A little bit of nostalgia amidst the high-tech trading world is a good thing.
That was the thinking of Doreen Mogavero, chief executive and principal of Mogavero, Lee & Co., a New York Stock Exchange-based floor brokerage, when she decided to bring back a piece of the fabled exchange’s history and reopened the 90-year-old Member’s Smoke Shop.
"I ended up presenting the re-opening of the shop as a bit of the tradition of the old NYSE, amid all this new technology," Mogavero said. "In that respect, I decided to keep it the way it was. No real changes—we just cleaned it up, and maybe we could offer a few retired guys a job there."
That was her pitch to NYSE management in the spring of 2011.
The store, located at the 12 Broad Street entrance to the New York, traces its roots back to the 1920s. It was then that Morris Raskin, a floor broker on the exchange, moved the stand from its original 20 Broad Street locale and opened a larger smoke shop where busy traders, brokers and others could run and get their cigars and cigarettes without missing a beat or a trade.
The store is a throwback to the days of an exchange when you could smoke on the floor and tickertape littered the trading posts. The shop is located down a flight of stairs from the main trading floor – a place it has resided since its opening. Polished wood shelves, nooks and crannies are filled with traditional candy bars, sodas and water bottles to cater to on-the-fly traders. The shop also sells sundry items such as aspirin, personal grooming items and the store’s trademark red and white peppermint sucking candy.
It stands in stark contrast to the Starbucks that opened on the floor in June 2010, as part of the exchange’s trading floor revamp. That store is situated in a corridor linking the options exchange and main equity trading floor. And it serves up a different type of fare – lattes, schmaltzy cold beverages and sandwiches in modern glass encasements, all served by trendy baristas.
Mogavero’s sweet shop serves up more traditional candy store items, distinguishing her stand from the Seattle, Wash.-based coffee purveyor. The most popular items it sells? It’s 1.5-liter bottles of water and gum.
It’s come a long way from the spring of 2011, when the whole idea of re-opening the stand started with an inquiry by Mogavero about what caused the stand to close in the first place. When the NYSE told her how the prior operators had taken ill and shuttered the shop’s gates, it asked her if she was interested in doing something with the space.
"They said come to us with a proposal," she said. And the rest is history. Mogavero, along with her family, spent the summer of 2011 fixing up the store after the exchange did large-scale carting away of debris. Her crew cleaned shelves, revamped the store room and installed new lighting.
They also added a flat panel TV so shoppers could keep tabs on the markets.
"I remember coming in on weekends and nights polishing up the wood myself here," she said, proudly pointing to the wood panels that adorn the walls. "It was old and dark when I got here."
Mogavero understands the importance of nostalgia and history behind the exchange. She began her career on Wall Street at age 19 as a summer intern for her father, William Earle, who was a member of the American Stock Exchange. By the end of that summer in 1974, Doreen had found her life’s calling.
Within a few years, Doreen moved to the New York Stock Exchange where she became its youngest member in 1980. In 1989, Doreen opened her own firm, Doreen Mogavero, Inc. as a broker-dealer executing NYSE-listed equities on an agency basis for other brokerage firms. It was then, and still is today; the only 100 percent women owned and managed brokerage based on the floor of the NYSE, according to Mogavero.
Now she also runs the candy store, which she re-named The Original Candy Exchange. But many traders, including Mogavero, still refer to the stand as "Morris’," a nod to the original proprietor. And like him, she will from time to time go down from her floor booth or office and man the stand, selling water and popping popcorn for NYSE staff.
"Sometimes I’ll relieve Steve," she said, referring to her one full-time employee, Steve Strickman. Strickman is a retired NYSE floor clerk who finished a 26 year career on the exchange, working for Legg Mason. He is joined by Mogavero’s great-nephew, Billy LaFave, who is a part-time stock boy. Her husband, "Arcky,"a former floor trader himself and member of the exchange, is in charge of inventory management.
"Nobody here likes it when I run the store, as I really don’t know the prices of things," she joked. "I wind up giving stuff away."
