One of the nicest people you’ll meet, Jonathan Mustich has been an asset to the Charlotte community and the city since he arrived. Jonathan has one of the most unique stories, in my opinion, that demonstrates how you never know what can happen and just stick to your primary purpose and meaning in life and pivot when needed. Jonathan has had an incredible journey, starting in the suit business to designing custom suits and jackets for Hall of Fame pro bowlers to now being an advocate for community gardens and spreading the knowledge of food and the importance of recycling material and where it comes from. How did it all start?
“I was living in Los Angeles and had started my custom suit business out there called Evolution Style. And at the time I really enjoyed Los Angeles and the city was great and was doing really successful with the custom suit business, but also started traveling couple of months out of the year abroad. And every time I came back, I got a little less interested in the city, but a little more interested in Charlotte. So a good friend of mine was working for the Panthers here, Joe LaBue and we come to visit every year and finally after six or so years I was like well let's give it a try. We just packed up our stuff and moved across the country, didn't even see our apartment. I just moved across country. I think the way I could put it, in Los Angeles, I was like a needle in a haystack and when I saw the opportunity here, you can actually move the haystack here. You really can make an impact and change people's lives. My suit business was doing well in Charlotte and then COVID happened and obviously no one was wearing suits, and I had to transition my factory over to make medical gowns because everyone needed those and I happened to have some of the fabric. We did that, got a contract with Atrium at the time and realized how much plastic waste was being generated by these medical gowns. As a gardener, I saw a droplet of water roll off a broccoli leaf and realized that if nature can stop water from getting through, why can't we? I worked with the polymer center here in Charlotte. Luckily they were here and worked with them to develop this fabric that was both compostable and met all the barrier protections of the healthcare industry. Since the last four years we've been developing this and growing it and now we've got land in Concord that we compost the gowns on and we bring that soil down to Charlotte to our community gardens and up to Hickory to community gardens that we work with and with Atrium, it's going to really open us up because they have community gardens on each of their hospital sites. We don't have to go in and build them we're just helping to provide the soil. Realistically with Hickory or Atrium they use about 200,000 gowns a year. That saves them in plastic waste — it reduces plastic waste by 40,000 lbs a year. So when you think of Atrium which uses 10 times that amount, you're really like 4,000,000 lbs of plastic waste out of the local community and not only that — it turns it into like something else that's positive.”
All they were doing was just throwing them out? “They just throw them out. Yeah, just thrown straight to the landfill or incinerated if they had, blood on them. It's been a really cool thing. And now we we won this contract with Premier, which is like a big GPO, called the Breakthrough Technology Contract so that just opened us up to all the hospitals in the US so that was a huge win for us and that now gives us the opportunity. I was on a call right before this saying we were trying to figure out how to get some hospitals out west that don't really know about us yet. So it went from like zero to 100. We went from zero to like nothing over four years and then it's like zero to 100 in like the last two weeks. It's been it's been really cool and fun.”
This is wild, so it's a whole business now? “Yeah, it’s good. I’m just trying to take what I'm doing with the compost thing and the gardening and actually now, me and the two friends thought on a bigger thing to create local plots of land to sell food to restaurants so that they can really, truly be locally sourced and for the communities because if you really think about it, Sam uses like 60 heads of lettuce a week just for that tiny little restaurant. It's amazing when you really start to think of how much food is needed. We've been planting lettuce so much we can't even keep up, I think it was 22 heads of lettuce this week, so it's really interesting to sort of grow that side of the business and see where that can go. It's interesting. I love opportunities here. You meet people. There's not a huge barrier to entry, but we want to make a big impact.”
With your history of design and sewing now growing vegetables and providing that to local restaurants was that in the cards at first? “Yes. That’s always been our mission — is not just to deliver gowns and get out of the community. We want to be part of the community and actually part of the health of the community. Part of our profit share, we always put part of our profits back in to create community gardens. Thankfully Atrium has community gardens but let's say they didn't, we would take a portion of those profits to put community gardens in local areas and in North Carolina, there's actually a budget for this in the state. So for that one we went to on the west side of the city, they paid for that one. There's another one they're building for us for next year. It's all part of the budget. A lot of times we don't have to do it, it's just part of the state and they need people to run it. We take over that and say; we can do that and generate the community interest and a lot of the times the nurses and the staff at the hospital want to manage themselves. This is something we want to get behind, so it really kind of runs itself but we're getting to that point now.”
