What does it take to reinvigorate an existing brand? In this series, we’re going to look at the inside story of how that gets done.
In our first season of this series, which will be released weekly, we’re going to be following Hersh Traube, owner of 1-800 Eichlers, as he works with me, Zacharia Waxler, CPA, and the rest of the Roth&Co advisory team to delve into how a legacy retail business operates, how to deal with problems a new owner has inherited from previous management, and what it takes to prepare a business for its next phase of growth.

A Neighborhood Icon
The 1-800 Eichlers—formerly The New Eichler’s—has been part of Boro Park for nearly four decades. It’s the kind of store people enter with a short list and leave with something they didn’t realize they needed. Judaica, sefarim, Yom Tov items, gifts, Jewish art—everything is there, arranged with an instinctive understanding of the community it serves.
Even now, in an age of same-day shipping and endless online choice, the store retains the feel of a neighborhood anchor. Customers linger, staff members recognize faces, and the aisles quietly change with the Jewish calendar, reflecting the rhythm of the year rather than a marketing plan. That familiarity gives the impression of stability. However, that masks a more complex history.
Founded in the 1980s, the original Eichler’s grew beyond Boro Park, expanding into multiple locations across New York and beyond. Demand for Judaica and religious books was strong, and the business rode that wave. Over time, though, the pressures that challenge many family-rooted retail operations began to surface. Ownership changed hands, economic conditions shifted and shopping habits evolved. One by one, all the locations closed.
What remained were the Flatbush and Boro Park locations. It became less a retail outlet than a point of reference. People didn’t just shop there; they relied on it.

Hersh Enters the Business
In 2024, Hersh Traube acquired full ownership of the Boro Park location, which had been operating under the name The New Eichler’s, and renamed it 1-800 Eichler’s. The Flatbush Eichler’s, still owned by the Eichler family, continues to operate separately. Customers occasionally confuse the two. The reason for the odd situation comes from a different era.
Before websites and search engines, a toll-free number was branding. A memorable 1-800 number conveyed reach, permanence and credibility. It suggested that a business was larger than its storefront. Customers remembered the number long after they forgot where they had seen the advertisement. For Jewish households across the country, 1-800-Eichler’s became shorthand for access to books and items that were not always easy to find locally.
That recognizable “domain,” along with the Boro Park store, is what Traube ultimately purchased and rebranded.
Traube did not come to the business as an outsider. He began his career managing shipping and distribution for Targum Press, an early pioneer in Jewish publishing. When Targum folded in 2011, he acquired its titles and rebuilt the operation as Menucha Publishers. Under his leadership, Menucha expanded into children’s books, educational materials and textbooks that met both private-school and government standards—an unusual crossover in the frum publishing world.
Today, Traube oversees Menucha Publishers, Targum Press Israel and 1-800-Eichler’s. Of the three, the store is his most personal endeavor. It’s also the most visible. Under his ownership, sales have grown and the business has flourished. From the outside, there was little reason to suspect concern.
Yet Traube sensed something problematic underneath the surface.
“Eichler’s is coasting on its legacy,” he tells me during an early conversation. “When you walk in, everything feels right—friendly staff, full shelves, an upbeat seasonal vibe. But behind the scenes, like in many growing businesses, there are operational challenges.”
That realization is what brings him to me. I’m a managing partner of Roth&Co, a Top 150 accounting and advisory firm known for helping businesses bring structure to their growth—growth that has outpaced their old systems.

