Editor’s Note: Veteran costume industry sales rep Nigel FeBland was recently interviewed by APDSP Executive Director Ed Avis. Here is a “first-person” article about FeBland based on that interview.
My father and uncle, Dan and Sydney Bland, bought a company in 1954 called Topstone Industries, which made latex masks. The factory was based in Danbury, Connecticut. My father worked with the chains, like Woolworth, Kresge and McCrorys, and my uncle sold to the jobbers (wholesalers). Eventually smaller retailers started coming to us directly because they wanted to buy from the source. I guess that led us to the NCA at some point.
I got to know the business when I was a kid and I’d go to the factory with my dad sometimes, and he always planned for me to go into the business. But I studied film, photography, and English in college and went to California after I graduated. I started working in photography there, and then got into PR. I started out delivering packages for a PR company, and eventually they let me write bios of the actors and musicians they represented. One thing led to another and I started writing “canned features” for the press and doing publicity. That was in the ‘70s, and I met a lot of celebrities, like Peter Finch, William Holden, Gene Wilder, Carol Kane, and Katherine Helmond.
Then one day my father said to me, “Leave California and come work in our rubber mask factory where you will be so busy you can’t look up all day. I’m going to retire in so many years, so come now or forget it.” I told him “forget it” doesn’t sound too bad!
I decided to go to Europe for a bike trip, because I knew if I started working at the factory, I’d never get a real vacation until I quit. I rode through France and was about to go into Spain when I heard from my dad and he said, “It’s now or never. You need five years to learn this business, and I’m at the five-year cutoff. If you want to do this, come home now.”
I was 26 years old. It was a hard decision. But I had saved enough money to buy my ticket home, so I went.
The deal I made with him was that I was going to be in sales -- I didn’t want to just work in the factory. But he said I had to work in the factory learn the business. I had to go through the line and learn every process and everything we do. “That way when people ask questions, you’ll know the answers,” he said.
We had an engineer working for us who had created a machine that was unique for its time. We had plaster-of-Paris molds that we poured the liquid latex into, and we would pull the masks out when the latex dried. But it takes a long time to dry. So this engineer developed a device that you could hang the molds onto and it would go around the whole factory like a ride going through Playland. Then it would come into these big ovens to help it dry. So these molds were perpetually going around the building and coming through the oven and drying. After they were dry the masks were pulled out of the molds and sent to the trimming area. A special machine would punch out the eyes and the masks were painted with airbrushes. It was quite a process.
We also did vacuform hats. We had a derby, a tramp hat and a party type clown hat. You didn’t have a lot of choice in hats in those days. Then we figured out how to sew hair on a hat, so you had the clown and derby hats with the orange hair sticking out of it. When the Beatles were the rage, Topstone sold Beatles wigs, too.
I learned every step of the process, and then one day I said to my father, “When am I getting out of the salt mine?” He said, “OK, now I’ll give you sales training.” He told me to get samples of everything we sold – in addition to masks and hats we were doing make-up, Dracula blood, that sort of stuff – and put it into a box. We walked outside and put the box into the trunk of my car and he said, “OK, you’re ready.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “You’ve made every item, you know how everything is made. Here’s your list of customers. Go to these jobbers on Broadway in New York. After you finish one week with these guys you’ll be ready.” He was right – I really learned from them. It was like throwing a dog into the lake to see if he could swim.
At that time we had three companies: Topstone Industries; Bland Brothers, which was an importer of caps and guns from England; and Bland Associates, which was a repping business. I became more involved in the repping business, because I wasn’t interested in the factory. My father’s philosophy was “Stay close to the buyers,” so that’s what I did.
One day five or six years later we had a lunch scheduled with a buyer at Woolworth. My father was living in Florida on a houseboat by then and was coming back to New York as needed, which was less and less. He flew in for this lunch meeting and walks into the restaurant, Miller’s, which was in the basement of the Woolworth Building. My father strolls in and the buyer says, “Dan, what are you doing here?” My dad said, “I’ve been waiting for five years for you to say that.” Then he said to me, “Now I know you’re ready.” And then he retired.
That was in 1986. Together with Jim Glennon, who was an executive with us, we bought the rep business from my dad. It took five years to buy him out. He had closed the import business by then, and my uncle bought out my dad’s share of Topstone. Jim and I owned the rep business, which we renamed Bland and Glennon.
Why is my name FeBland and my dad and uncle were Bland? FeBland is our real name. My dad and uncle changed their last name when they started the business because too many people couldn’t get their name right on orders. But when I came along I said, “This business is bland enough, so I want to be FeBland.” It took some doing to get people to realize that I was Dan’s son.
Even though Jim and I didn’t own Topstone, we were the exclusive sales agent for them. And we had other clients, such as General Foam Plastics, which made plastic swimming pools; Union Wadding (which made polyester fiber snow, icicles, snow flakes, etc.); FC Young, which made the best tinsel garland in the U.S.; and Blinky Products, which made Halloween pumpkins and cauldrons. My partner and I were repping to all of the chains – Woolworth, Kresge, McCrory, GC Murphy. But then in the early 1990s they started dying. The deathknell for me was when Woolworth went out of business in 1997. That was tough, and by 2000 Jim and I split up because there wasn’t enough business for both of us. But I had started calling on Party City, Party Fair, Spirit Halloween and the party channel: PFA and PCA, and some of your NCA members. Eventually things got better. I was even involved in Europe because my family owns a furniture business in England, so I could use their office and warehouse in Blackpool in the north of England.
Topstone had been bought by Paper Magic in 1995. We continued repping for them for many years, but one day – I think it was in 2010 -- the Paper Magic CEO emailed me and fired me. I told him I had to talk to him in person about this. So I went to his office in Philadelphia and said “You were always the most important line to me. I’m doing as well as last year or better in every area you have given me to sell: the party channel, Party City, and international sales. Why are you firing me?” He said, “We don’t want to pay your commission.” I said, “You’re telling me you’re firing me because I’m doing a good job? You’re going to lose, because what I do is based on relationships.” I walked out and never turned back. It was really painful to lose them. I was really hurt by that. But I rebuilt the business without them.
Since that time I’ve spread my wings into different companies. I learned, as my father said, that “when one door closes, another opens.” Now I work for Trick or Treat Studios, Ghoulish Productions, Underwraps, Costume Culture by Franco, KBW Global, Visual Effects and others. To be honest I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to stay in the business, but it’s been a good career.
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