Archives for November 2006

Jay Blumenfeld: Smart Alex Makes Good

This article originally appeared at www.deafprofessional.net.

“Where people go, I go the other way,” Jay Blumenfeld says with a playful smile.

Blumenfeld, 52, is the owner of Smart Alex, a Chicago-based manufacturer and wholesale distributor of greeting cards and party items. Smart Alex – which bills itself as having “smart humor with attitude,” has sold over 16 million cards that are usually sold at small, quirky family-owned shops.

“At first glance, you’d think we were a company that produced greeting cards, party coasters, bachelorette gifts, party hats and gift tags. When you look a little closer, though, you see what we really do,” Blumenfeld says. “We make people smile. Quite often I’ll be in a store and see people pick up one of our products, read it, and then chuckle to themselves.”

A Humble Start
Blumenfeld and his late brother Richard, both deaf, were born and raised in St. Paul, Minn. Mainstreamed for most of his school years until his 1972 high school graduation, Blumenfeld attended the Rochester Institute of Technology. He graduated with honors and an associate’s degree in photography, in addition to winning several awards for his photography.

It was during his childhood that Blumenfeld discovered photography. “My father was a commercial photographer of some note. I grew up in and around his studio, and often accompanied him to outside photo shoots as well.” After college, Blumenfeld began dabbling in freelance photography and became fascinated with photographing female impersonators, taking hundreds of photographs in various cities. He returned to Minnesota to put his work together in book form, and eventually moved to New York City with the intention of finding a publisher.

“I saw art director after art director, publisher after publisher, and I always heard the same two things: ‘Great book, just not the right time,’ and ‘You should really think about incorporating your work into a fun, alternative line of greeting card. It’s the hottest thing in the market,” Blumenfeld remembers. “I did a little investigating and found out they were right. It was pretty much an untapped market and the possibilities to be creative, clever and fun seemed unlimited. That was 1980, and I jumped in feet first and have never looked back.”

However, 1980 was long before e-mail, fax machines and relay services were on the scene. Unable to pick up the phone and make calls to operate his nationwide business, then known as Innovisions, Blumenfeld traveled constantly to meet with potential representatives, in addition to handling designing, printing, packaging and mailing. “Customer service was another big challenge for me. All orders and communications with customers had to be done via mail,” Blumenfeld explains. “This put me at a four-day disadvantage compared to my competitors, something that bothered me a great deal.” Even so, one good thing came out of this experience. “I developed the habit of answering all of my mail and filling all of my orders immediately, something that I still do to this day and something that has served me very well.”

Lessons Learned
Maintaining this work schedule for the first three years of his business is something that amazes Blumenfeld today. “I honestly couldn’t tell you how I managed to keep it up, but I’m glad I did. One of the most important things I learned was the value of a relationship that is formed face-to-face. Once I had established myself and was able to hire employees, I started to take the standard route of engaging representatives, suppliers, customers, and so on. Those relationships never seemed to develop quite as fully, and after a few years, I went back to my practice of meeting people in person,” he says. “I’ve found that people genuinely appreciate the effort that it takes to travel to them, look them in the eye and shake their hand. No telephone call or e-mail can ever replace that.”

By 1988, Blumenfeld found himself in a quandary. The greeting card industry was changing, especially with Hallmark entering the alternative scene with its Shoebox line and driving many small companies out of business. Blumenfeld, who was friends with many small company owners, believed he was next in line. “I attended a party and I met a gentleman who worked in the field of marketing. We hit it off, and it wasn’t long before we became good friends. One day I was telling him about my plight, how I was pretty sure this was the end. He looked right at me and said, ‘Jay, you’ve got a great head on your shoulders, use it. Think of something new, something different. At this point, you really have nowhere to go but up.'”

With this piece of advice that Blumenfeld calls a “wake-up call” and a renewed belief in himself, he began to re-examine what worked and what didn’t. “Once I did that, I could clearly see what it was we had been doing, and it was easy to go in a new direction. The ideas flowed, and the turnaround was quite dramatic,” he says.

Within a short span of time, the business made a comeback, and was more successful than ever. “I learned just how important it is to be honest, brutally honest, when assessing what it is you and your company are doing. If it seems stale, it is. If it seems tired, it is. If you wouldn’t buy it yourself, why in the world would someone else? Figure this out before your customers and respond accordingly. Subsequently, growth is almost automatic.”

Smart Alex and Grandma Ruth
In 1997, Blumenfeld made the decision to narrow the focus of Innovisions and to revitalize the company’s image. Searching for a name to communicate the company’s newer and fresher image, Blumenfeld spoke with a friend and local greeting card/toy store retailer, Ted Frankel. “I explained my dilemma to Ted and he commented that he had always liked the name ‘Smart Alex,’ a play on the words, ‘smart aleck.’ It was one of those lightbulb-over-the-head moments. I fell in love with the name on the spot, and even got the paperwork started to facilitate our name change that very day,” Blumenfeld says. “Truthfully, I can say it’s one of the single best business decisions that I’ve ever made.”

