Joey Shamie is the Co-President of Delta Children, one of the world’s leading children’s furniture brands. What started as a small Brooklyn shop has grown into a global, family-owned company, supplying major retailers like Walmart, Target, and Amazon with best-in-class cribs, strollers, and children’s furniture.
Delta’s story is one of resilience—when a massive industry recall threatened to destroy the company, they didn’t just survive; they became the #1 baby furniture brand in the world.
Beyond business, Joey and his family have made giving back a core mission, donating thousands of products to military families, disaster relief efforts, and community initiatives. Joey has a board seat on many organizations, and splits his volunteering time between the Sephardic Community Center, AIPAC, TeachNYS, his synagogue, First Candle, Kids in Distressed Situations, UJA, working on new initiatives with local elected officials, donating thousands of cribs to our men and women in the US Army, and so much more.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The recall that almost killed the company, and how Delta turned it into their biggest opportunity.
- How Joey and his family built a global brand from a small Brooklyn shop.
- The power of giving back and why philanthropy has been a game-changer for Delta’s success.
Transcript
Joey Shamie: The stores are all calling me up: “How come you’re not shipping?” I go, “Shipping? I don’t have an order. What are you talking about?” I used to lug a TV with the commercial and the strollers and the cribs. I literally did not want to make another phone call to another buyer because we couldn’t take the rejection anymore. We became the number one crib company in the world. They got in there Monday morning, and we started to sell Toys “R” Us. So my worst nightmare turned into the best thing that ever happened to Delta. Several of them would say, “He’s the father I never had.” That’s one of the reasons why my father’s my hero.
Victor M. Braca: I’ve had a lot of high-achieving guests on Momentum, but by far the hardest thing I’ve had to do was get a hold of Joey Shamie. Let me tell you, every time I call Joey, he’s busy. He’s either at a fundraiser, volunteering, hanging out with Mayor Eric Adams, starting a new project at the Sephardic Community Center, giving away cribs to military families, donating millions of dollars through his company, or advocating for brothers and sisters in Israel. I mean, I can go on forever.
Joey is constantly in motion, making an impact wherever he goes, and that’s exactly who he is. He’s a man who doesn’t just talk about making a difference, but he actually does it day in and day out. Joey is the co-president of Delta Children, one of the world’s top brands and leading manufacturer of baby and children’s furniture, cribs, and strollers. In this episode, we dive into the story of Delta, Joey’s family’s journey in business, and the incredible ways they’ve shaped the industry while giving back on a massive, massive scale.
We discussed how Delta revolutionized baby furniture safety, expanded into major retailers like Walmart and Toys “R” Us, and built a legacy of philanthropy—donating cribs to thousands of military families, supporting disaster relief efforts, and funding countless community initiatives. By the way, I’m Victor Braca, and Momentum is where I dive deep with exceptional leaders to uncover the key decisions, defining moments, and lessons that propel them to success and how those insights can inspire your journey forward.
Oh, and stick around until the end for an exclusive tour of Delta’s testing facilities, where Joey shows us around the top-notch equipment they use to ensure the safety of their cribs, strollers, and furniture. This part was actually super cool. I mean, when you’re using a product, you don’t realize the hundreds and thousands of hours of testing that goes on to make sure the product is safe and durable. It’s incredible.
But anyways, if you’re interested in building a business from the ground up, breaking into major retailers, or learning how to lead with integrity or using your success to make real true impact and touch hundreds or thousands of lives, you’re going to love this episode.
Joey Shamie, welcome to Momentum.
Joey Shamie: Thank you. A pleasure to be with you today and to be able to share some of my story and try and help inspire your generation.
Victor M. Braca: That’s the goal. That’s the goal. I finally got—I was going to say I finally got you here, but you finally got me to your showroom. Beautiful, by the way.
Joey Shamie: I’m very proud of the showroom. I love it. It’s like my heaven when I’m in here. I bring a customer, a licensor, the bank—I get inspired and I beat my chest and I show off the products that we make, and they love it.
Victor M. Braca: Amazing. I love it. It’s beautiful, and we’re going to do a quick tour afterwards. We’ll keep it in the episode because I think people should see this. There is so much to unpack with you and your story in business, but really, I want to put an extra focus on your giving back, your involvement in initiatives in the community and outside of the community.
So let’s just start off. Joey Shamie, you’re the co-president of Delta. You guys are a good duo. Tell us, give us a quick rundown: who are you, what do you do, and when did your father start the business? Give me the whole history.
Joey Shamie: Wow, that’s a long history. So the company was started by my parents. My father tells the story—very funny—one time I had the Toys “R” Us president, I forgot who it was, in the office up there in executive [offices] and they go, “Mr. Shamie, how did you start the business?”
He goes, “Because I was a cheapskate.”
“Cheapskate? Okay, where’s he going now?”
So he says, “I had a little children’s wear store, Kitty Shop, on Fulton Street in Brooklyn. My wife is pregnant expecting our first child. Of course, I don’t want to buy at retail; I want to buy at wholesale. So I go to the Edison Crib Company that had a showroom on One Park Avenue and I said, ‘I want to buy a crib.’ They say, ‘You have to buy a dozen. We don’t sell one crib.’ He says, ‘Okay.’ He buys a dozen. One for Sammy, eleven went into the store.”
And eleven cribs sold, and sold well. He bought more, and then he opened up a whole department in his basement of the store for juvenile furniture. So that’s how we got into it. And by the way, Edison Crib Company was Thomas Edison—he made cribs at one point in his life. His factory started there. So you talk about pivoting in businesses, he was making Victrolas out of wood and he decided there was no business there. He pivoted to cribs.
Fast forward, my father decides he wants to be in the wholesale business. He was an inventor. In the end, he had over fifty patents to his name. He was just always coming up with new ideas. He gets on a plane and he heads to Asia, to Taiwan at the time. They were not making strollers; they were not making any of this stuff. He gets a metal factory to bend the metal—at the time that was his idea, a metal factory make the bend the metal—he gets a fabric company to make the seats, and he gets a wheel company to make the plastic wheels. They all get shipped into New York and in the back of one of his stores—he had retail stores—we would package them.
I was thirteen years old, maybe, and I was opening boxes, putting 1, 1, 1—this is my summer—flipping the boxes over, sealing them, and that’s how we were shipping them out. My father was actually—the old-timers of Taiwan would say—he was the founder or the father of the stroller business in Taiwan. He got them to make strollers for the first time.
Victor M. Braca: Oh wow. And you guys had a funny commercial with the strollers.
Joey Shamie: Years later, it was always like a secondary business. He had the retail, and this was a secondary business. He comes up with this idea for the Love Buggy stroller, the first fast-folding stroller that was a carriage and it folded flat. They’re all over nowadays; it was groundbreaking in the industry.
