Author: trevor_rogers1

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Holze Music Co. -Final

Holze Music

From rich beginnings in 1937 to its turbulent downfall in 2009, Holze Music Co. faced a series of ups and downs throughout its 70-year history.  For all those years, Holze Music Co. served the community of Waco, and 9 other locations around Texas in all thing’s music related. From renting out instruments to school children, repairing broken instruments, and even giving music lessons, Holze did it all.

Holze Music Co. was founded by Lewis Holze in 1937 at 1210 Lake Air Dr. Mr. Holze led a simple life with his wife Edith Hander, who he married in 1938. Lewis was a Methodist, a mason, and even a Baylor alumni, playing in the golden wave band during his time in school. After his passing on April 12th, 1980, the business stayed in the family for another decade before it was sold to Rob Gibson in June of 1992.

Under ownership of Rob Gibson, Holze expanded rapidly. By 2003 Holze was doing 5.5 million in sales with locations in Waco, Temple, Killeen, and College station. Holze sales continues increasing after its competitor, Brooks Mays Music went out of business and closed all 26 of its stores in 2006, leaving Holze as the main, trusted music store.

However, Holze was faced with a tragic turn of events in 2008. It came out in early May, that the company owed more than $150,000 in taxes, all 10 stores were forced to close until the back taxes were paid. Continuing the misfortune, GE Commercial Distribution Finance Corporation filed a lawsuit for $931,082 against Holze for missed payments for financial services the company had provided. Despite paying off the tax debt in less than a week, Holze was still struggling to keep itself afloat. By the 20th of May the bank had foreclosed on the flagship store in Waco. In a quote from a lawyer for Holze, “Holze is out of business, and has no employees.”

Because the business was shut down so quickly it left many customers still in possession of instruments worth tens of thousands of dollars, and with no employees and no stores, they had no way to return them. The bank that foreclosed on Holze released a statement from its lawyer, Jeffery Cox, which said that it was Holze Music Co. responsibility to get the instruments back from customers. Holze Co.’s lawyer, Larry Kelly, refuted the statement by Cox and said that because Holze’s assets were seized, they no longer had the records for any of the instruments and it was now up to the bank to figure out how to have all of the instruments returned and customers rental periods end.

To this day, it is still unknown why the Holze brand, making millions of dollars, and multiple locations across the state of Texas, cascaded down so quickly. Gibson has always blamed “cash-flow issues” for the company’s downfall, but never elaborating on what that really meant, or why the issue was never able to be resolved, nor has there ever been an attempt to re-open the business.

Despite its tragic end, the Holze Music Company was a staple to Waco for many years. With its original location just off of Valley Mills, Holze sat right in the heart of Waco.  During its 70 years, the Company was able to go from a small instrument repair shop to a relatively large company servicing music enthusiasts all over the state of Texas. Countless members of the Waco community got their first taste of music from an instrument purchased or rented from Holze. So much joy and happiness was brought by this small Waco business, and it will always have a special spot in the hearts of thousands of Wacoans.

The store front of the original Holze Music Co. store just off Valley Mills.

The last logo used by Holze while it was still in business.

A typical day at Holze with a salesman helping a customer chose the perfect instrument.

Local rapper, Jr. Boy, shopping in Holze for the perfect sound equipment.

local man, William Ellis, talks about his wife’s experience with Holze music.

 

Sources:

Waco, Texas: Business and Industry: Holze Music and Company; Clippings

Waco, Texas, Citizens- last name beginnings with “HN-HZ”

Baylor Institute for Oral History, Interview of William Gardiner Ellis

Google Earth, Holze Music

YouTube, Jr. Boy as Holze Music Store, Part 1

mylogoart.com, Holze Music Logo

 

 

 

1 Comment Posted on by trevor_rogers1 20th century, Uncategorized

Is The Government More Entrepreneurial Than You Think?

Image result for tesla government subsidies political cartoon

image from wattsupwiththat.com 

 

When most American’s picture the relationship between government and capitalism, they see a stark divide. On one side, there is the government, creating roads, funding the military, bettering education, in general putting money into sectors for basic needs. On the other, there is capitalism, Titans of Industry creating inventions like the iPhone, Facebook, or even the Tesla Model S. Mariana Mazzucato is a professor of Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, and she seeks to show how government and capitalism are much more connected than we think.

