The Bela and Clara Nevai Charitable Foundation
Palm Beach, Florida, USA

The Bela and Clara Nevai Foundation was set up in 1996 for the purpose of funding appropriate and deserving programs or projects having to do with Education, Leadership and Health. The Foundation researches and then chooses those organizations and persons who are doing the B est and most efficient job of benefiting the greatest number of people.

The Foundation was funded by the Estates of Bela Nevai, who died on December 6th 1996 and his wife and business/life-partner of more than 60 years, Clara Nevai, who died on October 3rd 2004.

Both of them were extraordinary people each in their fields and served as excellent examples of leadership, persistence through all odds, great work capacity, innovation and both attention to detail and at the same time the ability to see the bigger picture.

Bela “Bill” Nevai was born in 1908 to a family who owned a general store in Budapest, Hungary. They were open from early morning to late at night to make ends meet.. When Bill was a young man he began to travel around Europe selling the Housewares and Woodenware made in their own factories. The small General Store was replaced by a very large Inter-European Firm called Nena.

Clara, also born in Budapest in 1915, began her life in business at the age of 12 when she sewed leather wallets and sold them to neighbors and family. By age 18 she had one of the best Millinery and Dress Design Boutiques in Budapest. She employed 30 seamstresses and had as clients some of the biggest Movie Stars, Singers and Nobility of her day. When she met Bela and they married they became a team that would create success after success in every field they entered together for the next 60 years.

Both of them survived incredible horrors and starvation between the World Wars and in WWII. Bill escaped 5 times from abduction by Russian soldiers into forced labor camps. They both escaped death dozens of times, enough to fill several novels. Having survived the Nazis, and the Russians they escaped from Communist Hungary with their 2 boys in 1947, leaving behind a huge mansion, offices and warehouses and a large factory outside of Budapest. It was all confiscated by the government.. They arrived nearly penniless in New York in August of 1948.

Clara would usually serve as the inside boss/comptroller and Bela would usually be the Creator of new Ideas (which she would refine) and he was also the outside man, the super salesman who came home from Chicago or Boston or Los Angeles with multi-million dollar orders for cutting boards, coat hangers, kitchen gadgets and 2,000 other items. Prosaic stuff. The very essence of our everyday lives. Not all that exciting, but when you sell enough of one thing to some of the biggest Food-, Drug-, Department- and Discount-chains all over America and in several other countries you end up with big numbers. In its heyday in the late 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s you couldn’t go into any town in America, small or large without finding Nevco (Nevai+Company) Products

Certainly not as exciting as show business or the fine arts, nevertheless these everyday household articles not only brought a great income but provided Americans with very good quality at incredible prices. Recently we saw a Nevco hardwood kidney-shaped folding stool made in Yugoslavia, which originally sold in Woolworth’s 5 and 10cent Stores for 79 cents in the 1950’s, selling in an Arizona antique store for about $16 in 2005! It was still in good shape.

Nevco was known for always having something new : a new idea, a new item, new packaging. Nevco pioneered many ideas in mass-marketing that in today’s world are taken for granted. Up until Nevco in the early 50’s for example, wooden mixing spoons and clothes hangers were sold individually by the piece out of a bin or barrel. The Nevai’s put 3 sizes of spoons on a printed card with nice artwork and the slogan – “Use Different Spoons for Different Foods and Your Foods will taste Better”….it may not be Shakespeare, but it sold Millions of spoons! After months and years of trials and testing, coat and pants and skirt hangers were also attractively packaged in fours or sixes, instead of as unpackaged singles. Over a thousand Kitchen Gadgets (Can openers, ice cream scoops, etc.) were first mass-bubble-packed on colorful informative cards by the Nevais. The entire Industry in America and then the World regularly copied every Nevco innovation until it became the new standard, in spite of a long list of Nevco patents and copyrights.

Not only was Nevco one of the leading companies of its kind but Bill Nevai became the President of the National Housewares Association, a group that included G.E., Sony, Hoover and other huge concerns. He was not only a great Innovator but demonstrated excellent Leadership skills running an office of 25 people, a 50-man sales force and about 200 domestic factory and warehouse workers, and a 4 story building covering 11 acres. The power “behind the throne” of course was Clara, who never missed a detail and whose Intuition about people, situations and deals was uncanny. And all this Leadership took place even while they were traveling all over the Planet, almost constantly, sourcing their imported goods.

Since neither of their sons wanted to follow in their parent’s footsteps, Nevco was sold in 1974. The legend goes that Bill and Clara then “retired” for 3 whole days. Both of them were used to 90 and 100 hour weeks and immediately they started another company out of their den in their home in the New York suburbs. One year later Bill and Clara were the heads of another multimillion dollar company, but this time with no employees, no offices, no salesmen, no warehouses, no real estate! Just one telephone and one typewriter! They knew all the sources of supply, they knew the buyers and they outsourced the rest, another innovation……. which today is fairly common.

In his later years Bill focused more on Investments and stopped selling goods. He built the fourth fortune of his life.

And after he passed away, it was little surprise to those who knew her that Clara, with her lifetime of business skills took that fortune and quadrupled it through shrewd and careful investing!..... and very hard work ……even until her death at nearly 90 years of age!!

(The The Bela and Clara Nevai Foundation is one of IIGL’s largest contributors)