Weathering The Storm, JR Manno

By Susan Derby

Starting a business from scratch proves to be very challenging and potentially risky. Problems can spring up around every corner, from finding the right location to establishing a customer base. One of the options that many want-to-be-owners have is to buy an already-existing store that is in need of new ownership. Many times, the store just needs some new ideas and energy to bring it up to a higher performance level.

Tom Bartolec did just that with JR Manno Uniforms in South Florida. He recognized the strong potential and solid customer base the business had, but it needed some tender loving care that the past owners just didnt provide. The payoff has been great, with tripled sales and streamlined operations. The stores new strength is enough to survive economic downturns and even storming hurricanes.

Jerry and Ruth Manno founded JR Manno in 1979. He was a retired police officer who started the company to stay active in police work and to continue generating income. He knew the needs of police and security officers, and he created a store to carry everything they would require in uniforms and equipment.

Jerry Manno passed the business on to his daughter and her husband, who carried on the regular operations. The daughter continued management through her divorce and second marriage. But she and her second husband didnt show much of an interest in the business, and it started to show in the bottom line.

Thats when Bartolec stepped in. He says, I had a varied background, and part of my background was in business brokerage, where he would evaluate businesses and try to match up buyers and sellers. I quickly came to discover that I would be interested in owning a business myself. I had a restaurant background I was a cook and my wife was a restaurant manager, so we were mostly considering a restaurant. We had no idea about uniforms, let along police uniforms.

But the ad in the classifieds was enough to pique their interest, and what they found was a business that had great upside potential that was simply owned by someone who had other aspirations than store ownership. JR Manno Uniforms proved to be a good match for the Bartolecs, so they bought it in January of 2000, keeping the name to lend historical credibility.

Since then, Tom and Anne Louise Bartolec have put a lot of elbow grease into reinventing and expanding what was a 1,000-square-foot store. They have installed computerized record keeping, upped the inventory and talked up the new ownership to bring back customers that may not have received the excellent treatment they were hoping to find.

The first thing that I learned is that the way you treat people is more important than anything else, and good prices help a lot too, Bartolec says. But its more than service. Its also being a regular person and having a personality. People tend to count the misses and not the hits, so they remember the mistakes and dont come back.

While Tom focuses on the operational management of the store, Anne Louise handles the bookkeeping (and the three kids). Karla Kelley is the operations manager, the anchor person as Bartolec calls her. She is the first person the customers see and is really the personal identity of the store.

Also a part of the team are seamstresses Josie Fiorvante and Jane Horan. Having on-site seamstresses has been a key to separating JR Manno from the competition. They can do hemming, patches and alterations on the spot most times unless they are working on a batch of customer orders. Horan was actually an employee of Jerry Manno 20 years earlier. She saw the ad for seamstress help and came for the job. Many of the officers who were just starting with their departments when Horan worked there before are now captains and chiefs, so many are bringing their business (and the business of their entire department) back to a person they recognize and trust.

The hard part of buying the business was advertising it. Bartolec went on the road with business cards and a store brochure to get the word out of new ownership. The problem was I am only one guy. To grow the store, I had to leave the store. But I just went out and introduced myself and just asked people to give us a try. I dont ask them to burn bridges with their current retailer, but just to test us out once or twice.

Obviously the tactic has been working, and sales have been increasing steadily ever since.

To accommodate the increasing sales, JR Manno expanded to twice its original size about a year ago. Located in a strip mall, the neighboring store was up for sale, and Bartolec saw that as his chance to expand to 2,000 square feet and to add discount medical scrubs to its full line of police and security uniforms and equipment. Now, police department sales account for about half of overall sales, and walk-in civilian sales account for the other half.

The store is split roughly in half, with the sales floor in the front and the seamstress stations and inventory in the back. The office is in the middle, acting as a divider between the two sections. Bartolec admits the store almost feels like a warehouse. He says customers are interested in low prices and finding what they need easily more than how it looks.

What we stock is driven by the customers need, Bartolec says. We are not speculative. We dont take the manufacturers word [that an item will sell]. We stock a product when our customers demand it, and were always wary about committing to something new until we know our sales can support it.

The store also takes mail orders and can turn those around quickly. In fact, the store gets many items in the customers hands within 24 hours of the order arriving at the store.

In the next year, Bartolec is 75% sure JR Manno will open a second location and expand into postal and restaurant uniform needs. He is also looking to add more large accounts to the customer base. An outside sales representative from Central Florida has been helping grow that aspect of the business and has brought a following of customers.

Thats one of the most exciting parts of it theres a real need for us, says Bartolec. I dont see any rollups happening in this industry. Departments like to see individuality in uniforming. They like their department to look different than others, so theres always new items and styles.

Still in development is a Web site for the business. One of the best benefits Bartolec sees in a Web site is drawing in remote agencies that dont have a retail uniform store nearby to depend on. If JR Manno Uniforms already has the product and the ability to ship it out quickly, those police departments can enjoy the same service and quality as current customers. Bartolec hopes the site will be up in six months to a year.

I dont like computers personally, but I know they are a great tool for a lot of things, he says. Kelley is the computer whiz of the store. She creates proposals, searches bids, researches new products and keeps customer profiles on the computer. The amount of information and professionalism that the computer brings helps put JR Manno Uniforms on the same level playing field as the larger retailers, Bartolec says.

One of the biggest challenges of the past year was the hurricane that tore through the area this summer. While the store didnt suffer any serious damage, it was closed for five days with no power. The air conditioner unit on the roof was torn off, leaving a hole that allowed water in that damaged some product. That meant a new air conditioner unit, repairing the roof and replacing the lost merchandise. The sign was also damaged and needed replacing. Like most others in the area, the damage amounted to less than the insurance deductible, so many businesses were left to pay out-of-pocket for repairs.

One positive that came out of the hurricanes was the goodwill steps JR Manno took to be sure police departments had the uniforms and equipment they needed. There was no laundry at the police departments because there was no power. We had a lot of officers suddenly buying BDUs, t-shirts and spare equipment. We really jumped through hoops and paid extra to get things out overnight, Bartolec says. We were really able to help a lot of other people out when they needed it to do their jobs.

It is taking those extra steps that has made the difference in the store Bartolec has turned around. While it has been rewarding both financially and in satisfaction, Bartolec says it was very tough to start. There was much that needed to be done very quickly when he first bought JR Manno Uniforms, from hiring his own staff to learning the product lines. He recommends to others that buying an existing store is easier than starting one from scratch. But he also credits part of his success to having the right personality for store ownership.

If a person has the attitude and believes in the philosophy that, if you can measure something, you can improve it, they are a good candidate for this business.

Its something that Bartolec has capitalized on in the case of JR Manno Uniforms. His venture into a new industry demanded a lot of him and his wife, but they are enjoying the payoff and celebrating a growing business of which even their customers are proud to be a part.

JR Manno Uniforms
3115 Lake Worth Rd
Lake Worth, FL 33461
561-439-4067
Fax 561-439-1511
www.mannouniforms.com