bernard castro; castro convertibles

AMERICAN FURNITURE HALL OF FAME

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW

October 19, 2016

BERNADETTE CASTRO

Speaking for her late father, Bernard Castro

Founder and owner of Castro Convertibles

LLOYD HARBOR, LONG ISLAND, NY

Gary Evans, Interviewer

INTERVIEWER: We're going to talk about your father, from the time he came to this country with nothing, how he started the company, how he grew the company, and the struggles he had.

CASTRO: My father first came to America, Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty, when he was 15. He had great wealth in Italy, but his father was a gambler, and all of the wealth was gambled away. When he and his father got here, they had nothing. My father couldn't speak English, and he had no money, but he had memories of household staff and horses and land and all the things that wealthy families had in Italy. My father said. "They told us in Italy that there was gold to be found in the streets of New York." They arrived, went through Ellis Island, which was quite an experience in itself, and he said, "I never found any gold but I did find golden opportunity."

He was determined, and said to me, "It was worse to have had it and lost it, then to have never had it at all." He was driven to accomplish something, and he could see in America that not everybody had his work ethic. He knew that if he mastered English …my father never taught me Italian, that he would succeed. Although he was very proud of his Italian heritage,   he   wanted   to   Americanize   totally   and wanted his children to be one hundred percent Americanized.

I couldn't even pierce my ears until I was 30, and he was quite upset when I bought the first foreign car in our family. He never returned to Europe, never left the United States. He never missed a vote. He was patriotic, not a party loyalist, but a candidate person. He loved Jack Kennedy. He loved Reagan. He loved Bush. He loved, I had to hear over and over, "Do not ask what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." That famous Ted Sorensen line that was written for Jack Kennedy.

My father was a patriot. In fact in Ocala, Florida, which was and still is a second home for us, my parents hosted the Florida National Guard who conducted drop-zone maneuvers with their choppers landing on our land. The Guard named part of this land the Castro Drop Zone and made my father and mother honorary Green Berets.

It was at the start of the first Gulf War when Dad promised the boys, as he called them when they went off, "I'll give you another barbeque when you come home." Well, he didn't think they'd be home 90 days later and he delivered on his promise of a big family party.

INTERVIEWER: You have a great big spread in Florida, right?

CASTRO: Oh, yes. At one time, my parents owned 5,000 acres.

INTERVIEWER: That's what I thought.

CASTRO:  He loved Ocala because of the rolling hills. Before discovering Ocala, we had always lived on the Florida coast in Broward County, South Florida, but when he discovered the magnificent landscape of North Central Florida, it reminded him more of Sicily, and he fell in love with the land. We now own about 1,500 acres. The family homestead, where the family memorial is, that's about 200 acres, and I think the family will always retain that parcel.

INTERVIEWER: Let's get back to his early days here.

CASTRO: He and his father came to America first. They left his mother and younger brother there and later brought them over. My dad took care of everyone.

INTERVIEWER: The immigrant way.

CASTRO: Yes, exactly. So, all for one, one for all. We go back to the time when he arrived here. He thought it was a good thing to be dressed up in a nice jacket and to get a job. There was something called Italian emigrant banks. They were really travel services, travel agents. They cashed checks. It was kind of a one-stop shop, but the men were dressed nicely. Dad got a job there, except he noticed that the men coming in with the most money to put in the bank had very rough hands and they weren't dressed up. He said, "There's something wrong with this. I think I'm going to do what they do. Let me find out what they're doing."

He really explored several different crafts, if you will. He made jewelry boxes, he did this, he did that, and he eventually ended up cutting fabric for a man in New York City. He became his boss’s best cutter.

Meanwhile, Dad went to school at night and learned English. I never heard his slight Italian accent because I grew up with it, but people who knew my father said he had a little Italian accent, which is interesting. I never heard it.

My mother, Theresa, the unsung hero of the story, worked with my father early on. She was born on a farm near McKeesport, Pennsylvania. She spoke Hungarian until she was seven, and had nine siblings. She milked cows before she went to school in the morning. She was supposed to go to a convent and did in fact enter a convent, but she begged her mother to return home, saying "I promise to do more good from outside these walls than from within." And she kept her promise. The reason she entered the convent is that her mother was brought from Austria by an order of nuns. There was an understanding that one of the daughters would become a nun. Of the five sisters, my mother was chosen to go.

