Abe Schofeld on The Shabbat Show

thank you so much for joining us on the show we really appreciate it thank you it's a pleasure to be here so tell us a little bit about your company and its relationship to not only football but the super bowl so i work for outer stuff my father-in-law saw werdeger who you had the pleasure of uh having had on the show sure times um so we make all the children's apparel for all the four major sporting leagues for the nfl nba nhl major league baseball we make the official license jerseys and team apparel that's sold on all the websites nfl.com.com and we make all the apparel in related to the super bowl and to the events as well wait so just slow us down a second because this is getting exciting what does that mean so if i go if you know in in the super bowl like what where where is your stuff all of the team shops and all of the stores inside the stadium as well as um the venues around the stadium so all of like all of the any place that you could buy team apparel we're there oh wow so so now that's that's phenomenal and it makes me makes me happier if i buy my kids team apparel now i know at least like you know it's staying in the family so we love it so um that means that you you've been have you been to super bowls before yeah i've been to about uh i want to say about a dozen super bowls already what what's it like in the stadium during the super bowl it's crazy it's it's it's it's really uh you know living in new york and being a giants fan the two best games i've ever been to in my life with the two super bowls where we beat tom brady patriots the patriots yeah uh but just the the the the feeling and the like you could feel in the air the tension of the game the excitement and it's just it's just an incredible event to be at from start to finish not just the game everything surrounding it the nfl does such a great job with all of the hype and all of the pre-game shows and all of the experience around the weekend of the super bowl and you've had the opportunity to see a lot of athletes and and players in your experiences can you give us you know because at the end of the day you know sports i believe is a metaphor for life right and people have achieved success in sports because they're achieving they're hitting some principles what do you find to be some of the things you learn from people that you've met that have achieved success in this area that you think is just principles for life um one thing i would say is just how people present themselves and carry themselves and um they show outwardly to everybody else and they're consistent about who they are and how they became successful one of the most important things you know especially about us being in the business and our family being in the business is we're you know us being jewish we're very proud about that and people respect that tremendously because we don't hide who we are and we don't hide our religion we're very proud of that and people from the top people in the league all respect the fact that we're jewish that we keep shabbat and that we eat kosher and i mean my father-in-law i'm sure has told you many stories about different events and things that happened at the events and at games world series super bowls where people went out of their way to make sure that we had accommodations for shabbat or to have kosher food at the games because they respect that about us it's an amazing concept you just brought up that i want i wanted i want to delve into here because i wouldn't have expected it and and the fact that you brought up is so great which is you can't really be great if you're not really being honest like if you're not you you can't be the best version of you and it's so interesting that you that that's that was the first thing that that you mentioned which is what you see in the people around you and what you are exemplifying in yourself is the idea that you have to be authentic with who you are and what you're good at and then when you when you have that confidence you can you can begin to build off that i mean being a sabbath observant jew i don't you know i don't use any of my electronic devices over shabbat and i've had people i had one time somebody asked me and they said hey you know there's a team playing tonight the world series could potentially be over tonight it was the uh was the cubs against the uh indians and there was a friday night game and somebody could have won that night it would have been over and they said you don't like sneak a peek at your phone and never look at like who won i said no you know you know i'm sabbath observant i don't look at my phone i don't watch tv i don't and they and like you know to them it's so far in but then afterwards they're like wow i wish i had the self-confidence and and the ability to be able to totally disconnect and not be able to you know to hold myself back from doing that right people really respect that they really do yeah it's an interesting concept and even when you look at the players i would i would say that the people that are who they are even in their own talents right so for sure in the area of one's spirituality and one's belief systems that that would be a hundred percent true i would go further i would like to get your opinion even even in the area of talents knowing what you can do knowing what um what you can't do and being able to be comfortable with who you are and then building off that as a pathway to to achieving greatness listen whether you're a player whether you're a manager whether you're a team owner you know or whether you're just a guy that's you know providing apparel for for the leagues at the end of the day if your message is consistent and and you outwardly show um what your religion is not just religion what a type of a human being you are yeah you know being jewish people people always ask me you know how is it to be in a sports related business yet at the same time be jewish and i try to explain to them that my religion comes first everything else comes is secondary amazing and that's how i try to present myself to everybody that i do have business dealings with everybody that i deal with and have relationships with because i tell them that my priority is my