Are you a gold driven person when it comes to, how do you manage your business? Because I feel like this is just a perfect example of what you're doing something you love and then another opportunity comes that you didn't really see coming. Like, did you see this coming at all? “I didn't see Terraloam like the business coming at all. It sort of came out of more of a necessity, and I've always, as someone who grew up in New York, I don't see problems as problems. I see them as opportunities a lot of the times. I saw an opportunity here that there was a very big void to fill and I was like well this was an opportunity and I got lucky because my friend at the time is now my business partner really was in the same mindset as me, same entrepreneur mindset and he was like; I think we have a business here, let's see how we can do this. Now we certainly have certain goals that we want to try to hit this year and in the future and next year and over the next 10 years to sort of build the impact of this because a lot of the information that we have to do now is basically just informing people what composting is. A lot of people don't even know what that is. People describe us as biodegradable. We're actually not. We're better than biodegradable. A lot of that is educating people how to turn something that is a waste product into something that is actually useful. Dirt right now is being lost all over the world so that we can generate actual good compost that can be used for farming. And then that's where these gowns basically turn into — so we mix them with food scraps and fallen leaves and over three to six months, that's a pile we take to the garden.”
Just put the like perspective for me, like building an impact. I think that's your biggest goal with this “Yes, I want to make an impact not only in the Charlotte community starting off in Charlotte but then North Carolina and then we want to like really make an impact across the country because there is a huge need for this especially the cost of food right now, if we can provide anything for free or especially underserved communities like that's a huge opportunity for us. And just healthy food, like people aren't eating healthy, so having that and educating them, where does lettuce come from or whats this carrot or what's this tomato like? I'm growing a tomato that actually — it's only been grown on Mount Vesuvius and a few other places, but so when you when you pick it, you can hang it because it has an enzyme in it that allows it to last for like six months. In Italy they give them as gifts around Christmas in a box. So this is me, as a business person — a pound of tomatoes in the middle of the summer is worth like $5. A pound of these tomatoes at Christmas is worth $50. One of my business partners has a big house, so we're gonna use his house for the storage. It's where folks don’t really know much about the importance.”
What is the current struggle that you're going through right now? “I would say, part is breaking into the healthcare industry that is very old school, has a bureaucratic mentality. That's been a real struggle because it's — I didn't come from that history of business. So that's been a really tough learning experience to have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until you make the right connections and get with some people that can help push you along. We got lucky a couple years ago meeting someone that was able to do that, Patrick Bruce up in Hickory, but that's been a big struggle. My business partner gets more frustrated than I do. I think as a growing up in New York like we have a little bit more of like, OK no? On to the next one. So I think that's been the biggest struggle for us has been getting through all these walls and no, we can't do this but then not really realizing we're just basically doing the same thing, just better. It's just the educational part of it.”
Is there a proud moment that sticks out to you that has shaped you into the person you are today? “I would say when COVID happened in my business that I've been running for 12 years stopped overnight. It went to zero and there was nothing on the horizon. We were in the house for less than a year, so you got bills to pay and things to do, and I had a staff member in California. I had two showrooms and they all went to nothing. The ability to stop, focus for a second, take it in what was happening and readjust and transition to a completely new business overnight and then fight through all of the bullshit artists around the world that we're trying to sell fake stuff and, you know, luckily I had built up a reputation in Charlotte and got a contract with Atrium that was pretty significant so that I would say would was the biggest hurdle because I thought at that time I was in real trouble and it was the mindset of what am I going to do and something you've been working on for 13 or 14 years just done overnight and by no doing of your own. I think having the perseverance to get through that and the drive to just keep going — I would say that's probably at the moment my proudest moment.”
Do you think you'd be as happy if nothing happened with COVID and you were still doing jackets now? “No! It was the best blessing. As sad as it was COVID was actually good for me to say because with the suits I would have two-three thousand clients and I was getting text messages all hours of day and night. “Hey, can you give me this? Can you give me that” so I had no boundary or personal time. Now with this I have 5 big customers that I work with. Basically it's me manufacturing stuff out in Wadesboro and I could work from 7:00 to 3:00 or 4:00. I go garden in the afternoon and meet friends after. That honestly has been the best thing for me. I have so much more freedom of time I own. And I always tell people; the most important thing in life, in my opinion, is to own your time or own as much time as you can for yourself, because that gives you a lot of freedom and gives you a lot of opportunities to develop and grow on your own.”
Are there any important lessons that you've learned along the way that you take with you every day? “This is going back to our conversation from 9-11. After that day I don't take any day for granted. Enjoy every day to its fullest. You'll have sad days and really exciting days, but don't take any day for granted, cause you never know you. You literally never know.”