Understanding the Situation
Our initial meeting is not framed as a rescue. Financially, the business is profitable. Customers are coming through the doors and inventory is moving. I’m not there to assess whether the store is surviving. I’m there to help Traube understand whether it is built to last.
As the conversation unfolds, it moves the way these meetings often do—one topic opening into another, observations stacking before conclusions are drawn.
Staffing comes up early. There is no formal HR department at 1-800-Eichler’s. Hiring, training and retention happens informally, often handled by the floor manager. Employees are loyal and experienced, but responsibilities overlap, roles blur, and work sometimes duplicates itself or quietly falls through the cracks.
For a business built on personal service, that ambiguity matters.
Purchasing follows. There is no single person overseeing vendor relationships or tracking inventory holistically. Purchase orders are handled differently across departments. Delays in ordering slows merchandise receipts. Missed deliveries mean missed sales. The system works, but that’s largely because people compensate for it.
Online operations are growing, but they aren’t fully integrated. Web orders arrive daily, yet systems do not speak cleanly to in-store purchasing, fulfillment or inventory tracking. Add to that the confusion created by the Flatbush store’s separate online presence, and the digital picture is understandably murky.
Despite all of this, Traube remains optimistic.
“My vision goes beyond business success,” he tells me. “I want every person who walks through our doors to leave happy, with their needs fully met.”
I hear something else beneath the optimism: opportunity.
I mention to the team after the meeting that I admire Hersh’s passion. “The challenges we’re talking about are typical for growing businesses and are fixable. What’s missing is a strategic plan, and the discipline to execute it.”
The initial meeting ends without a checklist or a verdict. But we have momentum and free rein to examine a familiar business more closely than ever before.
My next questions would get sharper. There is a simple rule that has served me well in the past: Once a business is described out loud, you begin to hear where it strains.

Peeling Back the Layers
By the second conversation, the tone has shifted. The question is no longer why Hersh Traube sought an outside perspective but exactly what aspects of the company my team and I need to examine.
I start simply. I ask Traube to describe how the business runs—not how it should run, not how it looks from the outside, but how it works on an ordinary day when nothing is “wrong,” and also on a day when everything is happening at once.
Traube begins by describing people. 1-800-Eichler’s employs roughly 20 staff members, with additional help brought in during peak seasons. Hiring decisions prioritize personality, work ethic and flexibility. In a store that depends on customer interaction and quick judgment, those traits matter more than a polished resume.
From there, the explanation expands.
There is a floor staff, overseen by a floor manager. A bookkeeper handles the financial records. A website manager oversees online operations. A customer service representative manages custom orders and problem resolution. Shipping and receiving function as their own teams. IT is outsourced. Some administrative support is outsourced as well.
As Traube talks, the structure begins to take shape, not as an organizational chart but as a collection of overlapping responsibilities that people carry because the store needs them carried.
The store is divided into departments: gifts, sefarim, Judaica (English books), garments and children’s items. Each department is staffed by floor personnel who both assist customers and manage inventory. In theory, the floor manager acts as conductor, coordinating ordering, displays and daily problem solving.
“How much of that works depends on the people,” Traube explains. Some employees take full ownership of their departments. Others focus on keeping things moving and customers satisfied.
One department stands out immediately. The sefarim section is largely run by a single driven employee who manages sales, purchasing, stocking and even corporate accounts. He has built a network of institutional customers and handles it with minimal oversight.
Other areas rely more heavily on continuity. One floor person in the English Books section works long, steady shifts, offering consistency and familiarity customers have come to expect. Customer service is handled by an employee who manages embroidery, stamping and special orders, stepping in whenever issues arise.
Calls are routed through a secretary. Product listings are handled under the website manager’s supervision. Cashiers rotate through long retail days. Behind the scenes, a back-room crew unpacks boxes, cleans and restocks shelves. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s the work that keeps the store looking like the store customers expect to see.

As the picture fills in, I keep asking the questions that force a system to show itself. Who places orders? Who follows up with vendors? Who is responsible when something runs low? Who notices first, and who does something about it?
Then we review shipping and receiving, and my understanding of the shape of the business changes again.
Online orders fall under the website manager’s authority. In-store customers who request shipping are often handled independently by floor staff. Receiving has its own manager and team, functioning largely apart from the rest of the operation. The separation wasn’t designed that way; it evolved. But once it exists, it creates parallel workflows that never fully meet.

