South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
WELCOME TO FLORIDA
Artisans who refurbish high-end handbags move to South Florida
Christopher Moore changes the color of a handbag while his father, Donald Moore, works in the background on Thursday at their shop, Artbag, in Coral Springs. The 90-year-old New York business restores high-end handbags and recently relocated to Coral Springs to take advantage of reduced costs and a better all-around business and living environment.
The New York Times headline sounded like a plaintive plea, “Who Will Repair Their Birkins Now?”
The answer: It’s still Artbag, the venerable Manhattan re-furbisher of women’s high fashion handbags since the early 1930s. But as of last week, the father-son team of Donald and Chris Moore are now plying their highly skilled trade at 927 University Drive in Coral Springs, their company’s new home.
The 90-year-old institution has become the latest of New York-area businesses to relocate to South Florida. But the business is an anomaly in the conga line of COVID-era companies that have migrated south in large numbers since 2020. Most have been financial and technology firms with a sprinkling of restaurants.
The Moores are small business owners who are lifelong craftsmen with a customer list that spans generations of well-to-do women including celebrities such
as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Diane Sawyer and Cicely Tyson.
Coral Springs has no data that reflects businesses relocating from New York to the West Broward city, said Kristi J. Bartlett, the economic development director. But she said: “It does happen quite often due to our favorable tax climate and the low cost of doing business compared to the Northeast.”
Chris Moore, who now heads the business and operates it with his wife, Estelle, started working with his father at 6 years old.
While the business is unique, the reasons for moving were not: The rent and other costs of doing business had risen to intolerable levels.
Donald Moore, now 80, said he’s happy with the move despite spending the entirety of his career in New York.
“I think it was a very good move,” he said. “No. 1, the customers know us. We do a lot of mail order. That’s a big difference. It’s not what you make. it’s what you can save. In New York you can’t save anything.”
Chris Moore said the business is saving $26,000 a month alone on rent by moving to South Florida.
Keeping a close eye on costs, he eschewed the higher rent enclaves of Worth Avenue in Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas Boulevard when scouting locations.
“If I was going to do that — it would not have been a good cost-benefit for the store and the family,” he said. “There is a certain freedom to not having to worry about paying that type of rent every first of the month.”
Moore says he settled on Coral Springs for its suburban environment and midway location between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. Moreover, the rent is much less than in the downtowns of bigger cities.
“Coral Springs, Weston, Parkland, all three of those locations, we felt the same way,” Moore said. “But Coral Springs, when we rode through, it just felt more like home than the other two.”
The move included the relocation of leather and equipment including sewing machines, a drill press, rotary tools for carving, cutting, engraving, sharpening
and cleaning, and a skiving machine which cuts or shaves the edges of strips of material.
Three veteran Artbag craftsmen chose to stay in New York and are available for projects. Smaller jobs are being handled in Coral Springs.
“When Florida customers found out we were coming down here, they were ecstatic,” Moore said.
Generations of customers
Since the early 1930s, women have entrusted Artbag’s artisans to refurbish their high end bags — many by Hermès, Chanel, Cartier and Louis Vuitton— for restoration and rehab.
The company was founded in 1932 by Hillel Tenenbaum, a former professor at The Fashion Institute of Technology, according to the company website.
Louis Rosenberg, a son-in-law and business partner, was a tinsmith “who brought his knowledge of metals and quality artistry to Artbag” and was considered the “king of quality control.”
Donald Moore was a protégé of Tenenbaum and bought the business in 1993. Originally from Elizabeth City, North Carolina, he started his career at the shop in 1959. working alongside Tenenbaum for more than 20 years learning pattern making and handbag construction.
Chris Moore began making bags at a young age, drawing on his father’s expertise. His dad persuaded him to come aboard full time after he graduated from Pace University in New York.
These days, Chris helms the business with his wife’s help while his father works on newly arrived jobs as the Coral Springs operation ramps up.
Asked if he will be working full time, Donald Moore said, “Absolutely not! I’m doing him a favor right now.”
Steady business
Over the years, the Moores have seen generations of customers — mothers, daughters and grandchildren — pass through the front door, dilapidated bags in hand.
The store’s craftsmen fix or replace shredded silk linings, re-stitch and clean leather, replace handles or start a bag anew with new skeletons and bottoms.
Repeat business is largely driven by customers who fall in love with their bags and are not inclined to trade up for new ones.
“Customers don’t swap out their bags,” Chris Moore said. “That’s how they get so worn and soiled. What happens is that bags are extremely personal and when you find something that works for you, you tend not to change or swap out.”
“If you continue to use it day in and day out for a year or two or three, eventually it’s going to break down, no matter who makes the bag,” he added.
Keen eye for knockoffs
Years of experience have resulted in another special talent: Distinguishing real bags from knockoffs.
“What we do have are customers that that come into the store with the belief and thought that something is real,” Moore said. “If I know that it’s not and they ask me, I tell them that is not a real bag.”
A case in point: A customer appeared in the Manhattan store one day seeking to have a Hermes bag repaired. Offhand, she asked Moore if it was real.
“I told her no,” Moore recalled. “She told me I didn’t know what she was talking about. But I told her, ‘Listen, I’ve been doing this for quite some time. I don’t believe it’s real but if you don’t believe me go two blocks down to Hermes and find out!”
“She snatched the bag off the counter, walked down to Hermes. Mind you, it was a very, very, very good imitation. But it wasn’t real.”
“She goes down to Hermes, she comes back a half hour later — ‘they say it’s not real,’ ” the woman conceded.
Nonetheless, she still wanted the bag repaired. And Moore obliged.
“Bags are extremely personal and when you find something that works for you, you tend not to change or swap out... Eventually it’s going to break down, no matter who makes the bag.” — Chris Moore, head of Artbag