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On Business | A match made in Fishtown

By Peter Binzen
Inquirer Columnist

JONATHAN WILSON / Inquirer
Jacob Holtz Co. President James V. Piraino (left) welcomed Heather Mulcahy to Fishtown from Illinois last week. She will oversee production of the Superlevel, a product developed by her grandfather to steady wobbly tables.

As acquisitions go, it doesn't rank with Kmart's deal with Sears. But when one of the few manufacturers left in Philadelphia's Fishtown section buys an Illinois manufacturer and moves its business here, that's at least unusual.

The little-noticed transaction last fall united two small companies whose products make up in down-home usefulness what they may lack in glamor or pizzazz. And both are very profitable.

With a workforce of about 50, Fishtown's Jacob Holtz Co. makes all kinds of wheels known as casters - brass casters, bed casters, rigid plate casters, institutional swivel-stem casters, nylon-hooded twin-wheel casters. Casters galore, as well as metal stampings and furniture hardware.

The Elgin, Ill., firm that Holtz acquired employs fewer than a dozen people and takes its name, On The Level Inc., from its chief product. Its patented spring-and-ramp "Superlevel" promises to take the wobble out of wobbly tables through an automatic self-adjusting mechanism that uses table weight to compress or expand on uneven floors.

Recently, the company has been selling about one million Superlevels a year to table manufacturers, hotels, restaurants and other institutions. The listed price is $13 for a set of four.

On The Level's founder, Lester Johnson, was an Illinois table manufacturer with first-hand awareness of the wobbly-table problem. Being an inventive fellow, he developed a device to eliminate the wobble. On The Level went into production in 1983.

After Johnson's death at 59 in 1988, his table company was sold. But he left On The Level to his three daughters. One of the three, Laura Cooper, had started with her father when he launched the business. She bought out her sisters and ran the company. About a year ago, she began searching for a buyer.

As it happened, the Jacob Holtz Co. had changed hands in 1999, and its new owners were in the market for an acquisition. They purchased Laura Cooper's company on Nov. 30 and are in the process of moving its production to Fishtown.

Cooper will retire. However, her daughter, Heather Mulcahy, 34, who has worked for On The Level for 14 years, has joined Jacob Holtz's staff. She moved to Philadelphia last week and will oversee what Holtz believes will be greatly increased production of the Superlevel.

Holtz's founder was a Russian immigrant who had followed his shoemaker father to Philadelphia in about 1910 when he was 11 or 12.

"He was a really great guy, very handy, mechanically and electrically," said his grandson, David Rentz, 53. "He could fix anything."

Jacob Holtz ran a gas station at one time, and in World War II he worked at the Budd Co.'s Philadelphia factory. In 1949, he and his 24-year-old son-in-law, Zeldan Rentz, started a business on Germantown Avenue. They called it the Jacob Holtz Co., and it fabricated tubing for the furniture industry.

As it expanded, the company moved to Hunting Park and then Port Richmond. In 1970, it more than quadrupled its working space through the purchase of a three-story building at 2424 E. York St. in Fishtown.

The $450,000 acquisition was financed through the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. "I helped them move," said Zeldan Rentz's son, David, who was then attending the University of Pennsylvania.

After his graduation in 1973, David Rentz joined the company full time. His grandfather had retired, but he worked with his father. And on his father's death in 1986, he took control of the business.

In the succeeding years under third-generation family ownership, the company grew tremendously. "We had a nice little niche making casters for bed framers," Rentz said. "A major competitor went out of business, and there were only three of us left in the United States making casters."

Rentz sold the company in 1999, thanks to some networking by his Philadelphia accountant, Charles M. Sheckman.

Sheckman had met investor Robert S. Adelson socially. Adelson's family has oil and gas interests in Oklahoma going back four generations. A graduate of Yale and its law school, he started Osage Investments, a venture capital firm in Jenkintown, in 1990.

Osage invests in profitable low-tech manufacturers with annual sales of $5 million and up. Much of its investing is in partnership with Robert A. Fox, whom Adelson, 45, terms "a mentor to a number of people, myself included."

When Sheckman described David Rentz's business, Adelson was immediately interested. But it seemed like a long shot. "David had no interest in selling," his accountant said. "He was not contemplating a sale."

Sheckman advised him to at least talk to Adelson. Rentz did. "They talked to one another," said Sheckman, "and lo and behold, the deal was done."

The sale price was not disclosed, but Rentz said: "It made my family very happy."

After the sale, Rentz continued to run the company until 18 months ago when Adelson and Fox brought in new management. This was another case of networking. Allan S. Kalish, a longtime Philadelphia advertising executive now off on another business venture, is Adelson's cousin. Kalish's wife, Leslie G. Mayer, is a management consultant.

Through Kalish, Adelson met Mayer. She introduced him to James V. Piraino, a Tufts University graduate whose work experience ranged from General Electric and AlliedSignal to smaller companies that he had headed in California and King of Prussia. Adelson hired him to succeed Rentz.

In taking the position, Piraino, 45, was given a small equity stake in Holtz. He said Rentz "did a fine job growing the business, which has great name recognition within the furniture industry."

Holtz makes close to 2,000 products, about half of which are imported from China, Piraino said. "This is a business that doesn't have to make everything overseas," he added. "Our domestic business is doing OK. With everybody else closing or downsizing, we're very efficient."

At the same time, he said, Holtz had been "stuck in third gear." Since taking over, he has spent about $200,000 on building improvements, including a $100,000 computer system.

Instead of three-ring binders to advertise its products, Holtz developed a colorful 22-page illustrated catalog. Piraino has obtained grants from the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Council to train his workers.

On the factory floor, workers praise the new owners. "Things have gotten a lot better," said Joe Bauer, a 20-year employee who is a production supervisor. "The new people listen, and for the first time we have training and quality control."

Piraino said Holtz's revenues rose sharply last year, and he expects the Superlevel acquisition to help boost sales even higher in 2005.

Heather Mulcahy, Jacob Holtz's most recent hire, is enthusiastic about its staff. "They're wonderful people," she said. "I can't wait to work for them."

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Contact columnist Peter Binzen at BusinessNews@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/peterbinzen.