My parents met when my dad was 30 and my mother was only 17. It was shortly after she left the farm to head to New York City. She was a gorgeous woman. Dad met her on a blind date and that was that.

INTERVIEWER: They got married on Valentine's Day, so your dad was a bit of a romantic.

CASTRO: Of course. He was Italian after all, and he was quite the dancer. He moonlighted as a ballroom dancing instructor on the side. Oh, yes. He was dapper.

Getting back to business, Dad was the best cutter his boss, Mr. Cohen had. But my dad always wanted to be his own boss so he asked Mr. Cohen if he could rent the empty loft upstairs. Mr. Cohen said that my dad could start his own reupholstery shop but only if he continued to cut fabric for Mr. Cohen at night. Bernard Castro always loved design, and he would go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and study classic furniture design. He then went to the New York School of Industrial Arts and received his degree.

INTERVIEWER: I wondered where he got his eye for design because I had not read it anywhere, but that was one of the things that helped his business.

CASTRO: Yes, it did. I think he became more passionate and he was always classic - in classical architecture, classical furniture design. He was not a fan of modernism, if you will. He could take the tacks out of his upholsterers’ hands. Actually, he couldn't believe it when upholstered furniture introduced a new look and the style became loose pillow backs with karate chops. But if that’s what his customers wanted, that’s what he would create.

INTERVIEWER: Where was his original shop?

CASTRO: It was Lower Manhattan on 5th Avenue. By the way, he took his first $300 and put it all in a sign. His gut for marketing and advertising was phenomenal.

INTERVIEWER: We'll get to that.

CASTRO:  Women would come in to the interior design shop where he was making draperies and reupholstering furniture customers (usually women) would have him look at a davenport. A davenport was pre-Castro. It did convert, but customers wanted it reupholstered. They would say to my father, "Can you reupholster this and please make it better looking?" He said, "Well, if I can take the bed out, I can make it look much better." "Oh, no, no, no. Don't take the bed out. We need the bed." He couldn’t believe that in this great country, there was a demand for a product, but nobody was doing it. There wasn’t a sofa that concealed a bed that looked like something you would want to put in your living room.

He started playing with wood slats. Steel was hard to come by. He took ideas from boats where they had the slats and he started designing. I'm sure he had help from steel people and mechanism people, but Bernard Castro was the man who really created the convertible sofa industry as we know it today. He designed beautiful sofas that just happened to open into comfortable beds.

I was born in ‘44. In 1948, we were still living in a two-family house in the Bronx. I was four. It was in a regular neighborhood. We had a Castro in the living room and Dad had a TV with a big magnifying glass. TVs had very small screens, so you'd get this giant magnifying glass and it would fit over the TV.

One Sunday afternoon, they came into the small living room and the Castro Convertible sofa was open and I was on it. My father said to my mother, "I didn't open it; did you open it?" She said, "No. I thought you opened it."

They went, "Oh my gosh. She opened it." They said to me, "Honey, did you open it?" I went, "Yes," and they said, "Close it and do it again." I said, "I cannot close it. I can only open it." So, they closed it and I opened it, and they were stunned. They said, "Okay. This is not going to work in newspapers because people would think that it was a staged photo. Radio wouldn't do it. Seeing her open it on television is the only way people will believe it."

There were two television stations/networks in New York City at the time.

One was called Dumont. Los Angeles wasn't hot yet. It was all New York City, so my dad called Dumont. He said, "I want to put my product on TV, a commercial." They finally came back on the phone after keeping him on hold for a long time and said, "Mr. Castro, we don't do spots on local television. We've never done a local TV commercial. Because you only want to run your spot in New York, you go make your commercial, bring it back to us, and we'll figure it out."

Dad hired a good advertising team, the Karlan brothers. That was 1948 and starring in that TV commercial changed my life forever after.

INTERVIEWER: Another first, he started local advertising.