He turns around—now I’m in the business at the time—and he says, “Let’s put it on TV.”
“This is fantastic! But Dad, what are you talking about? Like, we weren’t even a $2 million company at the time. The retail was our main business. We didn’t have the money to do this.”
He goes, “No, no, no. I have a great idea. Let’s put it on TV.” Okay. He goes out and produces his own commercial. “Here comes Cele, my sister Cele, with a new Love Buggy stroller. Look how easily it opens, look how it folds,” and so forth.
Then he—I was newly married—he meets Adrienne, my wife, at the bus stop. She’s wheeling a Hedstrom stroller. Hedstrom was the number one stroller company in the world. There wasn’t even a number two around. Cele picks the baby up with one hand, gets on the bus with the other hand because it just snaps closed. Adrienne picks the baby up, use the two hands to fold the stroller, with the big clunky stroller she doesn’t [do it]. She puts the baby on the grass, she’s folding the stroller, the baby’s crawling up the grass, the bus pulls out and there’s a little bit of fume, and we say, “Don’t be left in the dust, girls. Buy a Love Buggy today.”
I’m in my apartment, I’m paying $250 rent. The commercial was $500. It was on Channel 5, Lead It to Beaver, I Love Lucy, those kind of old-time shows. Commercial comes and goes, thirty seconds. I just spent $500. I said my father’s out of his mind. What is he doing? $500? Who the hell is watching this commercial at this time?
Get to the office—which, if you saw where our office was and what it was in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a little junky little shack type of place—all of a sudden the stores are calling me up. They’re saying, “Joey, everyone’s coming in the store, they want to buy the stroller. You get on the bus, they want the stroller.” I’m like, holy cow. Next thing you know, we’re on fire.
Victor M. Braca: All from the commercial?
Joey Shamie: All from the commercial and the fact that the stroller was a great stroller, a great invention. All of a sudden I get a call from the Toys “R” Us number two person. He starts screaming. Those days it was this old-ass type company, the founder, Charles Lazarus. Anyway, he starts screaming at me. He said, “The stores are all calling me up. How come you’re not shipping?”
I go, “Shipping? I don’t have an order. What are you talking about?”
“What do you mean you don’t have an order?”
I said, “I don’t have an order. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t even sell them at the time.
He says, “Get in here Monday morning.” The buyer happened to be on vacation. They got in there Monday morning, and we started to sell Toys “R” Us. That was our big start and our big roll. We grew from like a $2 million company to a $12 million company overnight because of that stroller and the commercial.
Victor M. Braca: Wow. And then what happens?
Joey Shamie: I see my father—now, I think I was having a [hard time] because we couldn’t get enough goods. We were shipping, we were small, operating out of this tiny, tiny little warehouse, and everything as they were coming in, they were going out. We would have a container meeting the trucks; we would even bring them into the office, into the warehouse.
I see my father’s working on something else. I said, “What are you doing, Dad?”
He says, “I’m working on cribs. I have a great idea to make the safest crib in the world.”
I said, “Dad, we’re not in the crib business. We’re in the [stroller] business.”
“No, Joey, I’m telling you, this crib is going to be phenomenal.”
“Okay, leave me alone, whatever you want to tell me.”
He says to me—this was very key—he said, “We didn’t patent the stroller, everyone is overseas copying us. The next big thing is going to be the cribs.”
Victor M. Braca: And your father was an inventor.
Joey Shamie: My father was an inventor, so he invented a crib that went together easier. No tools, no screws, no hammer, no screwdriver—zero. It snapped together, and you and I together could stand on that crib and jump up and down; it would be stronger than any other crib out there. So it was safer and easier to do.
Victor M. Braca: Revolutionary at this point.
Joey Shamie: Nothing ever like that in the market. He also does a commercial for that one also. Both of them are online; they’re fantastic. I used to lug a TV with the commercial and the strollers and the cribs. You had to see the stuff that I used to have to carry with me to go see a customer. But I would go to a customer and I’d come with the whole crib. Usually no one goes with the whole crib.
The guy would look at me and say, “I don’t have time for you to put together this crib. You’re lucky you got an appointment. Just show me a picture. What do you got? What’s the price?”
I go, “No, just give me one minute and I’ll put this crib together.”
He goes, “What? One minute?” And I would put together the crib in one minute. Then I would say, “Come stand on the crib with me.” I would take down the side, “Realized, come stand on the crib with me.” They’d look at me: “Is he crazy?” And I said, “This is the easiest crib in the world to assemble, this is the safest crib out there. We have revolutionized the market.”
Then to top it off, we took the Italian styles from Harrods of London and Bellini—all these cribs that were selling for over $1,000, made in Italy. My father took that same $1,000 crib and made it in Taiwan with our assembly, so it was safer, and they were selling for $150 to $200. We broke open the whole market across the board, changed the scope of everything to do with a crib. Safety, affordability, etc. We were even written up in Consumer Reports in a few different places as the safest crib, best stroller, things like that. And we grew.
Victor M. Braca: How big was the company at that point?
Joey Shamie: I would say 12 to 20 million at the time originally.
Victor M. Braca: And how old are you?
Joey Shamie: The stroller… I would be in the first year I was married, so I would be 24 or 25. Then two years later, when my son was born, we had the crib, so that would be about 27 that the crib came out.
Victor M. Braca: Was it ever a consideration for you to go out on your own as opposed to going into the family business, or was it pretty much automatic for you?
Joey Shamie: Originally I was in school; I wanted to be a lawyer. I love school and I love continuing to learn. My father at that time was not sure where he was going. The retail was okay, the wholesale was not great. He said, “Listen, I could use you. We could make something of this wholesale business, or we’ll close it up and we’ll just open up more retail stores.”
So I said, “Okay.” I tried—I did some night school at the same time—but eventually I had to devote full time to it. I never had a consideration for being out on my own. My father always encouraged Sammy and I to be partners in life, and we were always together, always shared everything. No, I always wanted to be my brother’s partner and continue to be his partner. No one’s going to have your back more than your family.
Victor M. Braca: That’s a great message.
Joey Shamie: Listen, nobody’s going to have your back like your family. When I had my health challenges, Sammy was there. Sammy picked up the slack and took care of everything, all without saying a word, without mentioning anything. So I love my brother. I thank him for all that he’s done for me, for the company as a partner, and being the best partner you could ever have in life.
Victor M. Braca: At what point did you and your brother take over the company? Take me through that. How old were you, and how did it feel? At this point, the company is established, it’s one of the key players globally in the children’s product space. How did that feel for you?
