Brooklyn is part of the reTreat empire that includes reBar, reRun and reBoy. Cam’s line of apparel, jewelry and paintings awaken the heart through creations infused with his passion. The designs themselves are inspired by the stained glass found in churches like Antioch Baptist Church in Bed-Stuy and the work of collectives of graffiti artists like TATS Cru. Cam made his bones on the streets of Alphabet City. His first live paintings were done outside of Tomkins Square Park. A beauty salon in SOHO commissioned his first mural and today his public works are essential to the fabric of DUMBO. As acting art director for reBar and reRun, Cam himself plays an influential role in DUMBO’s vibrant art scene.

Evoked by this soft spoken man’s heart is Ganesh, Lord of Success and Remover of Obstacles. A central figuring throughout many of Cam’s creations, Ganesh symbolizes our wish to overcome. “We all want to be successful,” says Cam. It’s true. We all want to make it. Still, it’s Cam’s view that success needn’t come at the expense of others. “Life is so much easier when you love. It’s too much work to hate.” And this attitude explains how reInspire Brooklyn is the Switzerland of The Shops.

A Sign of No Business

One day, I was walking down Berry Street in Williamsburg when I noticed an elderly gentleman cautiously surveying card tables laid out with what appeared to be chess sets outside a small ramshackle garage. He was going about it very deliberately, though I sensed he was approachable. The pieces were large and blocky. Some were plain and others ornately carved, but what caught my eye was the unfinished piece he held gingerly in his hand. I made some comment about the pieces and he responded with a challenge.  Boasting that he could beat a Grand Master, he challenged me in a thick Greek accent to beat him at “his game.” I’d win $100 if he lost, but I wanted to know more about this game of his. 

And so, for well over an hour we sat together like friends from the Old Country. We reminisced about how Brooklyn was over thirty years ago when he emigrated here from Greece. How dangerous it was. How difficult it was to make a decent living and yet how one could more easily make enough to get by whatever you did anyway. Following his family’s story from Bulgaria to Turkey to Greece and finally to the United States, Christopher “Elis” Voulgarelis eventually opened up about his unique creations, his games.

Elis is a self-taught woodworker who made his first chess set when he was ten. He continued making them on the side while he ran a trucking operation and later as a cabbie. His primary tool is an X-Acto knife. He designed two original games: Give & Take and Escape. Give & Take is a simplified form of Turkish checkers as there so many different variations and it can take seventy-five moves before a game is called a draw. The story behind Escape is more interesting. It was created out of Elis’ frustration with the police when he was a cabbie. He believed they picked on him because of his heavy Greek accent. In Escape, there are only three pyramid shaped pieces. One represents the cabbie and the other two, the police. The cabbie’s objective is to lose the police to avoid paying a steep fine for some traffic infraction in five moves or less. At least, this is what motivates poor Elis when he’s playing!

Elis uses wood from discarded furniture to make his games and despite his experience as a cabbie, he’s a proud New Yorker. In fact, some of his pieces resemble the towers under construction at the new World Trade Center. While Elis never made it big with his games, he makes them for his own edification while “trying to make fun of the world.” As if to emphasize this, he quotes, “business with no sign is a sign of no business.”