CASTRO: Yes, he did, and ours was the first TV commercial to feature a child. Therefore, I'm embedded in your friends’ minds, the ones that are baby boomers and grew up in the New York Metropolitan area. Dad had two options only. Two channels and BOTH were saturated with a little girl opening a Castro Convertible sofa. It was just like, you were my friend. We grew up together!

Actually, they had hired a professional little model. We were ready to shoot. I don't remember this, but I always say that I have my mother to thank.  I guess I looked hurt, and I said, "I want to do it. It's not fair, Mommy.” I always had this thing to be in front of the camera, I guess. You know, you're either born a ham or you’re not.

INTERVIEWER: You were the discoverer so ... "I was all dressed and ready to go."

CASTRO: They put me in a white nightgown. My mother sausage-curled my hair and I had one more request. I had to have nail polish, and they only had dark red at the time, and it was black and white television. They said, "Fine. Put her nail polish on." They put my nail polish on and I did everything. I was cooperating. I didn't care. I was smiling. I was jumping. Whatever they asked me to do.

My father bought the first flight of TV spots over five or six weeks. Nothing was happening. He was about to call and cancel, when week five women came in and asked, "Where's the sofa the little girl opened on TV?" He called Dumont and said, "Let her roll."

INTERVIEWER: Let her roll. Go.

CASTRO: I'm still, I think, the most televised child in America, and one of only several “living trademarks.”

INTERVIEWER: Wait a minute. You got more about the fingernails.

CASTRO: Oh, yes. More about the fingernails. The spot appeared on TV a lot and Dorothy Kilgallen, a columnist at the time, wrote that this Bernard Castro was a fraud because he hired a “little person. “

In those days, if Dorothy Kilgallen wrote about you at all, you were thrilled. Dad’s PR person demanded a retraction and she retracted it. He said, "It's my daughter Bernadette, and she's four!”

I took the butt of all jokes. I mean “Mad” magazine, when I was in middle school, ran a five-page spread. I was called a little freak from the circus because nobody could believe it was that easy. I'd be with my parents and they didn't know I was his daughter. They didn't recognize me without my curls. They'd say things like, "Does she have flat feet from jumping up and down so much?" Trying to be funny. I heard it all. There isn't a one-liner that I didn't hear.

INTERVIEWER: That is a great story. That was your pay to get your ...

CASTRO: Exactly, so as I grew, I continued doing the commercials and then I did the voiceovers. Five thousand, 6,000 radio spots and I mean I could do a 60- second spot and know where the 58th second was. The business really took off in the ‘1950s.

INTERVIEWER: Can I back up just for one question because this is important? Women would come in and want their sofas reupholstered, but they didn't want your father to do anything with the bed. How were the beds then; I mean, if they weren't retractable?

CASTRO: They opened up but they looked very bulky. I'm thinking that the mechanism was inserted in such a way that it was ridiculously obvious that the sofa opened into a bed. It did not look like a nice living room piece of furniture. The concept of the sofa or seating surface becoming a bed goes back to King Tut's tomb. There was an actual cement bench engineered to expand into a sleeping surface. Then there was a piano that somehow concealed a bed. There's old posters featuring that one. The concept of having something become a sleeping product was not Dad’s.  He gets credit for the design of a piece of furniture that concealed a bed. A stylish sofa that you could have in your living room.

INTERVIEWER: The first modern version of the sofabed.

CASTRO: Exactly.  And he tried to, but my father couldn't copyright the word convertible because it was in the dictionary. Anybody can use the word convertible, but Castro Convertibles, that was copyrighted. In addition to being a designer, my father was also a marketing genius. To use his name in his company’s name was very clever.

I always tell young people to strongly consider using their names when naming their businesses, because when you do, you create a celebrity. You must behave accordingly, however, because if you don’t, using your name could become a negative. The fact that Castro was in the name of our company made Bernard Castro in the New York area in the ‘50’s a very big deal.

Then, when he was in his early ‘50’s, he thought he could retire. By then we'd moved to Westchester.  He went to Ft. Lauderdale and loved Florida, and he was far too young to retire, so he brought the brand with him and opened showrooms and factories in Florida. Many people were snowbirds like he was and they thought Castro Convertibles was a national company. To this day, I meet people from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut that cannot believe we are a regional, not national, brand.