Joey Shamie: My father always set us up to run the company as time went on, but at the same time, my father never retired at all. He was always a vital asset to the company, even when we took over ownership. It just seemed to be a natural progression. I head up the sales, marketing, and that aspect, and Sammy heads up production, safety, and back-of-house stuff.
He’s phenomenal at that. He’s phenomenal at detail, and he is almost the world-renowned expert on safety when it comes to cribs, bassinets, strollers, things like that. He is the chairperson of the government Safety Committee, ASTM Safety Committee on cribs. Really, he lives and breathes that manual. He can quote from the safety brochures. Walmart or Target, from their safety side, will call Sammy up to say, “Can you explain to us what this or that law or safety feature is all about?”
That’s his aspect, and I’m pretty good at relationships. That’s my aspect of it. I love people, I love meeting people, talking to them and getting to know them better. I love my product line. When I get passionate about a product or about something that we’re doing, I just go at it.
Victor M. Braca: If you look back at a meeting that you had twenty or thirty years ago and a business meeting that you’ll have today, what are some differences you see in how you conduct yourself?
Joey Shamie: Twenty and thirty years ago, the way relationships and the way you sold the product is very different. The way you sell a product today, you really need to have a different set of marketing. You need to know what social media is happening and how you’re going to expand that social media, how you’re going to get the message out, what mommy bloggers are doing.
In that aspect today, my daughter Lorraine heads up our social media and marketing. She’s an expert at that. She has interns that work with her, and all day long they’re on the phone, on emails, and so forth with these bloggers and getting our message out. So when I go to a Target meeting or Walmart meeting or Amazon meeting, she’s the best person to sell the company and why they should buy Delta because of who we are in the social media aspect.
Years ago, there’s no such thing as that kind of social media. Also, years ago you were fighting for space on a shelf, whether it be Walmart or Target or Kmart or Sears—all those guys that are out of business—that had room for three or four strollers, and you’re fighting for it to be one of those three or four. Today you go online and there’s a thousand available.
Victor M. Braca: You’re sitting in a business meeting with Target. How do you convince them why you guys should be one of the strollers that they carry? Is it just the product? Is it your passion? Is it your personality? A combination?
Joey Shamie: There’s definitely a combination. First of all, they have to want to do business with you. I’m going to say that first, even before the product. The reputation of Delta as being an honest, reputable, safe company precedes everything. That’s what Sammy and I and everyone in the company have built over the years. We’re known as a company that’s devoted to safety. We’re known as a company that’s devoted to giving back charity-wise. Every one of my customers knows that Delta gives back more than any other company in our industry.
Those are all aspects that help sell who we are and why they want to do business with us. Now, of course I have to have the best product, I have to have the right price, I have to have the right marketing behind it. I have to sell all those aspects at the same time. Also the ability to produce it, which we have, and an ability to finance it, which thank God we have as well. They know that they can trust us.
Trust is a key factor. I would say that to anybody: when you’re building a company, or you are a salesman, or you are in any business, did you develop the trust factor for your clients, your customers, your co-workers? Are you a trustworthy individual? What is your brand? What is your personal brand? What are you known for? Do people, when they see you, have a good feeling about you? Do you give them a smile? Do you talk to them? Do you care about them? Or are you a selfish type of individual?
Your branding of who you are is also a very big factor for your success in life. That starts off from your high school days and before that. If you’re the guy that cheats on the basketball court, that reputation is going to stay with you. When someone comes to me for a job, maybe they were a contemporary of one of my kids, I’ll ask them, “Oh, you know, what’s that kid like?”
“Oh, you can never trust him,” or “What a great guy that guy is! He’s the one everybody loves. He’s the one that runs to help everybody else. He’s the one that, if you’re doing homework or studying for a test, he’s going to help you out.”
So I’m going to go way back. Who are you? What do you represent? What do people think about you? Give everybody a smile, treat everybody with respect. Do all those kind of things. You asked me about how do I sell a customer, and I went so far to high school, but that is who you become as an 18-year-old who hasn’t gotten into business yet.
Victor M. Braca: I find that so interesting. You obviously have to have the technical aspects of your brand and your product down, but you said a precursor to that would be the soft skills of your personal brand—trustworthiness and attitude.
Joey Shamie: My job on my side of the business was to make the sale, to gain the trust, to go out to all these retailers—whether it be the smallest guy who had a single store on Gramercy Avenue in Brooklyn or the Toys “R” Us-es and the Walmarts at the time. I had to sell my product, but I had to sell myself also at the time, because they could buy from a lot of other companies.
My brother and father, who were on the production side, had to sell Delta to our suppliers overseas. They had to develop a trust factor with our suppliers overseas so they would invest in new molds and new things to be able to produce them. Everything, wherever you’re going, you’re selling your personality too at the same time.
I’ll go a step further about selling: I market Delta as the family company, which is what it is. I play that very strongly. My mother and father worked together in the business. My mother went to all the shows. My mother went overseas with my father. Adrienne came to almost all the shows; unless she was pregnant and couldn’t come, she was at every single one of the shows. She came with me for dinner or lunch with the buyers. We were a team.
The industry till today always knew us as a team. The buyers loved—especially the women buyers loved—spending time with Adrienne. Sharp, young, dressed well, personable. We were just always together at the shows.
Now, this is a funny aspect. My mother at first started to make—when she was coming to the show, she would bring kosher food, make kosher food, and do things for us so we would have our Friday night meals during the show. Then there were a lot of Syrians that started getting into the furniture business, the show started to expand, and she was making food for everybody. She was feeding the whole Syrian Jewish and non-Syrian community at the show.
Then that expanded. We built a whole area that was a lunchroom area for everybody to come eat. Before you knew it, Walmart, Toys “R” Us—Walmart actually had to pay out too and get a receipt—Kmart, you name every single retailer was coming in to have lunch, which was mostly homemade stuff or somewhat homemade stuff that my mother made. It became the place to go. We made friends with the people that run the show to allow us to bring in our own food because otherwise you were buying that junk food offered by a typical show place. They loved us. Again, it was the whole family aspect of it. Everybody wanted to have lunch with Adrienne! She would literally have three or four lunches lined up. She’d have slippers for some of the women buyers that come in and they’d just chill by us.
So you walked into the Delta showroom and you felt you were with your family, and you felt the warmth of the family. You had my mother, my father, Adrienne, my brother, Susan came sometimes, Cele came early on. That family atmosphere that we portrayed as a company, everyone wanted to do business with. So it was a whole different aspect of marketing.
Victor M. Braca: That’s cool. I like that. Can you tell me about a story earlier on in your business journey that taught you something that stuck with you?
Joey Shamie: First, I go back to trusting my father. Our elders have so much knowledge. He was an entrepreneur that wanted to keep breaking down walls and do things differently always. I can tell you one time where I was really down and how things came back.
