'When people ask me what I did for a career, I say I've restored more people's soles than any other person in the history of the world,” jokes Marko Brickman, a 67-year-old newcomer to Jerusalem. At age 27, Brickman dropped out of law school and established Mark's Athletic Soles, a mail-order business out of his garage in Miami. Customers would ship him their athletic shoes and he would resole and ship them back. “I had three goals in mind: to do something good for the world, to have potentially everyone in the world as a customer, and to work for only 10 years,” he explains. He could not think of any logical reason to continue working until age 65, nearly 40 years hence. So he reasoned that if he worked twice as hard, he could cut 40 years to 20, and if he worked twice as smart, he could cut 20 years to 10. Never mind that he wasn't a trained cobbler. “I had no experience at all. I only knew that I wore out my tennis shoes quickly, and it bothered me to throw them in the garbage, so I looked into fixing them. Over time, I kept improving my technique.” The first three years were rocky because he had not only to learn a new trade, but also to persuade people to do something they'd never heard of before. “I had to educate and convince people, because there was no paradigm for resoling athletic shoes; people just bought new ones.” After three years, he was able to build a factory and start offering the service way beyond the local sporting-goods stores and tennis courts. This was, of course, way before the age of Internet. “My marketing plan was that I had a really good story to tell about recycling, sports and saving money. I called the media in three different countries every week, and many of them then wrote about my company. My only marketing expense was the phone call.” His biggest success was in Sweden, from which many people mailed him their Timberland footwear for resoling. In fact, business was so good that he could have retired after 10 years as planned, but he was having so much fun that he kept at it nearly another 10 years, until one day he suddenly felt the passion was gone. “So I sold the company and backpacked around the world five times for the next 10 years, nonstop. During this time, in August 1999, I met my precious wife, Denise, walking down the street in Tokyo.” She was teaching English there, and he was heading to the US Embassy to get additional pages added to his passport when their paths crossed. “We fell in love over the weekend and have been together 16 years.” Denise shares his travel bug. The couple lived in Hawaii for nine years before moving to Israel, but they have always spent half of every year globetrotting. Spontaneous decision Their decision to make aliya, following three trips to Israel together, came rather suddenly. “In the spring of 2014, my wife and I spent a month in Israel and then went to the Baltic countries and Scandinavia. On the way home, we flew to Los Angeles and were having lunch on a Friday afternoon. We started talking about moving to Israel, and I decided to call the Jewish Agency right away.” The aliya representative who answered the phone said there was no possibility of a pre-aliya interview in Hawaii, so Brickman asked if they could meet with her in Los Angeles that very hour. This was not the usual procedure, yet with some persuasion, she complied and the Brickmans wrapped up their pre-aliya interview just before the office closed at 3 p.m. “I make decisions pretty spontaneously,” he says. “But Denise was the moving force; she connects with Judaism more than I do and she wanted to come here more than I did. I want to make my wife happy.” In terms of his own motivations, moving to Israel had something to do with Jewish pride and a lot to do with his aversion to complacency. “We liked Hawaii, but didn't want to do the same thing over and over every day,” he says. “When we told people we were going to Israel, everyone in Hawaii said, 'Are you crazy?' And when we got to Israel and said we came from Hawaii, everyone said, 'Are you crazy?'” Common sense and gestures Brickman's first trip to Israel was in 1973 during a five-month trek that included stops in Europe and the Soviet Union. “I came to Israel on a boat from Greece – it was just me and this old Jewish guy who didn't speak English.” From Israel, he went to the Soviet Union with an international student travel association, bringing prayer books from Israel to drop off at the synagogue in Moscow. Now living in Israel since November 5, 2014, he finds himself surprised at “how important it is to the people who live here to have a country for Jews. You don't understand until you get here why people change their lives dramatically to be here.” Despite knowing very little Hebrew, Brickman makes himself understood with key words such as sliha (“excuse me”) and sheket (“quiet”), along with “common sense and gestures.” He enjoys attending lectures and shopping in the shuk. Brickman was raised in New York City and was a member of United Synagogue Youth. He proudly relates that he had three bar mitzvas. The first, in deference to his Orthodox grandfather's wishes, was held modestly in August on his actual 13th birthday on the Jewish calendar, at his parents' synagogue. The second was in his grandfather's Brooklyn synagogue in September and the third one was in October at his parents' shul with the full fanfare and party. Though Brickman has a college degree from the University of Miami, he says that he was never a good student and did not get much encouragement from the adults in his life. Nor did anybody think it was a wise idea to start Mark's Athletic Soles. However, he was so successful that after his retirement he was asked to speak at several American universities about how to succeed in a business that never existed before. “The most important factor is that I was never satisfied and never stopped improving,” he says. Brickman is eager to help anyone interested in starting a similar business in Israel. “I think it would be great. Israel has the most expensive prices for athletic shoes I've seen in the whole world. People want to save money and they would get back a pair of shoes as good or better than when they bought them. I am happy to offer information about setting up such a business if I feel the person is qualified.” He has even set up a dedicated email address for this endeavor: biz2day2010@ yahoo.com “If I can help someone, it makes me feel good about my life,” says Brickman.