INTERVIEWER: Because you were so well known…

CASTRO: Exactly. I'm going to give you a book called “Top Sellers.” It was published some years ago, but in it are Kleenex and Xerox to name a few. So, people would go into department stores or any furniture store and ask for a Castro. Most salespeople never explained that: “Castro only sells Castro Convertibles in their own stores.”

INTERVIEWER: Everybody knows…

CASTRO: Everybody knew it, and they didn't correct the customer. They tried to sell them whatever they had.

INTERVIEWER:I've known about Castro for ... I'm an off-and-on The New York Times reader, so I've known the Castro name for a long time. It’s in a lot of magazines and stuff. I know it very well.

CASTRO: That doesn’t surprise me as we advertised often in The New York Times paper as well as their Sunday magazine. Dad was a heavy print advertiser.  In fact, he was the first New York advertiser to run a “double truck.” It was in the New York Daily News: Two full pages facing each other. Most weeks he ran a full page in the Daily News on Thursdays and Sundays, with ads in The Times as well.

There was another TV first, however. We produced the first live color TV spot. They told me there were 20,000 TV sets. They held my que cards upside down, but fortunately, because I'm anal, I memorized the script. Meantime, there were hundreds of thousands of color sets out there.

INTERVIEWER: His advertising budget must have been way over average.

CASTRO: It was. It was over 10 percent, but he was investing in brand building. He knew at the time that he had to completely control the market and make his brand generic….like Kleenex and Xerox.

INTERVIEWER: He took you to Ft. Lauderdale. That's where he built the boat inside the store.

CASTRO: That's right.

INTERVIEWER: As part of his showbiz.

CASTRO: That was something else he always did. He created the first specialty furniture chain. Now, there might have been creative people out there but nobody took a product like a convertible sofa and dedicated an entire store to it.

When he presented his product, it was showbiz. There was gold leaf wallpaper, crystal chandeliers, room settings before people were really using room settings, wall units before there were popular ways to use living space. Recliners: he loved that product immediately. He didn't invent it, but he went with it. He had an eye for what he thought his customer really wanted. He also never cheated the customer who could only afford his lowest price product.

If you came in for a $599 sofa, you got the same quality steel mechanism, the same hardwood frame, as the $2,500 sofa. What you didn't get was the fabric selection, the detail on upholstery, all that. But he always said, "My customer who cannot afford me is the one that really needs me. She's going to sleep on it every night" - and they did. They would fib and they'd say, "This is for my little girl." His basic mattress was great, but he did offer several choices, step-ups if you will.

As buildings went vertical and living space became tight, that was good for my father because his product saved precious living space. The “first to conquer living space” was the tagline that was used. He launched that tagline when the U.S. first launched a rocket into space.

Yes. When the first rocket went into outer space, he copyrighted, "First to conquer living space." He actually had, in the old print ad, I don't know if I can find one, a drawing of a rocket ship.

INTERVIEWER: That's amazing.

CASTRO: It is. It really, really is.

INTERVIEWER: The fact was he had an affordable sofa anybody could afford, but he wanted pizzazz to go with it.

CASTRO: Oh, he did. His salesmen - it was just men in the early days - were dressed like bankers. They wore coats and ties. When saleswomen joined the force, they always dressed nicely as well.

He designed a chair that was not projected to hit huge sales, but it certainly was a conversation piece. Totally showbiz! It was a fan-back chair with a carved wood frame AND mink on the inside back. He called it the “Hostess Chair” because he said, "You know, the hostess never gets to wear her mink because she's the hostess. I want her to sit in a chair that surrounds her with mink”.

His flair for marketing brought customers into his stores. He had a chair that concealed an ironing board and a hair dryer. He had a convertible sofa that was called the “Scotch-and-Sofa.” The two attached end tables opened. One concealed a bar, the other a stereo!

