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About Kirschner Brush Mfg. Company

For 50 years, this family business has sustained a reputation for quality and down-to-earth honesty.

The legacy began in 1957 when Alex Kirschner, an immigrant from Poland, started his first paintbrush manufacturing company on Manhattan’s West 15th Street. Known for being a super salesman, he quickly generated business across the country, insuring that this company would flourish in the future.

With retail markets unsteady at best, Alex and his son, Israel Kirschner began to seek out government contracts including housing authorities, transportation departments and boards of education ¨ solid accounts that continue to make up most of Kirschner Brush Company´s business today. "So when you drive by and see workers painting bridges and tunnels in New York, they're probably using Kirschner Brushes." Israel Kirschner proudly exclaims. Government contracts make up 70% of KBC accounts today, and this business is not difficult to sustain, as Israel Kirschner told Brushware Magazine in October of 1998, "Import quality has not reached the level where it threatens U.S. manufacturers in the professional market. Our quality right now is way above what you would get from a third world manufacturer." Furthermore, our status as a Qualified HubZone Small Business enables KBC to be awarded Federal contracts that are set-aside for businesses that maintain a home in Historically Underutilized Business Zones, such as the South Bronx.  Currently, KBC manufactures most of it's brushes, though also provides customers with paint rollers, obtained locally, and China chip brushes, an inexpensive, efficient disposable tool, imported from Taiwan.

Located on 132nd Street in the industrial South Bronx, this old-style manufacturing warehouse equipped with a loading dock, freight elevator and roof-top view of the Tri-borough Bridge looks like something out of a forties noir film, but continues to be highly prolific in the new millennium. Israel Kirschner currently sits at the helm as CEO, adding numbers in his head before even touching a calculator, choosing to answer the phone rather than submit callers to touch-tone, and filing official KBC documents in hard-steel file cabinets over hard-drive space. Skilled operators still use machinery designed to emphasize quality over quantity and the finest materials to create paint brushes that are built to last! "At KBC we really do them like they used to!" explains Israel’s daughter Debra Kirschner with pride.

Israel’s son, Andrew Kirschner, is currently working to bring the company up to date by keeping up with on-line advances and technology - while insuring that the old-style integrity remains. Andrew says "Our goal is to reduce administrative costs through computerization, but not reduce production quality one bit."

And that is exactly what we have done!