The glaringly obvious Big Idea that Mazzucato uses is capitalism, and this is how she defines it;

[The] Defining feature of capitalism is how it “has really broken down all sorts of walls, that it’s constantly changing how industries operate; how production, distribution, and consumption work”

She begins her argument by pointing at her definition of capitalism. She argues that the government puts in significant resources into funding early-stage research, largely contributing to the success of technology, pharmaceuticals, and energy. By funding this research, Mazzucato believes that the government is changing how “production, distribution, and consumption work” and are therefore active participants in the capitalist system. Mazzucato points to several government agencies, specifically NASA, DARPA, and the National Institute of Health and how they contributed to inventions such as the internet, GPS, and HD displays. She believes that without these innovations, companies like Google would have no internet to run on and Tesla would have no GPS to lead its cars.

Mazzucato continues on by affirming that not only is government investing billions upon billions of dollars into research, but they aren’t getting credit for it, and they’re not getting much of a return. She illustrates this belief with two companies; Tesla and Solyndra. The government investing 1 billion combined in both companies. Solyndra failed and the government lost its investment and the American people were upset that the government was attempting to act as venture capitalists. Tesla on the other hand succeeded tremendously, and the government got no recognition for it, and no return on investment. Mazzucato suggested that the government should have required tesla to give them 3 million shares and after the significant boost in Tesla’s stock over the years, the government would have to been able to make its money back from the loss on Solyndra. She affirms that if the government is going to spend this money investing in companies, that it should also get a pay-out from them.

Mazzucato also delves into the market on pharmaceuticals. She states that most research during the beginning stages isn’t funded by private institutions, but by the government. She continues by saying that most large pharmaceutical companies don’t speed that much money on research and development, but instead on stock buy backs and dividends. Mazzucato believes that since the government funds so much of the development on these drugs they should be able to influence the price, specifically, by putting a price cap on drugs.

Overall, Mazzucato believes that the government is already an active participant in capitalism. She wants the government to be a co-shaper, and co-creator, not just a worried parent who sits on the sidelines waiting with band-aids for something to go wrong.

1 Comment Posted on by trevor_rogers1 Uncategorized

How Sears Mail-Order Catalogues Subverted Jim Crow’s Racial Hierarchy

[Image from amazon.com]

Most people would never guess that the slightly odd smelling, usually abandoned Sears at your local mall was on the leading edge of the civil rights movement in the early 1900’s. Antonia Noori Farzan seeks to enlighten the public on Sear’s racially progressive ideas in her article “Sears’s ‘radical’ past: How mail-order catalogues subverted the racial hierarchy of Jim Crow”

The Big Idea that is tackled by Farzan is business, state, and society. She begins the article by stating her overarching belief in what Sears was able to do for the black community.

[Sears] revolutionized rural black southerner’ shopping patterns in the late 19th century,                         subverting racial hierarchies by allowing them to make purchases by mail or over the                             phone and avoid the blatant racism that they faced at small country stores.

Let be begin by breaking down this quote in terms of our Big Ideas. Sears business model was relatively simple, they were a large department store and in order to extend their business to rural areas, where it wasn’t feasible to build a brick and mortar store, they began sending out mail-order catalogues so that customers could call in their orders and have them shipped to their homes. Incidentally, this led to blacks using the catalogues as a way to avoid the discrimination that they were facing in their local country stores. Regarding the effects of government, the Sears catalogues were being shipped during the peak of Jim Crow laws. In Sears actual stores they had to comply with Jim Crow laws, so blacks could only have jobs in the warehouse or as janitors. Lastly, in terms of social situations, blacks were outwardly discriminated against. Farzan writes about how in their local stores black were always served last and given the lowest-grade items. Because there was no discrimination when the business couldn’t see the color of your skin, blacks took to the Sears catalogue where they could get high quality items without fear of prejudice.