I was at one of those lows where every time I called a buyer, I wasn’t getting an appointment, I wasn’t getting an order, sales were low, things were not so good. A few months before that, I had met the Toys “R” Us VP. I was at a show in Germany and we spent some time together. He told me he’s a Giants fan. Okay.
So I worked up enough courage—I didn’t think to call this VP at one point and say, “Hi Marty, would you like to go to a Giants game together?”
He laughed. He says, “No Joe, thank you anyway, appreciate it.” He said, “But do you have anything you want to sell me?”
I said, “Yeah, I have this crib…” I happened to be overstocked in a particular crib, but I knew it was a good item.
He said, “Okay, call the buyer up in a few minutes.” I went in, called a few minutes later. I said I wanted to talk to her and she said, “Marty already came in to me. He told me that I should buy the crib from you. What do you got? How much is it?” I gave her the details and it blew out. We started to grow on that.
So I went from literally not wanting to make another phone call because I couldn’t take the rejection anymore, but then I made that one phone call and that one opportunity, and it spiraled into being their best crib in the category.
Victor M. Braca: Guys, if you’re enjoying the episode so far, join us in the mission of spreading the Momentum podcast as large as we can get it. If this episode is inspiring you so far, please share with a friend, a family member, or somebody who you think would be inspired as well. And make sure to stick around, because Joe is about to share the story of how his entire business almost went to zero and he explains exactly what he did to turn that setback into 100x growth. Let’s get back into it.
Do you think it’s just a mentality of take it day by day? Just go a little further, take five more rejections, ten more rejections? How do you deal with rejection?
Joey Shamie: My father one time told me, he said, “Do not be afraid of anybody. Nobody’s better than you. You’re not better than them, but nobody’s better than you. It’s okay. Pick up the phone and if they say something, it’s okay, you’ll deal with it.” Don’t be afraid of anybody. Be strong and go for it. That was a low point I turned into a high point because I did make the phone call. That’s a great lesson.
I learned also that, again, I’m not afraid to approach anybody in any room at any place at any time. They’re people just like you. Approach them respectfully and start a conversation.
Victor M. Braca: Can you tell me about the biggest setback in your career? What did that teach you?
Joey Shamie: The worst nightmare that we ever had was when the industry issued basically a recall for all drop-side cribs. The government had determined that cribs which had the sides that go up and down were not safe. Basically, they went after every single company out there. Us being the biggest guy and the safest—being the safest didn’t matter because people were leaving their drop-sides down. So even though it was a consumer’s fault, it’s our fault. It’s always our fault in the end. Even though we had the safest crib out there, we had to deal with it.
So my worst nightmare ever was that happening. The best thing that ever happened to Delta was that recall. We established a website, a call-in number. We got Sammy—who was actually the head of the Safety Committee, the government Safety Committee—to develop a fix-it kit for the cribs. Actually, he helped other companies too, because he looked at it as an industry-wide thing. “I have to help everybody, not just us. I have to do things for everybody.”
So we basically established a name for ourselves again as the safest company, the company that cares about everybody. Walmart, Toys “R” Us—we weren’t selling Target at the time—every company turned around and said to their buyers, “Only buy from Delta.” Truly only buy from Delta. Toys bought from others, but Target, Walmart, various other companies all turned around and said, “This is the only company we can trust.”
Unbelievable. So my worst nightmare turned into the best thing that ever happened to Delta. Several of our competitors just closed their doors because when the recall was happening, they didn’t want to deal with it. They were afraid of losing millions of dollars. That left the retailers holding the bag for those companies’ cribs; they couldn’t return them to anybody and no one was doing this fix-it kit. Again, Sammy led the way, and we turned a nightmare into a dream. We became—that’s when we catapulted into the number one crib company in the world, because of a recall.
Victor M. Braca: Do you think you and Sam share a sort of mindset of not giving up and not closing your doors even when everybody around you is doing just that? Why didn’t you just pivot into a different product line?
Joey Shamie: I think we have a very strong mindset, both of us. We know that things can get done. We know that we can figure it out. We have a great team. I say Sammy and I, but we have a great team of people that we work with every single day. I have 120 people in this building, about 15 in Wisconsin in the crib business, and about 100 in the mattress business over there.
The individuals that we’ve surrounded ourselves with are all great people who understand our mindset, understand what Delta is all about. We treat them like family, we care about them. I have employees here that have been working for us for forty years that my father started from zero to this point. I’m very proud of what we built, and that helped us get through every single problem.
Another aspect—it’s funny—if you keep yourself financially strong, you can get through every obstacle. So when we had the recall, we were still financially strong enough to weather the storm as opposed to our competitors who were not and went out.
I can give you several examples. When Toys “R” Us goes out of business, we lost a significant amount of money with them. But a couple of competitors weren’t able to sustain themselves after Toys “R” Us went out of business, and they went out of business. That put us at an opportune time to buy their business and to take their placements at retailers. That happened to us during some financial downturns as well where the competitor was not able to sustain it. So keep yourself financially strong and your head above water. Don’t drain your company of money. Be ready before you need to be ready.
Victor M. Braca: Correct. That’s a great lesson. Wow, that story with the recall—that’s a story in itself.
Joey Shamie: Nightmare. Again, I repeat, it was a nightmare. It was like I didn’t want to go to shul, I didn’t want to go out of the house. I was like, “Oh my God, this is the worst thing that could ever happen to me.” Because of the way we handled it—Sammy developing the fix-it kit at the same time—and the way we handled it honestly with all our retailers. We called various mommy bloggers at the time and we gave them the inside information on it. So now they were advocates for us. They said, “Okay, Delta’s doing this,” but they felt that we empowered them because we were open and honest about it.
Victor M. Braca: That’s very nice. They’re like the modern-day journalists. You do a lot of mentorship for young people. You’re involved in so many organizations with the mission of helping the next generation. Do you have any actionable tips for young people? What can someone like me, 18 years old or even younger, start doing today to put myself ahead for eventual success?
Joey Shamie: Okay, so I’m going to repeat something I said earlier. One: who are you? Who is Victor? What will people say about him? If someone came to me and said, “I have an opportunity to go in business with this guy Victor, what do you think of him?” Develop your brand, develop who you are. Make sure that you are that straight, honest person.
As you said, that starts from a young age. Your reputation will precede you, and it’s going to be very difficult to change your reputation if you started on a negative. It only takes a couple incidents for you to be known for that negative situation, and you’d have a lot to turn it around. So number one is your branding—who you are, what you are. That branding will help you if you were to come say, “Oh, I have the greatest new business idea, but I need a partner, I need somebody to finance me.”
If you went to some of the Syrian community members and asked them for a loan or a partnership, if you have a great reputation, you’re going to have a better chance than if you don’t. They will ask your contemporaries about you to understand who you are before they write a check to you or put you in business. So that’s first and foremost.