Today, browsing through the Smart Alex catalog offering “smart humor with attitude,” customers can choose from mischievous cards, coasters laced with insults, and other tongue-in-cheek products. Most notable are the cards featuring Grandma Ruth, a sweet-looking white-haired woman in various poses.

“My grandmother, Ruth Blumenfeld, started modeling for me at the age of 91 and continued to do so until the age of 96. This business is very much about tapping into the mood and tenor of society. A design that sold gangbusters last year may be a dud this year,” Blumenfeld smiles.

“Not so with Grandma Ruth. She seems to be impervious to the changing times and trends. In the last 23 years she has appeared on millions of greeting cards, and her cards have never fallen off my bestsellers list,” Blumenfeld says. “I don’t know how many times people have told me that she simply looks the way most people think a grandmother should look.”

Ruth, who passed away at the age of 101 in 1992, had an unbeatable sense of humor, Blumenfeld adds. “My family swears I inherited her humor gene. A perfect example is from when I was about 10. My dad bought an expensive sweater and showed it to my family. I said to my mom that it was a beautiful sweater, and she said ‘Ohh, it cost fifty bucks!’ That was back in 1964. I went up to Dad and said, ‘I don’t like your sweater…take it back!’ My family laughed, and this is how my Grandma Ruth would talk, also.”

The combination of humor, strong work ethics, and a willing market has proven successful for Smart Alex. The company has won six Louie Awards, greeting card awards that are the equivalent of Academy Awards. Smart Alex also received “Card of the Year” honors for three of its cards in 1991, one in 1995, and two in 1996, beating out thousands of companies.

Balancing Business with Pleasure
Even with his hectic work schedule, Blumenfeld makes sure to balance business with pleasure. Featured in Chicago Magazine for his cookie jar collection, Blumenfeld also collects Funko Wacky Wobblers, a line of bobbing head toys. But more important to him are the people he surrounds himself with.

Thomasina Seah, Blumenfeld’s best friend, knows this all too well. “Jay is a wonderful friend and an astute businessman. Jay has owned the business for 26 years, but he still possesses the same zeal and enthusiasm for his work as he did on Day One,” she says. “Despite his hectic and often stressful professional life, he never neglects to nurture his personal life.”

“Jay is a very gentle person who is not only creative but has a clever business mind,” Howard Rosenblum, an attorney in Chicago who is deaf, says. “Part of his success also comes from his intense loyalty to friends as well as colleagues and employees. A person who has Jay as a close friend knows that he can always be relied upon and trusted.”

Blumenfeld is quick to say, “Not only are friends important to me in my professional life, but they’re invaluable to me personally.” Equally important to him are his employees. Blumenfeld, who currently has five employees (all hearing, although he has often had deaf employees in the past), says his co-workers are like family, especially Austin Jones, a certified public accountant who has worked with him for 26 years.

Another co-worker who is prominent in Blumenfeld’s life is Mark Taylor, who has worked with him since 1992 as a commercial designer/illustrator. Taylor is also Blumenfeld’s partner of 18 years. “It’d be impossible for me to overstate the role that he has played in my success,” Blumenfeld says. “He’s someone whose opinion I trust completely. His perspective is often quite different than mine, and he provides me with a second set of eyes, allowing me to see things in a way that I probably wouldn’t have on my own.”

Looking to the Future
Smart Alex has no plans to close anytime soon. Blumenfeld is constantly working on new ideas and products for his company, saying, “Growth is the key to keeping it fresh and exciting, and that’s the key to maintaining your enthusiasm!”

“Jay’s greeting card business is essentially hip in that he and his network of employees and contractors have a cheerful irreverence for the norm,” Rosenblum says. “They continually reinvent their cards so that the business is always on the leading edge of the market. This is an excellent example of how a deaf person can be a successful businessperson without needing to focus on a deaf identity, but instead, marketing to the world at large.”

“The day I stop looking to the future is the day that I will give it up and look to do something else,” Blumenfeld says. “This is what I do for a living, and honestly, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.”

The Smart Alex website is at www.smartalexinc.com.

Copyrighted material. This article can not be copied, reproduced, or redistributed without the written consent of the author.

Adopt a Deaf Dog Today!

January 2, 2009: This organization is apparently inactive. Donations to the organization have not been returned nor acknowledged; complaints have been filed with the state of Florida and the Better Business Bureau. Even so, do consider adopting a deaf dog today.

This article originally appeared at i711.com.

I avoid www.deafdogs.org like the plague.

Otherwise, I end up having a broken heart because I can’t adopt all of the dogs on this site.

Page after page shows pictures of gorgeous, photogenic, lovable dogs – all deaf and needing homes. Every year, thousands of dogs are killed because they’re deaf, and this pulls at my heart. Maybe it’s because I’m Deaf, or maybe it’s because I have a weak spot for all furry creatures, or maybe it’s just the basic idea that someone (or an animal) would be discarded simply because of the inability to hear.

The website is run by Deaf Dog Education Action Fund (DDEAF), a nonprofit, educational organization based in California, incorporated in 1997. DDEAF is “dedicated to provide support and information to deaf dog owners around the world who, thanks in part to the Internet, were discovering that they were not alone,” the DDEAF website says.