The Sears company influenced black culture in other says. Culturally, their cheap steel-guitars allowed for a whole new genre of music- Delta blues. Without the catalogue, blacks wouldn’t have been able to afford these steel string guitars, but at Sears, they were only $1.26 ($50 in today’s dollars), giving low income individuals access to music. Furthermore, Rosenwald, a part-owner of Sears, donated over $75 million (in today’s dollars) to education. His money created over 5,000 schools in the rural south, leading to the advancement of education for black children. In the 1930’s 1 out of every 3 black students went to a Rosenwald school until they were shut down after Brown v. Board of Education.

Sears policy of commercial inclusion for minorities wasn’t without backlash. Local merchants were known for paying people to steal/ collect Sears catalogues and having bonfires with the collected books. The reasoning behind this is two-fold. First, Sears was taking business away from them because the customers that were usually buying items from the store were instead ordering from Sears. Second, they didn’t want blacks to be able to have access to the same quality products that they did.

Overall, we see that Sears had a large part in introducing minorities, and specifically blacks, into the marketplace following the Civil War. Although the company was not without its flaws, it paved the way for the Civil Rights movement and the equality between all groups that we now enjoy in America.

1 Comment Posted on by trevor_rogers1 20th century, unacknowledged assumptions

The Transformation of Corporate Lobbying

Trevor Rogers

When one envisions corporate lobbyists one might picture a man in an expensive suit and a too white grin wining and dining a shady congressman. This is the image that comes to mind when we think of what a lobbyist truly does. However, lobbying is a relatively recent phenomenon, taking Washington by storm in only the last few decades. In the article, “How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy” Lee Drutman details the history of lobbying and how the practice transformed over time into its current iteration.

The “Big Idea” that is most prevalent within lobbying is its complexity, especially its transformation over time. So let’s go through the history of lobbying and discover how it has transformed. Starting off in the Gilded Age we had a time of extreme influence by business in the government, pushing for certain legislation. This relationship was disrupted by a Great Depression and two World Wars. Now skipping ahead to the 1960’s we had a system where labor unions had significant influence in legislation, not the corporations. At this time it seemed futile for corporations to spend money lobbying for legislation, with one prominent corporate lawyer even commenting about how useless it was to try to influence legislation.

As every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders. If one doubts this, let him undertake the role of ‘lobbyist’ for the business point of view before Congressional committees.”

     As we can see the attitude of businessmen towards influencing the government was essentially, “Well, we can’t get anything done, so why even try?” That was the case until 1972 when the Business Roundtable was founded by several prominent businessmen. John Harper, CEO of Alcoa, remarked ” I think we all recognize that the time has come when we must stop talking about it, and get busy and do something about it.” His comment reflects the frustration felt by businessmen at their inability to influence the legislation that so directly effected their lives. After a few corporations sent lobbyists to Washington and started actually influencing bills, such as a major labor law reform and lowering corporate taxes, they began seeing just how successful lobbying could be. There was a major shift that occurred during the late 80’s that is perfectly captured by this quotation by a lobbyist, “Twenty-five years ago…it was ‘just keep the government out of our business, we want to do what we want to do,’ and gradually that’s changed to ‘how can we make the government our partners?’ It’s gone from ‘leave us alone’ to ‘let’s work on this together.'”

  With the current state of lobbying we must now focus on another “Big Idea”, and that is the unintended consequences that came with allowing corporations and lawmakers to become such tight partners. We now are faced with a modern lobbying scene with more than the $2 billion spent to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). For every dollar spent on lobbying for labor unions, large corporations spend 34, totally flipping the status quo from the 60’s and 70’s. Corporations are now able to play both offense and defense against government policies, getting some passed and others blocked, whichever ones they deem to have the most benefit to themselves. So how to we get back the balance? How can we reverse this pattern of corporate control? Well, Drutman has a few ideas. First, we must invest more into the Government, especially Congress. This would allow the leading policymakers to have the resources that are necessary so that they can hire and retain experienced staff, so they will not have to rely so much of lobbyists. Second, organizations that advocate for policies that are less well-funded need more financial support.

Overall, we are posed with this simple question. Who do we want creating legislation that affects this country and our own personal lives, our elected representatives or multi-billion dollar corporations?