Running Up the Score : Brazilian Immigrant Sews Up the American Dream With Soccer Uniform Factory
Jill Menzel strolls through her Wilmington factory in an elegant cream, wool dress and heels, exuding a casual manner as she surveys this long room cluttered with sewing machines, fabric, scissors and threads.
She does not hesitate to reach down to pull aside a pile of orange polyester fabric blocking her way.
And she does not mind when the many women look up from the bright-colored soccer uniforms they are assembling to smile widely and greet her familiarly as “Jill.”
For a woman who, in the last 14 years, has barged into the world of sportswear by expanding a three-employee business into one of the nation’s leading soccer uniform manufacturing firms, Menzel 49, seems remarkably at ease with her accomplishments.
Since 1978, when she purchased American Soccer Co. Inc., which uses the brand name Score, Menzel has expanded the company into a 140-employee operation, selling about 1 million uniforms a year to 10,000 clients worldwide.
“It was all hard work,” said Menzel, a Brazilian native who has been in the United States for 24 years, “and that is part of life.”
Menzel, who is a volunteer helping to organize soccer’s World Cup championship in Los Angeles next year, is excited about the game, which she hopes will increase people’s appreciation for the world’s most popular spectator sport.
But she does not expect an increase in soccer uniform sales because she does not believe the number of players in the United States will increase much after the World Cup.
“The World Cup has already made an immense contribution to soccer,” she said, noting that interest in the sport has risen since the 1988 announcement that the 1994 championship game would be played in the Rose Bowl.
The number of youths between 5 and 18 playing soccer in the three major nationwide leagues has increased from 1.8 million in 1988 to 2.3 million in 1992, according to Soccer World Cup U.S.A., the nonprofit company organizing the World Cup.
Soccer World Cup U.S.A. has estimated that 16 million people nationwide play soccer. Soccer is especially popular among teen-agers, second only to baseball, said Jeff Idelson, a spokesman for Soccer World Cup U.S.A, which expects the World Cup to boost the popularity of the sport.
Although she is a soccer fanatic who travels the globe to watch games, Menzel has never played the sport. In Brazil, women were not allowed to play soccer until the early 1970s because the sport was considered too violent.
“They used to argue that it was not safe for women to play soccer. At that time, it was a real scandal to see a woman in shorts,” Menzel said with her easy laugh.
But Menzel makes little of the irony that she now presides over a company that depends so much on the sport she could not play. She is not one to dwell on the past.
Still, as a woman it has not been easy building a business in the male--dominated sportswear world.
Menzel, who prefers jeans and a T--shirt to business suits, said she often is not taken seriously by businessmen. “I let them think that I don’t know what I am doing till it is time to close the deal.”
She has not been deterred by doubters. A few years ago when she introduced a line of soccer uniforms with bright pink colors aimed at the girls’ and women’s market, men in the industry scoffed. Now, the line has become a hot seller.
Just how successful the company has become is difficult to gauge.
Menzel declined to provide her sales figures, but industry analysts see Score as a leading soccer uniform manufacturer.
Adidas is the largest producer of soccer uniforms; Score is counted in the top three and is considered the largest producer for its size, said Manny Hirschel, a leading soccer uniform distributor in San Francisco.
Score is the official soccer uniform maker for nine national teams, including Canada’s and Venezuela’s (none in the World Cup, though).
Learning how to go after what she wanted was something that Menzel, who was born in a small town, learned at an early age.
The daughter of an accountant and a homemaker, Menzel, the fourth of 10 children, grew up competing with her siblings for everything in the household, including spending money.
When she was 10, Menzel began to knit infants’ socks to sell to department stores.
As a teen-ager, Menzel made money from decorating churches for weddings and from fund raising for nonprofit organizations.
In 1962, at age 18, she fell in love with a German-born American citizen who was working in Brazil. Seven years later, Menzel moved to the United States and married him.
She worked in tailor shops before getting a job as a seamstress at Score in 1975.
“I always worked hard,” she said. “I hoped that if I put in the extra hours, one day I would be promoted to manager. Deep inside though, I had the expectations of owning something of my own.”
Within a year Menzel was promoted to factory manager and three years later, Menzel, who had saved $7,000, bought 50% of the company. Six months later she got a bank loan and bought out her partner, who had decided to leave the garment business.
“It was like a dream come true,” she said, recalling the day when she became the owner of the factory--her 34th birthday.
Menzel immersed herself in the business, routinely working 17-hour days, sometimes going home at midnight.
“I used to do everything--answer the phone, pay the bills, design and sew the uniforms, and supervise the employees,” Menzel said. “There was a time when I would take the phone off the hook because it wouldn’t stop ringing and I couldn’t afford to pay a receptionist.”
Her husband, who is an engineer, provided a lot of support. They have since divorced.
“I was able to invest all the factory’s profit back on the factory right away. I had someone who could back me up,” she said.
Menzel tries to keep things informal at the factory. Employees eat their meals in the same lunch room where she entertains her clients and everyone is called by first name. Workers can walk into Menzel’s office without appointments.
Menzel pays her employees, who work in a non-union shop, an average $5.50 an hour, with some making $7.60. Minimum wage is $4.25. They also receive one week of vacation and health benefits.
Ramon Gonzalez, 47, who has been working in the garment industry for 18 years and with Score for the last eight, said working conditions at Score are far better than at other factories.
“The machinery here is the newest in the market, we have air conditioning, clean restrooms and a kitchen. A lot of factories don’t offer that,” Gonzalez said.
Score’s clients are rarely taken out for lunch. Instead, they are treated to home-made Brazilian meals, often cooked by Menzel herself.
Around noon, the air in the first floor of the factory--where the kitchen is located--is filled with the smell of dishes such as black beans, chicken and exotic salads flavored with Brazilian spices grown in Menzel’s home garden.
Unlike many successful executives, Menzel does not have a secretary. She shares her executive duties with her only child, a son, 22, and one of her sisters. The three of them do everything from presentations and purchasing factory machines to advertising and designing the uniforms.
Customers appreciate Menzel’s easygoing manner.
She said she frequently donates uniforms to soccer leagues to ensure that young people who want to play can.
Dennis O’Neal, a Catholic priest who works with children in the Los Angeles Pico-Union neighborhood, says that if Score had not donated uniforms to his 700 players, he would not be able to field several youth soccer teams in the area.
“If I need a single uniform, they send it to me in the same day,” he said.
“I want to make sure that kids will not be denied the chance to play soccer because they don’t have uniforms,” Menzel said. “One of the dreams of my life was to have so I could help others.”
In the future Menzel hopes to expand her business to soccer-crazed Europe.
“People in Europe are very much interested in products made in the United States,” she said. “If I maintain the prices as low as I have, I will be able to build the clientele that I need in Europe.”
KEN HIVELY / Los Angeles Times
