Nassau County, NY – Men’s Shirt Company Weaves Tzedaka Opportunity Into The Fabric Of Every Sale

Nassau County, NY – Taking their cue from the Tom’s shoe company, which donates a pair of shoes to the needy for every pair of shoes purchased, a quartet of Orthodox Five Towns residents are hoping to make philanthropy an integral component of their menswear business by providing customers with a convenient method of donating unworn garments to charity.

Ricardo Goldschmidt, Harry Cedarbaum, Asher Weinberger and Eli Blumstein are the founding partners of Twillory, which sells better men’s shirts. Drawing on their own previous efforts in the non-profit sector, the group realized that Twillory had the potential to become a thriving charity vehicle.

“With our past experience, we knew we wanted to do more than just make money,” Weinberger, Twillory’s CEO, told VIN News. “We wanted to add value to people’s lives. Giving back is one of the hottest trends in the e-commerce landscape and we were trying to think how we could incorporate that into our business.”

The group worked with the United States Postal Service to design a pre-paid, pre-addressed mailing envelope that would be packed in every Twillory shipment. With every new shirt order, customers could easily donate their gently used shirts for distribution to the less fortunate, by packing them into the envelope and popping them into the nearest mailbox.

“The Rambam says that it is better to give $1 to 1,000 poor people than to give $1,000 to one poor person,” explained Weinberger. “It would seem to go against logic because one dollar really won’t help much at all But the Rambam explains that every act of giving changes you as a person, helping you to do more. Getting up and putting those shirts in a bag can have a powerful effect on a person, so much more so than just having someone make a donation on their behalf.”

Twillory’s program, called Re: Purpose, sends the donated shirts directly to Career Gear, a nonprofit service and support network which cleans the shirts and distributes them to low-income men for job interviews.

Blumstein, Twillory’s creative director, estimates that in the three months since the program began, Career Gear has already received several hundred shirts from Re: Purpose, currently available only in the tri-state region.

“We are working on expanding nationwide,” said Blumstein who added that the company also hopes to team up with a charity in the Orthodox Jewish community.

While Twillory was officially launched this past June, it is the continuation of a men’s shirting business that has been operating continuously since it was founded in 1892 by Goldschmidt’s great-grandfather. Re: Purpose is not the group’s first venture into the field of charitable contributions.

“We helped out a lot after Hurricane Sandy, donating thousands of shirts to those in need,” said Weinberger.

The foursome is hoping that other clothing retailers will follow in their footsteps.

“Imagine for a minute if Nordstrom and Macy’s would do something like this,” said Weinberger. “It could lead to millions of packages of clothing donated every day. No one in the world would ever have clothing problems ever again.”