His showrooms become destinations. But then he got to realizing, starting with our Times Square flagship location with the giant billboard, that landlords could easily force him out of a location by asking for outrageous rents when renewals came up. It was at that time that he decided to start to buy the retail locations and then rent them to his furniture company. His business now had two divisions: real estate and retail. It also of course had a manufacturing arm both for our patented mechanism and our upholstery.

INTERVIEWER: The fact that you had that billboard ...

CASTRO: For years, and that billboard was in so many books. However, those rent increases put him in the real estate business. He said, "No landlord is going to do this to me again." He started buying properties, and the family today is in the commercial real estate business.

He bought a building in Manhattan, which is fabulous and we still own it.

INTERVIEWER: Let me interject. That's amazing for a guy who had little to no education other than self-education.

CASTRO: Exactly. But he had a keen sense for accounting and finance.

What happened in the beginning, when he started buying real estate, is that he had a built-in tenant, Castro Convertibles. He never had to search for a tenant, and the first mortgage payment was made with ease because of his new tenant: Castro Convertibles. He locked in a rent only to cover his expenses, so the furniture company benefited from paying under market rents. But as the years passed, this reversed itself.

In the early days, the furniture business subsidized the real estate purchases. However, towards the end of his life, the real estate was subsidizing the furniture company. We were paying ourselves so below market that it really caused us to pause. In the late ’80’s, my father knew I probably wouldn't finish my career in the furniture division, in furniture retail. Lower income competitors started coming in. China was coming on the front. It wasn't as much fun.

INTERVIEWER: Everybody says that.

CASTRO: My dad passed away in ‘91. In ‘93 we sold the furniture division. In 1994, I entered politics, but we kept the real estate.

I had reached out to Krause’s Sofa Factory in Brea, California. I saw what they did and I thought it would be a good fit. They didn't have a presence on the East Coast. There were a couple of Harvard MBAs that were running it. I say that because they were smart and I really liked them, but they didn’t understand the power of our brand in the New York Metropolitan area, nor did they have a sense for furniture retailing in our region.

INTERVIEWER: They were bean counters?

CASTRO: Great on the spreadsheets. They came to me and they said, "Okay. We have two ways we can do this purchase. We can buy you out of everything, real estate, inventory, brand, debt, everything. You'll get a nice chunk of change, or you can keep your real estate. We won't pay you very much money and we want 15 years of ‘sweet’ leases with kick-out clauses; however, you can't have a kick-out clause, only we can."

I have four children and I'm thinking, "You know what? I'll take no cash and keep the real estate. I'm going to sweat it out for 15 years if need be." My father had the vision to buy this real estate. He had a saying I never forgot, “If you take good care of your real estate, one day your real estate will take good care of you.”

That was the best business decision I ever made. I'm really not him. He was uncanny in business. My strength was marketing and advertising, but that's only part of business. You really need some type of bean counter. You need somebody that really can call the shots. Dad had some good executives and they stayed on with me. It was the right decision. Short term, holding the real estate was a little rough but it was definitely worth it!

In 1995, my daughter Terri Keogh, who was young and barely out of law school, left the Brooklyn DA’s office and came in to run the real estate. (In 1994, I ran for the United States Senate against Patrick Moynihan, and took 42% of the vote.)

We have some wonderful properties, but our crown jewel is The Castro Building in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, on West 23rd street between 5th and 6th Avenues. Then there is Florida: Boca Raton, Ft. Lauderdale, Hollywood, Ocala.

In Ft. Lauderdale, my father bought a fabulous property and brought in a wonderful architect. He actually built a boat inside the showroom. The building is now looked at as art deco and is part of the local Broward County historical scene.

Dad loved the idea of placing his space-saving furniture in yachts. It was heavy furniture that didn't roll around, and saving space on boats is essential. People to this day refer to the Ft. Lauderdale location as the “Castro showroom with the boat inside.” Ft. Lauderdale’s boating community was, and still is, huge. Once again, my father was a marketer.

Most of the real estate my father purchased both for manufacturing and retail is still in the family. It will be my children's decision as to what to do with it.

Bernard Castro, in addition to being a marketing genius, a furniture designer, an innovator in various categories, created the industry we now call the motion furniture industry, with the exception he did not invent the recliner.

