About Florida Boat Canvas

Our Story & Mission

I grew up in this business. Southern New Jersey was a hub of clothing manufacturing at that time, and our extended family owned two of the largest firms in that area.

As my dad, the youngest of eight, was preparing to return from Germany in 1945, he got a letter from his brothers: “Don’t worry about a job. You’re with us.”

Several years earlier my grandfather, uncles and aunts worked for a pants factory in tiny Rosenhayn, NJ. One night the conversation at the dinner table was very different. The eight of them decided to open a factory on the family farm.

But many years later, it was my mother’s father, an Italian-trained tailor, that made them successful. An amazing man, sought after by some of the largest names in clothing, such as London Fog and others, he first trained in Naples, Italy as a child, using the grid of the family floor’s tiles for his work drawing. As a teen he came to Philadelphia and opened his own multiple-employee business. It was toward the end of his career he joined my father, elevating them from a pants factory to a “#5 coat factory”–the highest classification for detail and excellence, as in Marine dress uniforms.

I fondly remember my first suit, hand-tailored at age five, a labor of love for his two grandsons. I remember those initial measurements, and a suit of canvas, made and fitted from it. Then deconstructing this for patterns, he made the final fabric suit, tailoring the final adjustments. Oh how I’d love to have that suit to this day; but the memories will nonetheless last a lifetime.

In summers, I also grew up on the water, reminiscent of my paternal great-grandfather, a sea captain. We know boats and boaters.

Mission:

Often, as I sit at the machine, I think of my family; my dad, uncles and aunts, and the three-hundred plus employees many of whom were as family; my maternal grandfather, and the precision and excellence of his leadership, and also my dad’s father, whose personal machine is in my shop to this day,

My mission is that you experience a small piece of the joy and excellence in fabric, that I have.

–Don Chinnici