Thomas M Haugen:
CLASS OF 1959
Anaheim High SchoolClass of 1959
Anaheim, CA
Thomas M's Story
After graduating, I started at Fullerton JC in fall of 1959. I got married early in 1960 to my prom date Connie Brown. We had a set of boy twins in fall of 1960 and when Connie got pregnant again in 1962, I left school and started working full time at Sears in Buena Park. I did pretty well at Sears and they moved us to their headquarters for the Women's business in NYC in 1967. We took our 3 boys and moved to NJ and I became a commuter. I was soon promoted to Watch Buyer and began travelling to Europe to buy the parts we assembled in our NJ facility. In 1969 I initiated business with Seiko, adding Japan and Hong Kong to my travels. In 1979, Sears closed their NYC office and consolidated all buying activities into their Chicago Headquarters when they opened the Sears Tower, so off we went to the Midwest. By then we had a daughter in addition to our 3 sons. We settled in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago and I still commuted, but on a different train line. When we made the move, I was the buyer of Misses Blazers & Skirts. Skirts were pretty much a low labor domestic product, but blazers were very high labor apparel, so they leant themselves overseas manufacturing. I started working in China in 1979 and placed one of Sears first orders with that country for garments. I also worked in Europe for woolen garments, buying fabrics in Italy and producing blazers in Greece, as well as some of the Eastern European countries. We moved back to NJ / NYC in 1986 when I joined Montgomery Wards, but that only lasted about a year since Wards decided to close their NYC office and consolidate in Chicago the same as Sears had done. They sent me to Hong Kong as VP of import sourcing for their apparel businesses. So in 1987, Connie, our daughter Nicole and I headed to Hong Kong for a 4 year stint. We had offices all over Asia, Europe and Latin America and I travelled between them and our Chicago headquarters most of the time. Our daughter attended the American School in Hong Kong for her last two years of high school, then went off to the University of Nebraska. Connie often travelled around the world with me after our daughter left for college.
We returned to the States in late 1991 and bought a place on the Northside of Chi...Expand for more
cago, within walking distance of Wrigley Field. It was nice to be in a place where you could basically walk almost anywhere you needed or wanted to go, but it didn't last too long as I left Wards and took a job in Houston, Texas as VP of Sourcing for Oshman's Sporting Goods in late 1992 and off we went on another adventure, returning to the State where I was born. However, as much as we enjoyed our stay in Houston, it didn't last too long either. At the start of 1994, I became Division President of a British firm's North American Apparel sourcing division, based in Hong Kong. I had a client group consisting of both Canadian & American companies, mainly retailers as well as all the apparel for Reebok and a start-up company - Eileen Fisher. It was all apparel sourcing for North America and I was also responsible for the European offices which meant Portugal, Italy and Turkey. After a couple of years, the British firm sold the sourcing company to a Hong Kong Chinese firm, but it had little impact on my job, other than now being a part of a company whose only focus was sourcing. I had been adding new clients, including brands like New Balance and Carters and our new owners did a deal with Disney and I got the Disney Stores and Parks as clients also, so business was very good,
By now all our kids were married and grandchildren were appearing quite regularly. We started a ritual of booking a beach house the week of July 4th on Kiawah Island, SC in 1995. It was our one chance to get everyone together for a week. We ended up buying a house there in late 1997, then building a house that could hold all 18 of us, which finished in 2002. In 2005 we moved back to the States, to NYC. I became the President of our company's U,S. division and set about acquiring companies that sold products to the retailers we couldn't get as sourcing clients since they had their own offices, Companies like Walmart, Target & Macy's. We had an apartment on 36th St. & 6th Ave. and my office was about a block away. We really enjoyed living in NYC, even though Connie spent most of her time on Kiawah Island. I finally retired in 2008 and now I play tennis 3 or 4 times a week and I'm on the board of our local Habitat For Humanity branch.
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