Secondly, I am a strong believer that you must have a college education. It’s very important today. It’s not the days of yesterday where, as I described before, you’re just going before buyers and you’re selling just your personality. I almost say the days of Joey Shamie sales are over. Now you have to have the spreadsheets and the information and so forth to make things happen, to understand every dynamic—every dot on the ‘i’ and cross on the ‘t’. I’m right? Just see, you got me scared over here. You’re overpowering me!
No, you got to be able to do the right thing and understand the business better than ever. College education is key. But also broaden your opportunities to be in business. My son Lewis went into finance, and I am so proud of him. He’s a hedge fund finance individual, he’s very successful, and he went out of the box for sure. A lot of people are doing that, and that’s what you need to look at. What are the other opportunities besides starting a typical wholesale business?
Victor M. Braca: Especially with how the world is changing today. It leads me to my next question. Joining your family business was a natural progression for you. Do you have any advice for people struggling to decide what industry they want to get into? “What if I don’t like that? What if I’m not enjoying myself?” That’s always a big question: follow your passion on one side, but make money to support your family on the other.
Joey Shamie: First of all, I know some people have been going into some businesses that are not as ethical as they should be because they want to make money. Don’t do that. Reputation, reputation. Go in the right business. You do have to make a pretty good living in order to put your kids through yeshiva education, camp, etc. There’s no sidestepping that. That is a big nut to crack, and it’s sad to say but it is. By the way, as a side note, it’s up to guys like me to try and help get our yeshiva costs down and all that, and we’re working on it.
Your advice is that you have to make a living, but you don’t want to do something that you’re not going to be happy about forever. There are opportunities and ways of making what you do more enjoyable. I originally wasn’t, let’s say, so happy with my business, but I loved the people that I worked with, I loved getting involved in the industry, I loved what I meant to the industry, and it evolved very much so. I also loved the opportunity it gave me to give back, whether it be in the community or outside the community. Everything worked hand-in-hand.
I think individuals should look strongly at what the family business is, but also look to try and do something different, depending on their economics.
Victor M. Braca: I think it’s worth noting that you weren’t necessarily passionate about cribs and strollers and baby products, but you’re passionate about your team, about leading the industry standards for safety, about selling Walmart and figuring out how to craft the best pitch. I think that’s really where the passion lies. People think you have to be passionate about the specific item you’re selling.
Joey Shamie: 1,000% what you just said is right on key. You can find your passion in any one of the products, but you could also find your passion in the people that you’re selling to and the relationships that you build. I loved meeting and befriending the buyers and the licensors. I still love it till today; I’ll be going to Walmart in a couple of days because I just love being in the action. I love talking to the people and getting involved. You can find your passion. It doesn’t have to be specifically in the t-shirt that you’re selling, but there’s always something great about what you’re doing. That’s up to you to find out who you are and what you are. Some people are not as “people persons”; some people love numbers and crunching numbers.
Victor M. Braca: I want to shift towards your giving back and your activism. Can you give me a brief overview of what you’re involved in and why getting involved is so important to you?
Joey Shamie: I’m very involved with the support of the Community Center. It’s one of my big, big passions. I love the Center; I love how it brings the community together. I could say this: you could be having the worst morning of your life getting up, but when you walk into the Center and you’re greeted by everybody there, and your friends are there, and you’re exercising, you’re going to forget those troubles you had before. And maybe someone there will be able to help you with your problem that you’re dealing with. I love the Community Center—how it brings everybody together.
I’m also very involved in AIPAC. To me, it is one of the most important organizations in helping Israel survive, grow, prosper, and protect itself. We need at this point in time—we still need the U.S. government. We need the funds they give us, the weapons they give us, and so forth. There is no reason for a congressman from Iowa or Nebraska to help Israel except for the fact that AIPAC petitions them, brings them to Israel, shows them the beauty of Israel, and makes them love Israel and realize the importance of Israel to the region and to America. Just because it’s the right place to be. So AIPAC is super important.
UJA just does so many great things for Jews around the country and around the world. They’re a one-of-a-kind organization that does so much and quietly. They helped the Center from when it was first founded until today. They give us millions of dollars as well as advice constantly. When the Syrian immigrants came from Syria back in the 80s and we weren’t professional enough to understand what we had to do to resettle the Syrians, UJA helped us with $25 million and an unbelievable amount of support, advice, and education on what we needed to do. They understood from resettling the Russians and more; they were just so much more educated in this aspect than we were.
Above a whole bunch of other community and non-community [efforts], something that I’m very, very proud of is my work outside of the community. I’m on several charities outside of the community. One of the most important ones used to be called KIDS (Kids in Distressed Situations); today it’s called Delivering Good. Delivering Good gives out over $200 million of product to needy families. It could be just poor families that need a product—need clothing, socks, underwear, jackets—they don’t have the money. It could be disaster relief from a hurricane, earthquake, or today the fires in California. They are soliciting, and I’m helping them solicit, tons of merchandise to help those people that have been ravaged by these fires.
In fact, I saw a few minutes ago there was someone here, two people that worked for us—we’re giving out a thousand cribs and beds and bassinets, and then another thousand blankets. We’re sending that immediately to California to help those people. Very proud of that, and it’s super important. I go to these places. I go to actually physically give out stuff to people that are in need. It could be toys, table and chair sets, toy boxes, or cribs. I go there. Adrienne has gone with me to several places; every one of my kids has gone with me to several. We’ve gone to St. Louis, we’ve gone to California—we’ve gone all over to give out and meet these families or these kids and see how they’re struggling and see how you can help. It’s heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. I do this also to create a Kiddush Hashem.
Victor M. Braca: So you personally and Delta, your company, are very involved in giving back to our men and women in uniform. Tell me about your philanthropy with the army and our country as a whole.
Joey Shamie: Part of my Delivering Good and Kids in Distress work, I actually started giving to the military families. we go to the bases and we give out hundreds—actually, I go to Fort Bragg every year, which is now Fort Liberty in North Carolina. We give out 500 cribs and 500 mattresses plus other stuff—strollers and other stuff.
I give them a whole little speech on safety, on what it is to keep a kid safe in a crib. I am very animated—I have pillows and stuff, I start throwing the pillows out of the crib and balloons. I do a whole thing on how to keep your kid safe in the crib, what you’re supposed to do and all. I’m in front of a thousand soldiers and their families when I’m doing this.
But I always start off talking about my grandparents coming to America seeking religious freedom. I talk about my father’s brothers all serving in World War II, and my father-in-law as well serving in World War II. When I end my speech, I end it two ways. One is I tell them the number one thing that’s going to keep your children safe is to make sure every single day you give them a hug and a kiss and you tell them you love them. Keep them close to you, keep them open, make them feel comfortable talking to you about what they’re going through. Those are things to keep them safe.