Fast forward to now when we still offer customers, on-line only, the Castro Convertible Ottoman, an incredible product.

I worked for New York Governor George Pataki, who I adore and who is brilliant, for 12 years in his cabinet as Commissioner of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.  I loved my time in public service. I was really taking care of everybody's real estate. That's what it was. I was back in real estate for the people of the great state of New York. After that I said, "I think I have energy for one more career. I really have always wanted to write a book but I'm not ready for that.

I just kept reflecting on how everybody just wants me to be “the little girl on TV.” The power of that original TV ad featuring a little girl…that's all Baby Boomers from the Northeast really care about. I said to my children (I have four), "You know what? I'm not fighting it anymore. Let's relaunch the brand." We bought back the intellectual property and relaunched the brand with the Castro Convertible Ottoman. I said, "I'm going to relaunch with a product I can ship UPS. It's a no-brainer. It's a Castro Convertible ottoman with a slipcover. It's not upholstery. It’s not big, it’s comfortable, and every home or apartment has room for one…actually everybody needs one.”

I went to Leggett & Platt. Randy Ford flew to New York and looked at an original Castro Convertible Ottoman and we started a partnership that is still going strong. Leggett makes the product to our specs and we sell it. Perfect.

What's interesting about the Castro Ottoman is that it’s a non-event as a purchase. You don't have to remove a piece of furniture from your room. The Ottoman is more like an accessory.

INTERVIEWER: Right. What would your father have thought about Asia, or what did he think?

CASTRO: He wouldn't have gone. He would've probably sent his executives.

He would've loved the internet. That he would've loved. You know why?

INTERVIEWER: No.

CASTRO: Number one, if you're ad isn't working today you can change it almost instantly with minimal expense.

INTERVIEWER: That's true. "Minimal" is the key word.

CASTRO: There's no rent to pay.

INTERVIEWER: Right. And it's vast.

CASTRO: There are no utilities. We now run the company, a much smaller company, with a small staff. And customers love the fact that if they’re not comfortable ordering online, they can speak to a real person and place their order over the phone. I actually enjoy interacting with customers online. It keeps me in touch. My father was always very hands on. I think that is part of any retail success story.

My father was an amazing guy.

We lost my brother, Bernard Castro Jr. when he was 26. My dad was kind of religious before then, but after that…   One of his best friends, even though they didn't hang out daily, was Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the author of ...

INTERVIEWER: “The Power of Positive Living.”

CASTRO: In fact, Dr. Peale's daughter, Liz Peale Allen, is still a dear friend now. I adore her. She runs “Guideposts.” Their headquarters is in Pawling, New York.

My dad would buy Dr. Norman Vincent Peale books by the case. He ordered so many books that the two men finally met. My father would buy Dr. Peale’s books and then give them away.  One day my dad ordered a case of books called "The Power of the Plus Factor." He's reading it and he gets to page fifty something and he says, "That's my story." Dr. Peale inserted a story of my dad when he was a young immigrant learning English at night.

There was a blizzard in New York and he was going to night school. He walked in the blizzard to school and the janitor was locking the door and said to my father, "Are you crazy? There's no school tonight. Nobody came but you."

My father, who read Horatio Alger books, was proud of the fact that he went to school that night. It was inspirational to him. Dr. Peale found it inspirational as well and described the incident in his book, “The Power of The Plus Factor.”

Once my dad found out he was in the book, the cases started arriving. After my dad passed away, I donated a lot of Dr. Peale’s books back to “Guideposts,” but not the “The Power of the Plus Factor.” Those are special.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of personality did he have in business?

CASTRO: First, my father always considered his customer in every decision he made, in every product he designed, his pricing, etc. It seems like a cliché, but he lived it: “If it's good for the customer, it'll be good for us.”

INTERVIEWER: How did he know his customers?

CASTRO: I just think because he worked the floor. He started as a retail salesman, and as the designer, and as the upholsterer.

INTERVIEWER: As the upholsterer.

CASTRO: In the very early pre-Castro Convertibles days, Dad would go to homes with books of fabrics. He really got to know women shoppers and he told me a story once, which is classic. He said, "You know, I didn't have all my fabrics in stock but I'd look at the color of their eyes" and say, "Your blue eyes; I want to show you a fabric that I think would go beautifully with your eyes."

