A Very Special Factory Tour
M&S Schmalberg is the last remaining American manufacturer of a highly specialized product: fabric flowers. Seeing their production facility was a rare treat.
Note: This article includes several video clips that are essential to the story, so I strongly suggest that you read the web version, not the email version. Enjoy! — Paul
I really enjoy seeing how things are made, so it makes sense that I’ve always loved factory tours. Over the years, I’ve toured facilities that make candy bars, pretzels, potato chips, Tabasco sauce, ice cream cones, maple syrup, beer, whiskey, farm equipment, baseball bats, footballs, cigarettes, glass, musical instruments, Brannock Devices, Barbicide, New York City street signs, and probably a bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.
Those are all fairly mainstream products. But I recently toured a factory that makes something a bit more specialized — something I’d never even thought about until a few months ago: fabric flowers.
Fabric flowers, which are most often made from silk (although sometimes from cotton, wool, or other textiles), are used by dressmakers, milliners, film and theater costume designers, wedding planners, event planers, visual merchandisers, and pretty much anyone else who needs durable, lifelike flowers that won’t wilt and die. Hundreds of American companies used to make them, primarily in New York City, but the industry is now based largely in Asia. One U.S. manufacturer remains, however: M&S Schmalberg, which has been operating in New York since 1916 and is still headquartered in what remains of Manhattan’s garment district.
I became aware of M&S Schmalberg (and of fabric flowers in general) last October, when I saw that they were offering a factory tour. I wasn’t able to attend that one, but I jumped at the chance when they offered another one last month. And in a lucky break, there was only one other person in my tour “group,” so the two of us had a very personal tour experience with company co-owner Adam Brand, whose great-great-uncle founded M&S over a century ago.
Brand spent a good 40 minutes or so just sitting down with us in the company’s reception area, giving us the M&S backstory, answering our many questions, and getting to know us a bit. Then he brought us into the inventory area, which was filled with stacks of boxes, each containing various flowers that had already been made.