I sort of end it at that time, and then I say, “I need another moment of your time. I have to fulfill a promise I made to some soldiers in Israel.” Then I say I was recently on a humanitarian mission to Israel—Rabbi Besser’s trip. I tie that into a humanitarian mission, which is true. I say when I went there, I visited hospitals, orphanages, and so forth, and I saw how the Israelis treat all religions—whether it be Christian, Muslim, Jewish—with the same respect. They treat every patient with the same exact medical needs. They don’t discriminate. They care. When the equivalent of 911 goes to Hatzalah, to a situation, they don’t care if they’re wearing a skullcap from one religion or a bandana from another. They treat everybody equally.
The soldiers… at the end, they cried to me and they said, “All we want is for our families to live in peace. And we thank you, America, for all you do for us. And please, when you go back to America, tell your friends we love you, America, and God bless America.”
Wow. I get such a round of applause from that. Our friends at AIPAC said they are on a mission to do something like that because these soldiers are potential congressmen at later dates. While I do this because it’s the right thing to do and because I love to do it, I also have a mission of creating a Kiddush Hashem with everything that I do.
Victor M. Braca: Moving speech.
Joey Shamie: I get very emotional about it. I always also tell them that the soldiers in Israel are the same like you guys—they’re just fighting for their families and to do the right things. I try and tie in the thread that they’re the same personality, the same ethical, moral fighting for the right things.
Victor M. Braca: Why is this so important to you, giving back as a whole? Was there something in your life that inspired you?
Joey Shamie: My father and my mother were always among very charitable people. They always did whatever they could to help others. My father, even though he wasn’t the wealthiest guy, was helping out these employees that we have here. There was just something that they instilled in us; it was so important to constantly give back. I learned from my parents about giving back, and then the opportunity started to grow on me.
Something interesting happened. This is a good story. We as Delta were always giving back. Janis Wyman, who heads up the KIDS (Kids in Distressed Situations) charity—an amazing woman who really liked me a lot—she comes to me and she says, “I want you to be our honoree, our Humanitarian of the Year, at our upcoming dinner.”
I’m like, “What are you talking about? I don’t think so.”
She said, “Joey, you don’t realize I’m doing this because I love you and because I think that this is a phenomenal opportunity for you. Everybody in the industry will be at the dinner. Every retailer—Toys “R” Us, Sears, Kmart—everybody will be there. I’m trying to help you, Joey. This is very good for you. You’re going to be the keynote honoree.”
I turned around. I was a little bit shy about it. I also remember asking Rabbi Shamah, “I really don’t like to talk about what I give because it’s supposed to be [private].” He says, “No, you have to talk about what you give so you can inspire others.”
Okay. So she says, “Who do you want to introduce you at the thing?”
“What do you mean?”
She says, “We want someone to introduce you before you speak. Tell me someone and I’ll ask them for you.”
“Do I want the Toys “R” Us president?” I asked. She says, “Who’s your number two? I got to have a number two.”
I said, “I want the Toys “R” Us president to introduce me if I want someone.”
She says, “Okay, I’ll ask him.” She calls me back a couple days later. “He knows you, he thinks very highly of you. He knows your company is a strong family company and you have a lot of good values. He said, ‘No problem, he’ll do it.’”
So now I have all the Toys “R” Us buyers at the tables, I have the Sears buyers, everybody’s already there. He comes up and he does a great introduction about the family. He really spoke about my dad, about my mom, about the whole family. Then I got up and spoke. I spoke a lot about my mom and dad—how they started and taught us to give back.
I spoke about how the difference between a simple stroller—which we would take for granted—maybe is the difference between a woman without anything being able to get outside and take a walk or not. I think a simple shirt maybe is the difference for a kid to be able to go to school with a clean shirt and some dignity. Things that we take for granted, other people don’t have. This should be a daily part of your life—giving back.
My speech went over phenomenal. I would say those are one of the things that propelled me in the industry to do more, but also to get recognition for what we do. Then fast forward a few years later, my daughter Lorraine is heading up marketing and she says, “You’re not saying enough about what you do.” She turns it into a whole marketing campaign around Delta gives back. That became a strong part of our marketing. On our website you’ll see Delta Gives Back is a big deal. Don’t do it because of that, but do it because you love it, you want to do it, you care about it, and then that will help you in other aspects. It’s helped me in my life across the board. My charitable efforts have helped me with many different opportunities in life. People want to do for people that do.
Victor M. Braca: 100%. I think that’s the key. Your intention is because you love giving back, but what comes out of it is personal fulfillment and increased success in business.
Joey Shamie: All the businesses—the buyers, the licensors, the banks—they respect what we do and how we do it. It becomes a key character trait of the company and of the people here. By the way, we take many of our employees to these events. I want them to talk about it within the company and say, “The company that you work for cares about other people and gives back, and it’s your hard work that’s helping us to be able to do this.” That builds up the culture of the company.
Victor M. Braca: Was there anybody in your life who particularly inspired you?
Joey Shamie: There are a lot of people in our community that I look up to. Joe Cayre is one of the people that stands out tremendously. Joe is my sister’s brother-in-law, so I got to know him a lot and work with him a little bit. I saw his passion—unbelievable passion for giving back—and at the same time how he was recognized within his own industry as a leader and how he built a phenomenal company while he built the Center to an unbelievable organization.
I’ll tell you one quick story. I wasn’t selling Walmart; I never even went to see Walmart at the time. He says, “Joey, you got to go see Walmart with me. I’m going to get you an appointment.” He gets me an appointment through calling one of his contacts with the buyer there. He says, “I’m going on a private jet there. I have one seat left—it’s the toilet seat! Come with me.” He took me for my first appointment with Walmart then. Here’s a guy that had no reason to help this kid, but yet he put himself out to be able to get me an appointment and get me going. On the plane he spoke about giving back and what to do. Special individual.
Eddie Catton was the first guy to get me to speak at UJA. He inspired me to do so, and he was on the Sephardic Community Center board and he was a president at one time. Loved him; he was very special to me.
Another individual that I look up to would be Stanley Chera. Stanley helped me in my business a lot. I’d go in and he gave me carte blanche to fill up his stores. He says, “Just write whatever order you feel we need, fill up the stores and keep filling them up. You don’t have to ask me.” I’d have to give me order, maybe, and then he yelled at me once because I wasn’t giving him enough goods! He says—I would give him sixes and reorder them a week or so—he says, “Just give me 36! What do you give me only six pieces for? I don’t want to do something wrong…”
Years later he helped me get my bank. He’s a special individual, but I could go on and on. I love him. But I want to talk about someone currently who is the most amazing individual, and that’s Morris Bailey. I never saw an individual that is so devoted to helping our community grow and so smart and charismatic and caring and loving. Morris Bailey has done so much for the community and will continue to do so. He’s a selfless individual, and we’re blessed to have him. There are many others—I’m skipping over dozens and dozens of other people that do so much for the community. But more important is to make sure that I have the Victors of the world to give back and do things and take over the reins.
