siness
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The Negative Heel put native Detroiters Michael
Budman and Don Green's business on the map.
SUSAN KNOPPOW SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
Michael
Budman
and Don
Green sit
outside
their
Birming-
ham
store
with
family.
Mr. and
Mrs. Irwin
Green,
(Don's par-
ents); Don
Green;
Sophie
Green and
Anthony
Green
(Don's
kids)
he afternoon of his corn-
pany's 20th anniversary
celebration, Michael Bud-
man, co-owner of Roots,
sat on a bale of hay out-
side the chain's downtown
Birmingham store. In cut-
off shorts, torn green sweatshirt, a
colorful wool jacket and high socks,
the 47-year-old entrepreneur looked
like he was dressed for a canoe trip.
Mr. Budman and his partner, Don
Green, like to dress in the clothes
their company produces. The Detroit
natives, now living in Toronto, own
and operate Roots, a $100 million,
500-employee international whole-
sale and retail operation that turns
out everything from cotton sweat-
shirts and leather jackets to chil-
dren's T-shirts and shoes.
In addition to their retail trade,
Roots supplies summer camps, movie
crews and a variety of large and
small businesses with custom jack-
ets, sweats, baseball caps and oth-
er items. Commercial sales now
account for one-third of the compa-
ny's revenues.
Clients include Camp Tamakwa
in Algonquin Park, where the two
men first discovered the outdoors.
Vic Norris, Tamakwa's co-owner,
met Mr. Budman and Mr. Green
when he worked as a junior coun-
selor at the camp.
"Michael and Donny have never
lost sight of where they started from,"
Mr. Norris says. "They've been good
friends to camp and good friends to
me."
The two men credit Lou Handler,
the camp's founder, as their greatest
inspiration.
"Lou Handler changed my des-
tiny," Mr. Budman says. "The cul-
ture and the way of life at Tamakwa
is something I've carried with me."
Thirty-eight years ago, Mr. Han-
dler brought his home movies of Al-
gonquin Park into the Budman fam-
ily living room. He was on his rounds
of Detroit families, trying to convince
city parents to send their children to
his camp deep in the Canadian
woods.
The Budmans signed up. For the
next 13 years, beginning in 1956, Mr.
Budman attended Tamakwa. He be-
gan as a camper, then graduated to
counselor, and eventually became
boys camp director.
Mr. Green, 43, also attended the
camp.
"Growing up in Detroit, I wasn't
really plugged into nature at all," Mr.
Green admits. "I remember planning
to go (to camp) for four weeks, but by
the fourth week, everything felt so
great, I had to stay the whole eight
weeks."
The duo met in 1962, when Mr.
Green pledged a high school frater-
nity. Mr. Budman, three years old-
er, was already a member. Their
friendship solidified in the summer
of 1963 at Camp Tamakwa. Ten
years later, they opened the first
Roots store in Toronto.
With some left-over bar mitzvah
money and a $20,000 loan from Mr.
Green's father, Irwin Green, the two
men, then 24 and 27, began manu-
facturing the Negative Heel Shoe,
a modified version of the American
Earth Shoe.
The first day of business, the
Toronto store sold seven pairs of
shoes. Within three weeks, word had
spread, and customers were putting
their names on waiting lists.
`The moment we opened, (success)
hit us like a tidal wave," Mr. Bud-
man recalls.
In the first year, the partners
bought their shoe manufacturer's
business and moved the operation to
a larger facility. By year's end, Roots