PROFILES IN BUSINESS: Joe Famolare and the Foreign Trade Zone

Vermont Business Magazine, Feb 01, 2004 by Marcel, Joyce

With offices in the U.S., Switzerland and Italy, Famolare ran Famolare, Inc. from 1969 to 1989. He also ran a second company, Fabras, in Brazil, from 1983 to 1988.

"It was a fun business," Famolare said. 'We were highly promotional, and did a lot of stuff about the environment."

FAMOLARE IN VERMONT

Back in the late 1970s, Famolare visited a friend in Westminister West and fell in love with Vermont.

'You know how we have those three or four days that are absolutely incredible here?" he said. "Well, I was visiting on one of those days. If you ever want to sell something in Vermont, get the people up here on one of those days. We only have three or four of them a year. Not a cloud in the sky, blue, the grass was green, the birds were singing and the little butterflies are going by. My friend says, 'Would you like to buy the land next door?' And I bought it, just like that."

Famolare had his brother-in-law build him a house because he was too busy to do it for himself. In 1979, he also bought a 120-acre farm near Ft. Dummer Park in Brattleboro because he thought his daughters might want to keep their horses there. The Interstate runs through the property 'The farmer called me up and said, 'I want to sell you my farm,'" Famolare said. "I said why, and he said, 'I hear you'll take care of it.' He was running about 80 cows here at the time. It included what is now the VABEC land, plus investments on the other side of I-91. That's now the Exit One industrial Park. I created that, and then sold it to the Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. But the concept was mine. I still have land up there."

Around the same time, Famolare was having union troubles. "I was having big fights with the unions - tough unions, New Jersey and stuff, with the warehousing," Famolare said. "I wanted to have a bonded warehouse away from the ports, so I could move my containers without opening them. You had to be over 80 miles away from the port to be able to move a container without opening it."

One big problem at the ports was theft.

"They would steal your shoes," Famolare said. "And worse, they would take shoes out of the cartons, so if you had 36 shoes in there, and you were missing two or three pairs, it was like losing the whole carton because they would be delivered short. It was terribly costly." Through his Vermont connections, Famolare received an invitation to talk with thenGovernor Thomas Salmon.

"We met at the Howard Johnson's up in White River Junction," Famolare said. "So I'm very impressed to be with the governor. He said, 'Why don't you move your place up here?"'

With the approval of the US Department of Commerce, Famolare built an energyefficient bonded building on Old Ferry Road, the first one in Vermont.

"I was able to bring in shoes in closed containers to a fenced-in area without paying duty," Famolare said. "I was able to save millions of dollars. Say I got 100,000 pairs in. Before, I would have had to pay, say, $5 a pair, or half a million bucks for duty. Before the shipment even got on shore I would have to write the check to the government. By not having it unloaded, I didn't have to pay that $500,000. So I would ship, say, 20,000 pairs a week, and every time I shipped, I would pay the duty. But on the other 80,000 pairs, I didn't have to pay yet. So I would save that money."