INTERVIEWER: Sweet talker.

CASTRO: I know. Exactly! So, my mother was waiting in the car, the gorgeous wife, and he was charming, all dressed up. A total gentleman. But it was that European charm, I guess, with his slight Italian accent. He closed the sale and usually he did it with a stock fabric (laughs).

INTERVIEWER: That's so …

CASTRO:Yes, it's classic but he …

INTERVIEWER: Who wouldn't go for that?

CASTRO: He trained his salespeople, he wanted them to always “break (open) the bed.” If you did not open the convertible sofa for every single customer, you really had to answer for that. He even hired a professional shopping service.

If a salesman opened the bed, they got a $50 check in the mail. If they didn't open the bed, they got a letter. And if it happened two or three times, things started happening, and they usually weren’t good.

As far as how he treated his vendors, my father had a very strong sense of business ethics which I have passed on to my children. He never cheated either his customers or his vendors. However, he would fight when he was right.

Somebody knocked off the Castro Ottoman and started selling it to Macy's. He sued them, he sued Macy's, and he won. He had an issue with a few franchise dealers, and he won. He always said, “If you're right, you fight.”

But he treated all people with respect, and I mean all people. I mean people that delivered packages to our home and the reason is, he spent time as one of those people, installing draperies, delivering furniture.

In the very early days, in fact, Dad and his men would deliver furniture. Dad would divide up the cash in the back of the truck and that is how he paid his men.

He told us the story of when, on Christmas Eve, he was putting up draperies for a family who wanted them done by Christmas Eve. He said, “I was there Christmas Eve until midnight and they never even offered me a cup of coffee.” He said, "I'll never do that." If my dad was cooking and you delivered an appliance, he would say, if you smelled the food, "Did you eat?"

INTERVIEWER: He's a guy …

CASTRO: Yes, but it was also the fact that he knows what it's like to be on the other side. My father's employees really liked him. Not to say he was easy. If you ever lied to him, if you ever cheated or lied or stole - and he had a couple of people who did that - you were gone. You were gone so fast. We used to have this saying, "You're either with us three months or 30 years."

INTERVIEWER: You can become family here.

CASTRO: He trusted you but the minute you violated that trust you were done.

INTERVIEWER: Did he have any favorite suppliers or anything like that?

CASTRO: Schumacher and Scalamandre Fabrics. You must remember he was into classic interior design.

INTERVIEWER: We were talking about how he interacted with the industry.

CASTRO: Exactly. He taught that to me, to respect everyone and I taught that to my children. Every person deserves the same respect and the same etiquette and the same politeness and the “pleases” and the “thank yous.” All of that.

In addition to the internet, my dad would have loved HSN and QVC.

I can hear him now, "So you're telling me that they're going to give you a 15-minute commercial for our product, then they're going to buy the furniture from us?"

INTERVIEWER: You get all this exposure.

CASTRO: Yes, so he would have loved that.

INTERVIEWER: Have you done any of those?

CASTRO: I was on air live for the launch of our product on HSN. But HSN is based out of Clearwater. We trained a woman at the network, and she's great.

As for lessons learned from my father, there are a few quotes I repeat to my children. For example, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Another favorite of his that we heard over and over: “Live right, work hard, and leave the rest to The Man upstairs." He said, "If you work hard but you don't live right, that's a problem. But if you live right but don't work hard, that's another problem. You’ve got to do both."

I would think my father would say to his fellow industry leaders, “Embrace change,” which he always did, “and don't be afraid to invest in advertising.”

When we were advertisers in the old days, you had print, you had certain TV channels and you had certain radio stations. When all-talk/news radio first launched, nobody believed in them but my father did. “You give us 20 minutes, and we'll give you the world.” My father bought in immediately. He didn’t sit back and wait for the crowd. He was always out there and very interested in new things.

INTERVIEWER: He was an old-school man but still facing forward all the time.

CASTRO: That's what was so interesting. Always.

INTERVIEWER: The status of the company now is you are only doing the ottoman?