Sharper Questions
We continue with coffee and a small box of pastries. The conversation pauses, not because the topic is heavy but because the day is long and people are human. When the meeting resumes, the pace is slightly slower and the questions sharpen.
We speak about online operations. 1-800-Eichler’s ships all orders within 24 hours. That speed has earned strong customer loyalty. But the systems supporting it are not fully integrated with in-store purchasing, fulfillment or inventory tracking. The store’s responsiveness is strong, but so is the friction behind it.
Bookkeeping was once outsourced but has now been brought in-house. The records are accurate and bills are paid on time. An additional employee was hired to clean up invoice coding. IT remains outsourced to a specialist who keeps systems running.
Seasonality dominates the rhythm of the business. Summers are quiet. Back-to-school brings momentum. Yomim Tovim transform the store entirely. On peak days, thousands of customers pass through—far more than on an average weekday.
Financially, the business is stable. Annual revenue falls between ten and 12 million dollars. Reports are reviewed monthly. The store is profitable.
Then I ask a question that lands differently.

“What’s your break-even point?”
Traube pauses. Not because the number is secret but because it hasn’t been needed. The store has been run on experience, intuition and responsiveness rather than explicit financial thresholds.
The moment hangs in the room, not as an indictment but as information for me to process.
I don’t offer conclusions yet. I don’t need to. Instead, I close our meeting with something simple. “Next time,” I say, “I’ll tell you what I’m hearing.”
That conversation will be different from what we’ve had until this point.

Where the System Strains
By the third meeting, the posture in the room has changed. I’m no longer gathering information; I’m responding to it.
I begin with purchasing because that’s a priority. Purchasing, I explain, is not just a function, it’s a lever. And at 1-800-Eichler’s, that lever is being pulled in too many directions at once.
Orders are placed by different departments, in different ways, often without visibility into one another. Vendors interact with multiple people inside the business. Volume exists, but it’s fragmented. Leverage is lost not because the store lacks scale but because that scale is never consolidated into a single negotiating posture.
I offer an example that is almost mundane, which is why it lands. If the gift department and the toy department both use the same vendor—and it is entirely possible they do—two separate orders may be placed at two separate times, at two separate price points, without anyone realizing that the combined volume could have earned better terms.
No one is doing something “wrong.” The system simply never evolved.
“Without a centralized purchasing process,” I say, “you miss opportunities to cut cost and improve margin. And in retail, margin is oxygen.”
Traube listens the way an owner listens when he recognizes a truth that has been sitting in front of him for a while. He is not defensive; he is attentive.

From purchasing, the conversation moves to people management.
There is no single owner of HR. Department heads handle issues as they arise. Traube remains intentionally hands-off, trusting his managers to manage. That trust has preserved culture and loyalty, but it has also produced inconsistency. Expectations differ by department. Policies are informal, and decisions are made case by case.
I’m careful. I don’t criticize the approach; I just name its limits.
“It works when everyone is in the building and everyone knows everyone,” I say. “As you grow, you need clarity; otherwise, you’ll feel it in hiring, retention and accountability.”
The conversation digs further into the problem of overlap. Roles blur because people are capable and because the store has learned to solve problems by throwing good people at them. But overlap is expensive. It hides bottlenecks and makes it difficult to recruit when you can’t describe a job cleanly.

On the financial side, the tone shifts again.
“The books are clean,” I note. “That’s a good foundation.” Reporting is timely. But bookkeeping is backward-looking by design. It tells you what happened, but it doesn’t tell you what will happen.
Budgeting, forecasting and analysis would change how decisions are made. They would allow the business to see around corners instead of reacting after the fact.

Digging in on the Duplication
Shipping and receiving return to the table. Now the earlier descriptions feel less neutral and more like something to reexamine.
Online orders fall under the website manager. In-store shipping requests sometimes live elsewhere. Receiving operates in its own lane. The result is duplication: two workflows doing similar work without a single standard that governs both.
I suggest consolidation. One system, one owner, and one version of the truth.

I ask a question to reframe the discussion. “What do you think is the biggest challenge here?”
Traube answers immediately. “Staffing.”
I nod and then reframe it gently. Staffing, I say, is rarely just about people. It’s about clarity in regard to the business as a whole.
Ideas begin to surface. Not solutions yet, but directions. Certain functions could be consolidated. Responsibilities could be elevated. An operations role could provide connective tissue.
Before the meeting ends, I asks Traube to identify five or six employees he sees as potential leaders. Traube takes a moment and then names them.
“What happens next?” Traube asks.
“Now I talk to them,” I say. “We’ll hear directly from these employees—what they see, what they struggle with, and how they envision a stronger future for the business.”