Victor M. Braca: That’s the goal really, to inspire people my age. And I think we’re doing a great job at that.
Joey Shamie: I think you are. It’s funny, I had a meeting once with Jessica Safdie. She called me up one time to talk about how she and her friends could do more. After meeting a couple times, I said, “You know, I’m so impressed with how much you and your friends care and are looking to do.”
And she said, “If not us, then who?”
“If not us, then who?” I got such a great feeling to see that your generation is getting ready to take over the reins, taking initiative. I didn’t call her; she called me. I am happy to know that the community is going to be in good hands with another generation of leaders—people that give back, people that help others grow.
Victor M. Braca: At Delta, you guys value the company culture and giving back, but I think paramount to both of those is your employees and your team. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Joey Shamie: You’re only as good as your team, and the smartest thing you can do is surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. You don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room, but you have to lead them. Sammy and I have built a company—and I should say originally my father and mother—where we have a great leader in our stroller business, a great leader in our crib business, a great leader in our toddler furniture business, a great leader in licensing. Each one of those individuals is heading up that division.
But then you look at everybody—from the guy that’s packing the boxes in the basement to the one that’s building the stroller—every single individual in the company is important to making the company successful. Treating every one of them with the right respect is paramount. Sammy and I do our best to treat everybody as family. It got harder and harder as we get bigger and you don’t know everybody and their kids, but we try our best to still hold true to those values. Everybody deserves your respect.
I think that in the same way when you’re giving back and when you’re just conducting yourself as a good, humble, generous person, the intention is because you love doing that and you want to do good, but what comes out of it is personal fulfillment and increased success in business. It’s similar with the way you treat your team—you’re doing it out of the goodwill of your heart, but the product is a better company culture, better products, and a better company as a whole.
Joey Shamie: You just said it all. It’s so paramount. I’ll tell you something else: we have a lot of employees here for twenty, thirty, even forty years. Those people are loyal to us, and we’re loyal to them. You can’t buy loyalty like that. I’ve been blessed to work alongside so many great individuals. One of them that I’m probably closest with is Lewis Hopstein. Lewis came forty years ago to my little apartment on Lancaster Avenue seeking employment. I did an interview. I had a show in a week or two, and I needed somebody to take over my sales position for the local stores. I hired him on the spot.
He walks out the door and Adrienne says, “How the hell did you hire that kid?”
I said, “I don’t know. I need somebody.”
She looks at me: “Okay, whatever.”
Go to the show and we’re building. We have this furniture—it’s a big showroom and it’s a lot of hard work to build a showroom. My father’s there running things, and my brother and all that. Lewis is there with us now setting up, and my brother comes and looks at me: “How the hell did you hire this kid? He’s never going to [last]… what’d you do?”
“Oh, I needed somebody.”
“All right, whatever.”
Well, I think it’s forty or forty-one years later, Lewis Hopstein is my right hand. We travel together, we go together. We’ve spent more nights in a hotel room together because we were always on a budget and sharing rooms together. I love the guy and he’s been a very strong part of Delta. Despite what Sammy and Adrienne said forty years ago, they love him forty years later.
Further feeding into the culture of the company: my father, when he had his first stores on Bedford-Stuyvesant, he took in a bunch of guys that would be part of gangs today. He gave them opportunity, and he took a couple of them and he educated them. I’m talking—not just one or two—I’m talking about dozens. He used to take these guys in with his “tough love” way. I mean, he was a strong bull of a personality—couldn’t find a guy stronger than him and louder than him at the same time—but there’s no one that hugged like he did or gave you his love like he did or gave you his heart and took care of you.
I have designers and engineers that would have been gang members. A salesperson—I could go on and on—maintenance people that he trained and taught how to do certain things. They’ll do anything for him. When he was alive, they would kill for him because he killed for them. Several of them would say, “He’s the father I never had. He taught me Jewish values. I never had a family. I never valued the family until your father taught me that.”
That’s one of the reasons why my father’s my hero, why I talk about him so much. He turned the company into an education facility. I had one of the individuals, her name is Lydia Torres. When her husband passed away, he paid off her mortgage. By the way, he doesn’t bother telling Sammy; he just does it.
Skip through that to about two years ago. My HR manager comes into me and says Lydia’s father passed away and he lives in Colorado. I go, “Oh wow. Get her a plane ticket, get her a hotel, do whatever we can to help her out,” and so forth. I never even heard her talk about her father.
A little while later she walks into my office and she says, “Thank you, Joey. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But I want you to know: he was my real father. Two years ago.”
You think about the Kiddush Hashem that Lou Shamie created with all these individuals. Our responsibility—maybe not on that level—is constantly with our employees, our business partners, whoever we do business with, to make sure we’re doing the right thing. And I’ll go above the right thing: the lives that you can change, the things that you can do, and what people see in a Jewish company.
Victor M. Braca: Our show is called Momentum. The primary goal is to inspire young adults to take small steps that will slowly but surely increase their momentum for eventual success in business and giving back. We have a signature question called the “Momentum Moment”—the moment where your business was catching on or you saw what you were doing was a viable business and that you were being fulfilled by it. Do you have a story to illustrate a momentum moment?
Joey Shamie: I think I’ve said a couple of moments. There’s usually not one. There were numerous momentum moments within every company. I just told you about the commercial—how my father did the commercial and created the Love Buggy. Then we did the crib. Then the opportunity when things went sour and there was the big recall; we turned the big recall into from a nightmare into a dream.
Every aspect was just another step in growing the business. You can have that one moment where you have the greatest widget in the world and you’ll sell a billion of them, but what are you going to do to follow that up? That’s really I guess when my father said we went from strollers to cribs to eventually table and chair sets and toy boxes, and we kept growing around the baby and the child. So it’s a series of moments, a series of opportunities. Piece them all together, grow on them, and that will bring you to a point like we’re at today.
Victor M. Braca: Beautiful. Do you have any advice, tips, final words for young adults looking to put themselves ahead?
Joey Shamie: Go outside your box. If you’re 18 in this community, I will bet that you live in a bubble. You’ve been to yeshiva your whole life, you’re surrounded by community members. You got to get outside your box and you got to talk to other people. You got to learn from other people, learn other things. That means on every level. It’s very important for you to develop a wider network of individuals—of friends, of perspectives, ideas of how people live.