religion i live my life around my religion and everything else comes after that and i want to make sure that i present myself as a good human being as a good person and that everybody respects that about me yeah and our our family i learned that from my father-in-law he's the uh he's the prince of our family and he gets to uh the leader of our family and he leads by example so he's a great he's a great leader for us let me ask you a question that you don't have to give me an answer if you don't want to but i have to ask it okay you know you know i as a kid growing up i always was i mean obviously you know i would stay up obviously not on shabbat i would stay up until whenever it is to watch the final games especially if there was you know the yankees or the giants i would always be amazed that like you know five minutes later they got t-shirts on and i'm like wait how did that happen like how did they know like like how does it work like do you have them both and you don't get to tell us if you don't want to you can say the state secret i'll share it with you it's okay so obviously uh the way it works is they they draft up and they design uh the apparel for the winning team of all the winning teams um i could actually show you not the super bowl because that's confidential but i could show you you know the afc champions if you could see that that was cheap right but if the bills had one oh wow that's great um so it's like a template you know you got the same thing they're playing the box the bucks one had the uh packers one oh that's great so do you print these jers do you print them or you just have them ready yeah so we print a very small percentage of the t-shirts ahead of the time just the players and whatnot just so you get a little bit of players for their kids for for for like the in venue for let's say like the stadium this year is a little bit different than other years because there's really less people at the events and in the arenas but we usually do a percentage in advance that that gets sold to the stadiums and sold to the surrounding stores uh for both teams or for you know for everything and then we go ahead and we have everything staged at screen printers that's actually what my end of the business that i manage uh we have everything there the blank t-shirts the artwork the the holograms the stickers everything that needs to go and we have people just on standby as soon as the game is over you know it's done a few years back it was a few years back i think it was the uh broncos panthers and they were like blowing out the broncos were blowing out the panthers in the game they were up by like 30 points at halftime and the printers kept calling me abe can we start printing can we start printing and i said no you can't start until it gets close enough that i can gamble because what happens is that the team that loses we actually um we actually the nfl requires us and we send it to a third world country as a donation for impoverished and and poverty-stricken people so that they do get used occasionally but not sold right then i'm right exactly that's amazing you're making one of the most important calls in the game i can imagine you like looking at the bench going like uh he called a field goal he's never going to be brady go to the presses like that's a pretty uh three years ago when the uh when the patriots played the falcons right oh my gosh that's exactly right they came back what happened to that game did you end up printing no no our printers had all everything set up to start running the falcons merch and then as it started getting closer i was actually at the super bowl and like i had people calling me saying can we start and i said you gotta hold you gotta hold off look at what's happening and then they had to switch over everything and change and start printing patriots it was just bedlam it was crazy oh my gosh that's great oh the stuff nobody sees stuff nobody sees and you know for me it's a lot of fun you know i grew up i grew up obviously it's my father-in-law's business it's our family business but i grew up a big sports fan so i mean like this is like a dream come true as a job you know the sports fans so that's amazing well i thank you for being on and more importantly i thank you for being who you are and that's something that people need to appreciate when you are who you are and the way you say it the way you just said a minute ago which i love first and foremost i'm a jew and that's who i am and then on top of that i can do stuff but we thank you for that clarity because i'm sure what you're doing without realizing it because i know in my career i've had the benefit of other jews who have been proud jews that laid the groundwork for me when i got to the law firm when i ended up doing whatever i was doing and i'm sure what you're doing is without even realizing it is you are actually paving the way for other jews to feel prouder and to have an easier ride because the people around you go no i know abe we're good like you know i'm saying i i know i know saul i know abe i know the team if if it's okay that you work that you don't work on shabbat it's okay i i i know it i i've had the experience and so thank you for what you do and thank you for uh what you do what you mean to us my pleasure and you know what's funny i'm on i'm on like a bunch of groups uh from all my years of going to the uh sporting events into the games actually ellie who's another guest on the show he actually texted me this week and asked me if i was going because he was looking for where to have the shabbat meal or where to have services you know we're on we're on like some group chats of people who are looking for the services looking for the kosher stand looking for the kosher meal so you know you i've developed relationships with people who are jewish right and in the sports business and and and it's you know it's it's it's really a great thing to be a part of thank you for having me and i really appreciate it and um i'm happy i was able to share some of that with you amazing thank you thanks so much for watching for more content like and subscribe and be sure to tune in live every thursday at 8 p.m eastern at the shabbato.com or right here on youtube [Music]