Mishpacha meets with five Lakewood business owners who operate exclusively during bein hasedorim

Photos: Langsam Studio, Avi Gass

One Step Ahead

Yossi Brull

Shoe importer & seller

How many different shades of black can there possibly be? A walk into a basement in the Pine Street neighborhood of Lakewood, New Jersey, may give you a clue.

Deals on Daniel, a yeshivish shoe lovers’ paradise, operates four locations. This — the original — is still its most popular branch.

There are no large, welcoming sliding doors, no slick signage, not even the slightest hint that this is a “store” at all. The first clue of the unlikely contents housed in what used to be a basement studio apartment is the hours sign haphazardly taped onto the exterior door — 12 to 5:30 p.m. and 8 to 10 p.m. daily, with extended bein hazmanim hours — visible only after heading down the stairs from outside. Inside, the place is crammed floor to ceiling with thousands upon thousands of black boxes, each one containing a pair of black shoes.

One after the other, they are designed with the yeshivah man in mind, says Yossi Brull, the store’s proprietor.

“They all have that eidelkeit, that fineness to them, that our customers are looking for,” he explains.

Yet even within the monochromatic color palette and design, there is stunning variety. Crammed into this maze of walls and shoeboxes are 300 unique styles. The nuances within this overarching uniformity are emblematic of the clientele this store serves: a community that remains anchored to the yeshivah in action, thought, and dress, expressing its individuality within that framework.

Deals on Daniel is largely self-service, with an easy numbering system allowing customers to select a style, find a size, pay, and be on their way back to yeshivah, so landing a conversation with Yossi isn’t a particularly arduous task, despite the busy Yom Tov season.

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even years ago, Yossi moved into this house. He had been learning in kollel for about 15 years at the time, and someone who knew he had an extra room in the basement and that he was looking for a way to make a living approached him with an offer.

“He had this idea to cater to the yeshivah oilem by selling high quality shoes at a decent price — no such concept existed at the time,” Yossi remembers.

Yossi made the basement available to him at no cost, and he helped him get the business going. The original business model was to find closeouts from suppliers whose style matched what the Lakewood market was looking for at the quality they needed and for a price they’d be willing to pay. Quality and price were easy to source, but it was the style — classy, low-key, and all-black, of course — that was difficult to obtain.

When Yossi and his partner did land their hands on a shipment, they’d have it delivered to the basement apartment, hang up some signs in the yeshivah advertising their two-hours-a-day store (8 p.m. to 10 p.m.), and help outfit men who came by.

But within several months, it became clear that they needed a new model.

“There aren’t a lot of companies out there making our kind of shoes,” says Yossi.

The original owner settled out of town and decided he’d design his own shoes. When a cousin in the clothing industry mentioned an upcoming trade show on the West Coast, Yossi — without any previous industry knowledge, but laser-focused on getting a shoe that was the right fit for his clientele — boarded a plane to Los Angeles.

“I was never at a show before,” Yossi recalls. “I had no idea what I was doing.”

He entered the conference center lined with hundreds and hundreds of booths, headed right over to the shoe section, and started talking to manufacturers.

“I didn’t want something cheap. I wanted quality,” he says, and instead of engaging with the Chinese manufacturers, he landed upon a manufacturer from Turkey. “It was mamash Hashgachah.”