Business View Magazine | October 2019

63 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2019 J . SOLOTKEN & COMPANY , INC . brokers, mills, foundries, and refiners: segregated aluminum, segregated copper, briquetted copper, vacuum quality high-temperature alloys, copper chops, nickel, mill and ingot maker brass, aluminum ingots, segregated tool steel and carbide, segregated stainless steel, and nickel chrome alloys. J. Solotken has several key suppliers and partners they work with. Among them are their law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, and their accounting firm, Teipen, Selanders, Poynter & Ayres, P.C. Recently, Business View Magazine spoke with J. Solotken’s long-time President, Joseph Alpert, and its Vice President and Joe’s son-in-law, Brian Nachlis, to find out more about this venerable company. The following is an edited version of that conversation. BVM: Can you talk a bit about the company’s beginnings and any important milestones over its hundred year history? Alpert: “The company was formed in 1914, by my maternal grandfather, Jacob Solotken, who was a Russian immigrant who spoke very little English. He started with a horse and wagon collecting rags, paper, rubber - whatever he could obtain that he could sell. We always joked that his horse ate before the family. Metal, of course, was more expensive, and most of the time, he was not able to buy metal. “As the business grew, he would accumulate scrap in a garage and sell it once a week to have money to operate the following week. One important milestone was when he obtained his first truck, sometime in the 1920s. I was in high school when they bought the first lift-truck in 1956, for the exorbitant sum of $5,600. Another important milestone: my dad, who was my grandfather’s son-in-law, happened to be a Phi Beta Kappa law school graduate, and he practiced law for about two months, but nobody paid him. In 1936, my grandfather invited him to come to the scrap yard for a month or two until his law practice could