Will they agree with our assessments?

The Team Speaks
I start privately, one employee at a time. No group dynamics. Just a room, a chair, and the practical question that matters most in a growing business:
Where does the work get stuck?
I begin with Faigy C., whose responsibilities sit at the quiet center of the operation. Payroll coordination, account reconciliation, payments, deposits, weekly and monthly reporting—work that rarely earns attention until it’s late. Once Receiving confirms merchandise, she manages the bill-approval process and keeps communication moving between vendors, customers and internal departments.

What makes her role especially revealing is that she sees the business through documents: purchase orders, invoices, approvals, mismatched entries, and the lag between what was ordered and what was actually received. She describes how purchasing touches multiple hands before anything reaches her desk. An order may start with the secretary, move through the sales floor and eventually reach Receiving for confirmation in the POS. Only then does it reach her for review and approval.

“It works,” she says, but then she qualifies that: “But not always as smoothly as it should.”
I don’t ask for a redesign; I ask for the pain point.
Faigy doesn’t hesitate: cash flow.

Cash flow affects everything—relationships with vendors, supply flow and the store’s ability to negotiate. When payments slow, vendors stretch less. When vendors stretch less, deliveries arrive later or in smaller quantities. When deliveries arrive late, the sales floor feels it first, long before finance feels it on paper.
Faigie also describes the grind of data discrepancies—barcode updates, new items entered differently by different departments, mismatches between website information and what shows up in the purchase-order system. Over the summer, she worked through it vendor by vendor and uncovered major inconsistencies. She adds, as a footnote, that these are common issues across the industry.

On the Floor
The next interview is with Mordy L., the floor manager, and it shifts the lens from paper to people.
Mordy’s day begins early: making sure staff arrive on time—calling, tracking down, nudging and arranging. Once the store opens, he organizes the front so presentation, layout and flow are ready for customers. His work changes with the season. In busy periods, he spends most of his time on the floor, supporting customers and staff. In the off-season, he shifts toward back-office tasks: collaborating with salespeople to place orders, managing layouts, merchandising, setting up displays and clearing out old stock.
If Faigy’s view is the system as a sequence of approvals, Mordy’s view is the system as a stream of interruptions.
He describes himself as the people-mover by default. He fields pricing questions, deals with supply shortages, and schedules employees’ requests for vacation time and pay raises. There’s always a bit of drama in moving the pieces around. Employees turn to him because he’s present and because the floor needs a pressure valve. But resolving most of these issues is beyond his formal role. He doesn’t have clear authority over staffing or salary adjustments.
“I can’t always provide the answers they need,” he says.
Mordy also returns to the theme Faigy raised—cash flow—but from the floor. Timing and coordination glitches in ordering and payment push orders late into the season, which damages vendor relationships. Suppliers stretch for customers they trust. Trust often looks like timely payment. When the store sells out of popular items and remains out of stock, customers don’t blame the payment process. They just see an empty spot where the item should be.

The Problems of Structure
I shift to Receiving, and Mordy’s earlier comments gain another layer of context.
Shloimie G. works in Receiving and lives on the back-end of the promise the floor makes to customers. He focuses on getting invoices entered into the system so orders can be unpacked correctly, and he matches each invoice to its corresponding purchase order. His work depends on accurate information from other departments. When that information is inconsistent, he becomes a translator between what was intended and what arrived.
The store uses a computerized system, but not everyone uses it consistently. Some orders are placed by phone, some are entered manually and some are created retroactively. Duplicate or outdated POs pile up. A mixed English/Yiddish system slows things down in subtle ways. In busy seasons, Shloimie sometimes enters invoices himself just to stay ahead.
His complaint is not about effort, it’s about structure.
“I’m fully onboard with improving the system,” he says. “I’d like to see it streamlined, with a tighter structure in my department.”
I don’t summarize their points out loud. The pattern is already forming: good people compensating for unclear systems, each in a different corner of the business.
I need to hear more voices. The question is not whether the stories will match, the question is what happens when they don’t.

