Nancy Meller shares her early memories of Feldmar Watch Co.
While researching my story on the 100-year-old Feldmar Watch Co. for Sunday’s Image section, my big regret was not being able to include the recollections of Nancy Meller -- daughter of second-generation owners Barney and Harriet Feldmar -- who responded to my interview request too late to be included in the story that appeared in print.
But as someone who grew up in a family business (especially one like my family’s where the contributions of the women tend to be overshadowed by those of the men), some of the things she shared really resonated with me.
First, let me tidy the branches of the family tree; the former Nancy Feldmar, granddaughter of company founder Jack Feldmar, married Sol Meller in 1970. In 1972, Sol Meller joined the family business and has worked there ever since. (He is currently Feldmar’s president.) Although the Sol and Nancy Meller divorced in 2000, each continues to own half the family business.
Nancy Meller said her memories of the family business don’t go quite as far back as the very first L.A. shop (which Jack Feldmar shared with a tailor) but she does remember the second location -- the H.D. Stack Building at 228 W. 4th St. in downtown Los Angeles, where it was for many years before moving to its current Pico Boulevard location. One thing she does remember? That her mother, Harriet, was in charge.
“My mother really was the boss,” Nancy Meller recalls of her now 93-year-old mother. “She always said that my father was the watchmaker and that she was the salesman. She would always wear a watch on her wrist and sell it to a customer right off her wrist. She always had this button she’d wear that said: ‘Number one salesman.’”
“I also remember my mother saying how [she and Barney] made a really good pair -- that he was good at some things and she was good at other things.”
And that acknowledgment, I think, is one of the key reasons the same family has remained at the helm for a hundred years: Different family members brought different things to the table at different (and crucial) times. Barney was a watchmaker, his father, Jack, was the entrepreneur who lit the fuse on the family business when he identified a niche in the pawnbroker circuit of Hackensack, N.J. And Harriet, to hear Nancy Meller tell it, excelled in sales.
In my conversations with Scott Meller, the son of Sol and Nancy Meller, vice president of Feldmar Watch Co. and heir apparent to the family business, it’s obvious he is aware of the dynamic too -- describing his father as consumate salesman (an assessment Nancy Meller shares) who built the business into what it is today, and himself as the one who spearheaded the store’s massive multi-year renovation and social media outreach.
And, while you might expect a marketing-savvy 37-year-old in an entertainment industry town to seriously consider taking the family business to the next logical step in brand-building -- the reality TV show -- that’s something Scott Meller quickly puts to rest.
“We’ve had reality television producers in here a lot, wanting to do a show on us,” he told me. “And my answer always is: ‘We may have been in business for a hundred years but if we did that we’d be closing our doors in a week.”
PHOTOS: Feldmar Watch Co.: 100 years in business
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