Michael Bauer, President and CEO of Michael’s Formalwear, has been deeply involved in the family business since the late 90s, guiding its transition from a franchise to a local leader in tuxedo and suit rentals and sales.
Tell me about your background.
I've been in Jacksonville pretty much my whole life. I did go to military school in the 90s, so I didn't go to high school here, but I've been here my whole life. I was born in Jacksonville and I still love it here. My dad started our family business, what’s now Michael's Formalwear, in the 1970s. We've had this family business for over 50 years, this is our 51st year, so that's a very long time.
How has Michael’s Formalwear changed over the years?
I started working here around 1999-2000 more seriously, so it was a natural progression for me to take over. When my dad ran things, it was a franchise, but that changed and we closed a few stores so now we have two locations, one in the Jacksonville Town Center and one in Orange Park. We used to be strictly tuxedos, nowadays we do tuxedos and suit rentals and we do sales. We have a state-of-the-art processing plant where we have all the different colors of apparel items. Everything's organized and we update it every year. It's a professional place where we have the latest and greatest. We stay current with the trends.
Are you pretty hands-on with both locations?
Yes, I'm hands-on with both locations I work. Mostly I'm at the Town Center, just because it's the busiest store, but I visit both stores almost every day. I go to both places and our processing center to make sure everything's being pulled correctly, the correct inventory.
Would you say that you enjoy what you do?
For sure I do. It’s what I know how to do best. This is a business that is a little more complicated in the sense of there's a ton of moving parts. It's not like you're selling one thing that has one size or two sizes. Our shirts, our one style shirt, has 36 different sizes.
Looking ahead to 2025, is there anything on the agenda for Michael’s Formalwear?
We'd love to open a new store in St Johns County, that’s something that we're looking to do. We just haven't found the right spot yet. Also offering all the colors that people are looking for, which our competition doesn't always have. Like sage green, hunter green, that stone khaki color. Brown is a popular color that started in November, so we have a brown suit now. If our customers want a certain color, we can listen to our customers and supply what they want. We specialize in having all the colors of suits or tuxedos that people want, which is something that we can do by being a local place.