Money and Managing
In the first set of interviews, the store’s pressure points showed up in predictable places—cash flow, ordering and who has the authority to resolve the problems that inevitably land on the floor.
The next conversations go somewhere slightly different: into the roles that sit closest to revenue itself.
I start with Shulem S., who oversees the sefarim department—one of the largest categories in the store’s inventory and, in many ways, one of its identity anchors. Shulem is not simply a buyer or a salesperson. He is the buyer, manager and floor salesman all at once.
He describes his day the way someone describes a job that has grown around them. He starts with reviewing emails, then following up with customers and vendors, and then making sure shelves are in order. Demand doesn’t arrive in a straight line. Yomim Tovim shift what customers want. Daf Yomi cycles create their own rhythms. Schools and organizations place bulk orders on schedules that don’t always align with retail seasons.
Then he steps onto the floor, where the work becomes immediate. Questions, guidance and specific requests that require both familiarity and judgment. “Do you have this edition?” “Is there something comparable?” “What would you recommend?”
Beyond the floor is the work that doesn’t look like retail at all: commercial accounts. Shulem develops and manages relationships with schools, organizations and institutional clients. He doesn’t just sell sefarim. He goes the extra mile, sourcing items for them beyond sefarim—netillas yadayim cups, gifts, specialized items—because that’s what keeps the account intact.
What he wants is not fewer responsibilities but a cleaner division of them.
Balancing time between high-value accounts and floor sales is a constant tension. Smaller customers need attention, and that attention pulls him away from larger opportunities. He would like more focused time for purchasing, vendor relationships and commercial accounts. He also notes that the store would benefit from more teamwork and cooperation across departments to help maintain floor coverage so high-value responsibilities aren’t constantly interrupted by staffing gaps.
His vendor relationships are strong and help keep his department running smoothly. But even he feels the back-end strain. More timely coordination in bill paying and order processing would make things smoother.
“With a little more delegation and a few adjustments to how tasks are divided,” he says, “I could really focus on purchasing and keeping our key accounts happy.”

Sending It Out There
The next interview is with Chanoch R., who oversees online sales and shipping. His world is measured by cutoff times and customer expectation.
He handles incoming online orders through ShipStation. He coordinates with a team member who pulls merchandise from the store floor and back rooms. He addresses customer concerns. When floor stock is unavailable, he places orders with vendors. The operation processes an average of 40 to 50 orders daily, with capacity to scale up to 100 during peak seasons.
Chanoch’s primary objective is simple on paper: any order placed before the 2:00 PM cutoff should be prepared for same-day shipment.
In practice, that objective is a daily negotiation between systems that aren’t always aligned.
Inventory inaccuracies in certain departments slow fulfillment. Shared responsibilities can mean orders are overlooked. Vendor delays, especially from smaller suppliers, or outstanding balances can mean canceled orders or extended wait times. He also points to a practical limitation: the store’s customized website relies on vendor-provided images. When an image is not supplied, an item is listed without one. Another limitation is strategic: the business does not sell through third-party marketplaces such as Amazon.
Chanoch isn’t simply maintaining the online operation. He’s trying to improve it by attracting more visitors, driving sales and exploring targeted marketing initiatives. He suggests the store would benefit from a dedicated marketing team. He has also been working to streamline the purchase-order system and improve consistency.

And there is an ongoing customer-facing confusion: two “Eichler’s” websites. One is operated by the Flatbush location, and one by 1-800-Eichler’s. Customers mix them up, so questions and complaints land in the wrong place, and explanations consume time.

The one-on-one interviews are now complete. But I know that the real test isn’t what people say privately. It’s what happens when perspectives collide in the same room.
I schedule the next step. Roth&Co’s conference rooms are ready. The 1-800-Eichler’s team will close up shop for the day. Hersh Traube and the leadership team he’s identified will sit down together for a full leadership roundtable.
Up next is not another interview; it’s a conversation that isn’t one-on-one and controlled. ●

To be continued…