Charles Atanasio Celebrates 10 Years of Stone Mountain Handbags

The Hamptons fraternity of fashion icons includes Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors — and then there is Charles Atanasio.

In contrast to the others, Atanasio, who recently celebrated his 75th birthday, has kept a very low profile. His brand, Stone Mountain Handbags, speaks for itself.

The all-leather handbags together with related accessories such as tote bags, backpacks, luggage, wallets, belts and more are widely sold by retailers and department stores. Atanasio has been a successful career entrepreneur who checks a lot of boxes relevant to today’s business trends.

“The traditional 65 retirement age meant nothing to me,” Atanasio says. “It came and went. I am blessed with the opportunity to be enthusiastically engaged in work every day, which I love. I guess I am just like my contemporaries in this respect because Tommy is 72, Ralph is 83 and Calvin is 80!”

Atanasio is celebrating his 10th anniversary owning Stone Mountain Handbags, which was founded in the historic community of Stone Mountain, Georgia about 60 years ago. He acquired it from bankruptcy in 2012.

Together with sons Charles Jr. and Eric, the family has rejuvenated the operation where it handles more than $50 million in annual revenues. Stone Mountain even features a Hamptons Collection line.

Not too bad for a weak academic student who dropped out of Oceanside High School and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was sent to guard the North-South Korean border. Concluding military service, this young man from a blue-collar family figured he would get a construction job, because he was nimble with his hands.

“I made a friend whose dad was a small Brooklyn handbag maker,” Atanasio remembers. “I hung out at his Flatbush warehouse and learned techniques, how to put together handbags. Meanwhile, my friend and I would visit flea markets and buy cheap merchandise. We would resell it for a profit to different, small Long Island retail shops. On weekends, we would take this flea market inventory and resell it at the street fair staged in front of the old McAlpin Hotel on Manhattan’s Herald Square. Still in my early 20s, I was making some money and learning how to sell.”

Atanasio made a connection with a big buyer from Hartfield-Zodys. The buyer’s father was one of the largest junior coat manufacturers in Los Angeles. Atanasio moved to Los Angeles and began taking the excess material at this factory, turning it into funky handbags, junior handbags, cheap handbags, junior belts and junior wallets. Sales were humming.

With some money in his pocket, Atanasio returned to New York and became a project manufacturer on Mudd jeans, which sold very well.

Atanasio’s career stints have included being a leading contract buyer for the nation’s 3,300 Woolworth’s stores. He was a pioneer in the design and development of the fashion backpack.

“I consider myself the father of the mini-backpack,” Atanasio declares. In recent years, he has developed the hands-free fashion mini-backpack “so people can carry/use their phones and hold other items.”

As a solution to widespread time-consuming inventory problems, which affected many of the nation’s retailers, Atanasio joined forces with an MIT professor to develop one of the first computer “floppy” programs offering a universal industry replenishment application.

“Since this professor was named Arthur, I named it The Arthur Plan,” Atanasio laughs.

Although Stone Mountain Handbags operates a showroom in the Midtown fashion district like many corporations today, the true operations of designing, sourcing and importing products from China, Vietnam, Cambodia and India are managed by Atanasio from his oceanfront Westhampton home.

On any given day, you might find Atanasio at his favorite Westhampton coffee shop on his cellphone transacting a global deal.