CASTRO: We are.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, but you're going…

CASTRO: Two sizes and we are going to be expanding the product line.

INTERVIEWER: Besides coming over here at an early age, your father started the business right at the beginning of The Depression.

CASTRO: When he advertised for his first secretary he told me the line of women went around the block. My mother was actually Bernard Castro’s first employee. But she didn't get paid very much (smile).

INTERVIEWER: I was going to ask about her.

CASTRO: She waited tables, gave Dad her tips and then she finally came in. She stuffed cushions and answered the phones. When the business took off, Mom stayed home with her two children and became enormously involved in good charitable work.

As far as how I can explain why my father chose a particular political candidate to support, or whether my father was a Democrat or Republican, I explain it the way I watch football. I kind of want to know the back story of the quarterback. Who do I want to win this thing? Let me see what these guys are like off the field. So, my dad loved the back story and if he felt they were decent people, he went with them. Of course, policy mattered, but he was most interested in the quality of the candidate.

My dad was generous and wrote the checks to the charities my mother started or supported. She started all kinds of organizations: The Royal Dames of Cancer Research in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, then a second chapter in Ocala. She was on the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind Board for years in St. Augustine, Florida and helped launch their foundation with graduate Ray Charles attending their very first fundraiser. Mom was determined that the school should have a nonsectarian chapel and the only way to build one on campus without losing state funding was to create a 501(c)3. So that’s exactly what Theresa Castro did. No challenge, when it came to something she was passionate about, was too big for her.

George Steinbrenner was a good friend of my parents. George Steinbrenner was really a wonderful man. Underneath all of his toughness with the Yankees - and I'm sure he was tough in his other businesses, too, he was a great man. When my brother was killed, he came and sat with my parents ... My brother's wake was at our home in Ocala.  Another year Mr. Steinbrenner organized a big dinner in Ocala in my mother's honor - Theresa Castro Night of Appreciation in Ocala. He organized the entire program complete with an orchestra and an original song written and presented that night called “Theresa.” George Steinbrenner was a generous man. I’m sorry more is not written about that side of this unique man.

INTERVIEWER: Your father knew so many…

CASTRO: Interesting people.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. Another thing that seems to be a thread in the interviews I've done for the HOF is that people haven't come into this industry rich.  They've come into the industry just like your father, with practically nothing but determination and grit. I think it's really been amazing.

CASTRO: I think the industry is such a wholesome industry. If you think about other industries, there are a lot of wholesome industries. But I'm thinking of segments of the music industry, for example. When I listen to pop lyrics that are far from family-oriented.... It's worrisome to me as a grandmother.

INTERVIEWER: You're not crazy about Kim Kardashian?

CASTRO: This whole reality television industry sends confusing, mixed signals to young people. If you think about the furniture industry, however, it's about home and family. It's a happy industry.

INTERVIEWER: It is.

CASTRO: It brings families together, whether it's decision-making or in our position, in our convertible furniture, it's usually family coming to spend the night, it's a happy occasion. My dad also knew early on that the parents were sleeping in the living room on the Castro because they had turned over the bedroom to the child.

Those were the people that he was always thinking about.

My daughter Terri Austin Keogh, although an attorney by education, is the CEO of Castro Properties. Sons Jonathan and Bernard Austin are also involved in our real estate business. My eldest son David practices law in Jupiter, Florida, but is a partner with his 3 siblings in the real estate holdings. The children get along and respect one another. That’s important to me. Terri is an amazing negotiator, and like her grandfather loves spreadsheets. Her brother Jonathan is her logistics wing man as they embark upon new projects. Amazingly as a hobby Jon loves to design handcrafted industrial furniture. Her youngest brother Bernard, named for his grandfather, is a design architect.

INTERVIEWER: That's a nice thing.

CASTRO: Yes, that's really all that matters. As a parent, that's really all you want. It's not a matter of what a child’s net income is, it's just a matter of, are they good people? Are they good husbands and wives? Are they good fathers and mothers? That's really what it's about.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

CASTRO: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: If you can do that ... I’d like to thank you for your time and for the graciousness you’ve shown me in your home.