As someone who shares a house with a deaf dog, I first learned about deaf dogs years ago when I was surfing the Internet. When I saw the DDEAF website, I immediately wanted to adopt a deaf dog, but I already had a 75-pound dog and was living in an apartment that only allowed dogs up to 40 pounds. I promised myself that when I moved to a house, I’d get another dog, a deaf dog. Meanwhile, I checked the site every week, bemoaning all the adorable dogs staring at me from my computer screen.

Then fate smiled upon me. I got an e-mail from a woman in Atlanta who had seen my name on some deaf dog list. She asked if I’d be interested in adopting seven-month-old Malcolm, who was hours away from being euthanized because he was deaf. I immediately said yes, especially after seeing pictures. My mother agreed to take Malcolm in until I could take him; Malcolm was brought to Chicago via a dog run – when people drive dogs from one point to another, and then transfer the dogs to another person who then drives the dogs another distance, until each of the dog is transported to the final destination. It’s a remarkable service. Malcolm came into my life in August 2002. As I write this more than four years later, Malcolm is happily chewing on rawhide next to his best friend, Isre.

Deaf Candidates: It’s Also About the Issues

This article originally appeared at i711.com.

If a deaf person runs for political office, should deaf people automatically support that candidate simply because she or he is deaf?

That was the question I posed to several friends recently. In Minnesota, we have the fine Rev. Emory Dively (R) running for District 64B (St. Paul) in the Minnesota House of Representatives. He’s up against incumbent Michael Paymar (DFL) in a heavily Democratic district.

Emory and I serve on the Minnesota Association of Deaf Citizens (MADC) board together; he’s long been involved with the Deaf community, including through his church and as a past president of MADC. As a registered Democrat, I initially wasn’t sure about supporting a Republican. I have deep respect for Emory and decided to support him out of loyalty and his dedication to social justice, but I did wonder at first about the consequences of supporting someone whose political affiliation wasn’t something I cared for. So I asked friends what they thought. (In the spirit of disclosure, I should mention that I contributed financially to Dively’s campaign.)

A Democrat friend quickly responded to my question, saying that deaf people should always support a deaf candidate, regardless of party affiliation. “When you support a deaf candidate, you’re assured that the candidate’s primary focus will be equality in all aspects of life,” he said. “And if he’s deaf, he’s going to automatically support deaf people’s issues and rights.” Hmm, good point.

Another Democrat friend disagreed, saying that it’s about belief systems for him. He said he couldn’t imagine voting for a candidate who supported the death penalty or other fundamental issues. I asked, for discussion’s sake: “But if we support a hearing candidate who might not care about deaf people’s equal access and prefers to focus on other issues, instead of the deaf candidate – then won’t that increase the risk of our rights as deaf people being taken away? Shouldn’t we support a deaf candidate for that very reason alone?”

He replied, “What’s the likelihood that a rookie representative changes the system and eliminates oppression and discrimination during his/her term? There are other issues she or he will have to focus on, too.” Good point, too.

A Republican friend – I do have Republican friends, believe it or not – said, “I would go for the candidate’s agenda and platform, rather than party affiliation or being deaf. For instance, if a CODA runs for political office, but is a great supporter of American Sign Language and Deaf culture, then I would support for this person over a candidate who doesn’t support these things, even if the other candidate is deaf or hard of hearing.” Me, too, although I would also look at other moral issues.

Yet, on the flip side, it’s a major asset to have a Deaf representative involved in the political process, because this does wonders in changing hearing people’s – legislators, especially – perceptions of deaf and hard of hearing people. Even though there are many ways of doing this without being directly involved in the legislative process, it’s important to have someone actually involved in the day-to-day business of creating laws.

In the case of Emory, my doubts continued until I interviewed him for SIGNews. After a fascinating chat, I realized that he actually supported many issues that I was in favor of, and even the issues we disagreed on weren’t major issues. But the selling point for me was that if he got elected – I can’t vote for him, since I don’t live in his district -I could easily meet with him at any time if he is elected. I know he’d make time for me and for any other Deaf Minnesotan on whatever topic we wanted to talk about, because we are his people and community.

That, for me, is of paramount importance: accessibility to politicians. With accessibility, I can take full advantage of our country’s democratic process and express my views and opinions. With other legislators that I meet with for various organizations such as MADC, I sometimes have to explain how to use interpreters, ASL, and so on. Generally, legislators allot very limited time for these meetings with their constituents, and these explanations eat up valuable time; I’d much prefer to spend that time on the issues I’m there to talk about. With a deaf candidate like Emory, all these hindrances would be removed, and we’d be able to focus on the issues at hand, deaf-related or not.

For me, it boils down to learning all I can about candidates, and having access to these politicians. And if they’re deaf – even better! That enables me to talk with them directly to see what issues they support, so I can make an informed decision about who to vote for.

Don’t forget to vote on November 7.

Copyrighted material. This article can not be copied, reproduced, or redistributed without the written consent of the author.

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