Harley Finkelstein

You know, as opposed to, they were rough and tumble.

They were like, do whatever we needed to do to survive.

If it was eggs or it was garments or whatever.

You know, we're sitting in Montreal right now and about 10 kilometers north of here is the Chauvinel Garment District.

Wow.

The Chabonel Garment District is an iconic area.

It's probably four streets by four streets.

And American Apparel, Buffalo Jeans, Algo Industries, so many companies, K-Power Succo, more modern companies.

Essence is based there now.

Moose Knuckles is based there.

It's this tiny little area that so much of the apparel industries that we know today were created out of.

Why did that exist?

It existed because it was the lowest barrier to entry.

The needle trade or the schmata business, which is sort of the Jewish version of that, the reason you see so many Jewish immigrants go into the schmata business, the needle trade, is because low barrier to entry.

They couldn't go to biotech.

Biotech had a high barrier to entry.

You couldn't be, you couldn't have no money and start a biotech company or start a pharmaceutical company or start a technology company.

But the clothing business, you need a sewing machine and that's it.

And I, it's wonderful that we have that industry that's been built here.

But there's a lot of people that ended up building those companies that built it because they had no choice as opposed to because they chose to be, like James chose to be in this industry.