Ask people about their life—how they grew up, where they grew up. You saw me a few minutes ago—I was asking this individual where she was from. One was Portuguese, one was Filipino. People have a story behind them and you can learn from that story. At the same time, they will feel warm about you if you’re willing to ask them about their life. I love meeting people, I love talking to people, love understanding their lives. I love that American dream—how did they get to that American dream, whatever it may be? There’s a lot to learn from everybody else.
I do emphasize college education and so forth, but the best education I personally had was traveling with my dad. We started the company together; again, it was just a small little company. We didn’t even have enough money—we’re going to a show in Chicago—to even ship the samples or fly there. Maybe we had enough money, but it was better to save money. We literally packed the samples into the car and we drove to Chicago back and forth. We stayed in like a second-rate hotel far outside where the show was. We did this a couple of times.
But traveling with my dad and going overseas with him and selling with him and being with him and seeing how he treated people, seeing his dynamic and his passion for making things happen, was unparalleled. I think Sammy will tell you the same thing because Sammy traveled with him to the Orient way more than I did. So he had long extended trips with him.
Why am I saying this? Because I think everybody has to appreciate what our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents did for us and what you can learn from what they did and how they did it. If you have the opportunity to spend time and learn from them, do so. They’ve got so much knowledge to share with you.
Victor M. Braca: Incredible closing words. Joey, thank you so much for this opportunity. Wow, amazing. Do you want to show me around?
Joey Shamie: Yes, let’s do it. When you get off the elevator in our showroom, you’re greeted by Sam and Joe Shamie—they’re step-brothers—but at the same time you’re met by Joe and Sam Shamie as well. That’s Jessica. These are really old, it’s time for us to update them, but it’s very cute that we have Sam and Joe.
We have industry awards because, as I mentioned, we do a lot of giving back. Of course, my friend over here, Eric Adams. I also have a picture with De Blasio, but I never tell anybody about De Blasio—that would be a whole different story! Scholarship awards… we got a lot of stuff over here.
But let’s walk in. If you come into the showroom, you can see we have on this side all our cribs and nursery furniture. In this area you can find cribs anywhere from $100 to $1,200. You can find every kind of design—whether it be traditional, whether it be modern, eclectic, and so forth. We make every single kind. We’re at Walmart and we’re at Restoration Hardware and everything in between. But every single crib—it doesn’t matter if it’s $99 or $1,200—it still has to surpass every safety standard that there is. Safety is number one.
On this side of the showroom we have what we call our “gear” division, which is strollers, walkers, high chairs—that kind of stuff. And then here we have our toddler furniture or kids’ furniture, which is table and chair sets, toy boxes, and so forth. We literally created the toddler bed business, which is a big factor for us.
And then made in America, the mattress business. we have our own plants in Wisconsin manufacturing mattresses. When you walk into Delta, you’re immediately greeted by the founder of the company—or the founders, I should say—my dad Lou Shamie and my mom. They built the company together. They were a dynamic duo, and my mother continues to do so much for the community and just inspires me. We have to always remember that people like my dad, parents, grandparents, did everything for us, and I never forget that. He founded the company, he gave it to Sammy and I to continue to grow it, but without his leadership, without his love, without his inspiration, we would not be here today.
Joey Shamie: What’s doing, Caesar? Hey Joe, it’s my friend Victor.
Victor M. Braca: Hi Joe, how are you? How we doing, guys?
Joey Shamie: I want to show them some of the testing stuff. What do we show first? Okay, this is probably the most interesting one. This was one of the Syrians that came to America in the 1980s—my father hired like twenty of them, really gave them jobs, and then helped them all basically move on. You don’t know how many Syrians will stop me in the street and say, “Oh my God, your father was the one that helped me get going.”
This simulates a mom wheeling a stroller up and down curbs and back and forth over all the bumps. We put this on for 300 hours to make sure that nothing bends or breaks or screw loosens. This is a very big deal.
Victor M. Braca: That’s very cool.
Joey Shamie: You’d be surprised at the amount of testing and abuse that we have to give our products. Things can sell for $19.99, and you’d never think… it doesn’t matter the price point, everything has to go through the same testing. You go up to a curb and you tilt back, and you’ve got the weight of a baby in the stroller. If the tubing is not strong enough it could bend, or the wheel will break. You’d be surprised how much abuse that is with a 40-pound baby sitting inside of it. So we put a 40-pound weight inside it and we’re testing it… 8,640 cycles. Eight hours we’re doing this.
Victor M. Braca: That’s a lot of abuse. Rigorous testing.
Joey Shamie: Tell me about this. This is your worst nightmare: baby jumping up and down all day long, in the middle of the night. This is a heavy kid! We do this in the center and all four corners 3,000 times. So the federal standard is [lower], but our standard—we call the Delta standard—nobody does what we do here. This is all under my brother’s guidance.
Victor M. Braca: That wraps up this episode with Joey Shamie. I really hope you enjoyed it. Here are a few—just a few—of the lessons that I took away from this conversation.
First: build your reputation before you need it. Joey emphasized how trust and relationships are everything in business and in your personal life. Whether it’s customers, retailers, suppliers, family members, or friends—people do business and overall interact and gravitate towards people they trust. So start building that today.
Second: opportunities come from taking action. From his father’s first big commercial to navigating a massive industry recall, Joey showed that the biggest breakthroughs come when you step up and take risks, but more importantly, when you turn setbacks into opportunities to improve.
Third: success means giving back. Delta Children isn’t just a business, a corporate entity; it’s a force for good. You can tell that by the way Joey speaks about it. Whether it’s donating cribs to military families or funding community programs, Joey’s story proves that real success isn’t just about making money; it’s about making an impact.
And last but not least, my number one takeaway from this conversation and the main thing about Joey that inspires me: who you are matters just as much, if not more than, what you do. Your reputation, your values, and how you treat people will shape your opportunities and determine your success in the long run. But to take it out of business even for a second: just do good. Joey proves that you can do well and do good at the same time. Make giving back a core of your personality. Off-camera, Joey is just as kind and giving as he seems on camera. And if there’s one thing that you should take away from this episode, it’s that.
I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to check out my conversation with Lee M. Cohen, who started a powerhouse accounting firm currently employing 140 people. Imagine that. Lee, like Joey, makes giving back a core of his personality and his business, and he tells amazing stories of how that trait alone led him to astronomical success in the business world. To listen to that episode, you can search “Momentum Lee Cohen” anywhere on Google, YouTube, or Spotify, or check out the link in the show notes.
With that said, thank you again for watching. Please be sure to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice—again, we’re on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcast, and Instagram. Rate the show five stars, please share with a friend who you think might derive value from this podcast, and until next time.
Momentum 
Leave a comment