Israel Epstein, a well-established grain merchant from Bialystok, fled from Poland with his family and moved to Israel (then, under British mandate) to avoid persecution, with nothing but a silver spoon engraved with the family's initials, the only family heirloom to survive robberies and lootings by the Poles.
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In 1921, he and his son Meir went to a local bank to open an account, where the clerk, after making sure that Epstein was indeed the grain merchant from Bialystok, informed him that he was sought after throughout the entire British Empire to be given back the money he had previously paid for merchandise that never arrived.
That sum allowed Epstein to go to Egypt and purchase barrels to start a business. What started out as a small family business that sold beer to British soldiers became Hacarem Spirits, Israel's leading importer of wine and spirits, with multiple warehouses, filled top to bottom with the most diverse collection of alcoholic beverages the company imports.
Israel Hayom met with Epstein's descendants to celebrate its 100th anniversary and numerous achievements.
The business was later taken over by Epstein's grandson, Amiel. He became one of the most influential people in the country's alcohol industry.
Amiel was a marketing genius. In a world where importers were trying to get movie stars to market their products, he did not wait around for James Bond. He created PR events before they were even called that.
When he took over the Swedish Absolut vodka company, he discovered that no one wanted to buy it, because the bottle reminded clients of medical infusion bottles. Amiel then had the idea of inviting them to a fancy clubhouse in Tel Aviv, with waitresses dressed as nurses who poured vodka through pipes that were dangling from inverted bottles.
Overnight, the vodka that was previously rejected by society became everyone's favorite.
In the years where the premise was that the road to a man's pocket lies through his wife, he handed out pearl necklaces, watches and Persian rugs to esteemed customers, and invited his clients to gala dinners together with their spouses. Whichever client placed the largest order at the event won a luxury coat modeled by Amiel's wife, Hannah.
Both Amiel and Hannah were born in Tel Aviv. The two married in their early 20s. Shortly after the birth of their son, Amiel's father, Meir, passed away.
"His passing was a severe blow for us. Amiel was 25 at the time, and there were a lot of debts," Hannah said and recalled how they were forced to sell their house and lay off their workers. The two worked frantically to keep the business afloat, praying to God for success.
Then came the 1967 Six-Day War, which was followed by post-war prosperity.
"Since then, our business has only flourished," Hanna said, with her daughters quickly knocking on wood.
Amiel and Hannah had three children. Ariel, the eldest, served as the company's CEO for 30 years, until a year ago, his younger sister, Nurit, a lawyer and an accountant, took over. The middle daughter, Ronit, has been the company's vice president of marketing for 25 years. Ariel became the chairman of the board.
The three siblings learned the complexities of running a family business, how to create and respect hierarchy and be open to each other's ideas.
They shared stories about Amiel, who passed away in 2016 – how he used to take them in his truck to Jaffa - and the stories he told them – about the Absolut vodka bottle and the grand piano in the family's living room that no one actually played.
All three have a truck driving license because "Dad insisted," in order to be ready for any situation, be it a refusal to accept a product or a drivers' riot.
Ariel went to London a year after his army service to improve his English. That is when he received a phone call from his father that he must return, for his parents were going to Japan for a month.
"Father [Amiel] said that I should arrive two days before they left, to have time to prepare," he said. "There were only two employees in the business at the time. They thought that was a good time to ask for a raise. Instead, my father fired them to make an example of it. Although, there was no one else that could learn from this example."
That is how Ariel came to be in charge.
Like any other company, HaCarem owes its success to hard work as well as occasional luck, especially because it imported whiskey and cognac to a country that mostly preferred vodka.
One such lucky success happened with the sparkling Bosca wine. In 1980, Chana was on the phone with several wine manufacturers in Italy, looking to buy Vermouth. One of them suggested the company also try a sweet sparkling wine made from muscat grapes. When the samples arrived, the Epsteins took several bottles to a party they were invited to, as an experiment.
Bosca was a hit, with customers showing up at the company's door the next day, asking to purchase more. Israel fell in love with the sparkling wine, and the company ordered such large quantities of the product, the manufacturer even traveled to Israel.
Unfortunately, the success was short-lived, for a law was approved banning free wine import that raised taxes from 20% to 200%, said Ariel without any hints of anger, not even when he said the law was promoted by a rival winery that ended up releasing a sparkling wine of its own at the time.
Nevertheless, HaCarem walked away from the experience having learned a valuable lesson - not to be afraid of experimenting and learning to let go of popular products, especially since with time manufacturers abroad became large corporations, binding all importers into one company, raising risks, sabotaging flexibility, and in some cases, even destroying established importers.
The Epsteins know that a company that wishes to remain successful, must avoid such scenarios, which is why it parted with Absolut and began to import Stolichnya, a Polish vodka no one knew at the time, which became popular, because it was affordable.
Since then, the company has also begun importing coffee. It currently employs 180 employees with an annual sales turnover of about 300 million shekels ($92 million).
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