CLEVELAND – As a youngster, Tony Madalone loved playing basketball. After captaining the Elyria Open Door Christian Schools basketball team to the Division IV state final four his senior year, Madalone wanted to continue his basketball career as long as he could. That passion for basketball drove the Lorain native to walk-on at Division II Ashland University, where he eventually worked his way to a scholarship.
Now, Madalone’s passion for his adopted home of Cleveland has inspired the entrepreneur to run for mayor of Cleveland.
Madalone, 32, announced his entry into the already crowded field on May 24, joining incumbent Mayor Frank Jackson and others with much more political experience than the AU grad.
“I actually think that’s a positive,” Madalone said of his lack of experience. “We have a number of people that have been in the political realm in Cleveland for so long that they don’t have a real perspective on what’s going on in the community. They also don’t have a perspective on how to get things done.”
The AU grad said it was frustration with the way things were being done in Cleveland that prompted him to consider a political campaign. Madalone, founder and CEO of Fresh Brewed Tees, is involved with Ohio Homecoming, a grassroots group focused on raising the profile of Ohio. According to the group’s Facebook page, they hope to “reinvigorate citizens to aspire to greatness, build civic pride and invest in our local cities and neighborhoods.”
“Because of that and also Fresh Brewed Tees, I got to work closely with the City. Through my meetings and through having interactions in City Hall I realized how screwed up things were and there’s a reason for the limited progress,” Madalone said.
He originally had no intention of running for political office, but after working with some other like-minded people to see how they could best make changes, their plans transitioned into his mayoral campaign.
“I think it’s a great time to do it. We’ve had a mayor that’s been in for three terms and he’s not necessarily looking excitedly to run again. We have other players that are in the field that have been in City Hall with little success. For me, if I don’t do this now, I don’t have four years to wait,” Madalone said. “There are so many people who are hurting because of the lack of focus of our current administration on people that I didn’t really have a choice in my mind.
“The problem with our current administration and other leaders that are stepping up is they’re all trying to tackle it individually. There’s no collective strategy for how to turn things around. You’ve got education, you’ve got safety, you’ve got economic development. You’ve got a number of things, but none of them can change unless their done together,” Madalone said. “You can’t build a sustainable, long-lasting city with skyscrapers and championships and things downtown. You need to build it with foundational things, and those foundational things are what better the people.”
Madalone sees a number of issues that government could be improving in Cleveland. One major issue that he uses as an example is illiteracy – 66 percent of Clevelanders are functionally illiterate.
“That means they have difficulty reading bus routes, prescriptions, utility bills. That’s 200,000 people. There’s no way we can throw any amount of money at a problem like that in the neighborhoods and say ‘This will fix it.’ It’s got to be a strategic plan to better people’s lives and educate and train them so they can become the workforce. Once we get them trained, they can get jobs. Once they get jobs, they can better their properties and their families. Once they better their properties, it betters neighborhoods and that increases the desire for companies to move here. That’s how real economic development happens once you focus on human development. I think strategically it’s just something our current administration has not focused on, or even understands. You can’t just throw money and hope the problems go away,” Madalone said.
Madalone believes his business experience and relationships in the community make him a candidate people should vote for, even if they haven’t heard his name before.
“I’ve started five companies. I’ve got a number of employees. I’ve created jobs. I’ve put Cleveland on the map a number of times nationally because o the things I do with my company. Unlike the current administration, I believe the city needs to be run like a business,” Madalone said. “There’s ways to drive revenues. There’s ways to cut waste and cut expenses. There’s an incredible amount of waste now. We have the money to do the things that we need to do. We just haven’t allocated our resources properly. As a business person, as a person who is educated and knows how to build relationships, the only way we can get stuff done is to bring the right people to the table. And the current administration has brought all the wrong people the table. People who aren’t competent to do the job. While I know some things, I don’t know everything, but I know I can find the people that are experts in those areas and I’m going to bring them together.”
Besides using social media and traditional advertising, Madalone plans to use one of his strengths to spread the word about his campaign before the Sept. 12 primary election: building relationships with people.
“I want to spend a lot of time having conversations and building relationships in the community,” he said. “I don’t want to just throw billboards up. I’m not going to just plaster stuff all over the city and expect people to vote for me. I’m going to have real conversations in communities that are filled with people that are suffering. I’m going to be listening to people instead of telling them what to do.”
Madalone started in the T-shirt business while he was still in college, selling vintage tees from his Clayton Hall dorm room.
“When I was in high school, I realized it was cool to buy stuff at the thrift store,” Madalone said. “I was just shopping for myself, realized there was a market for it, so I started buying and reselling primarily from thrift stores.”
After completing his MBA at Ashland, Madalone birthed Fresh Brewed Tees in November 2009 in Cleveland. In just over seven years, the company has experienced rapid growth, and the CEO knows very well what his secret weapon is.
“A lot of relationships. Building those relationships and a lot of it is player relationships,” Madalone said.
Those relationships have led the company to secure more than 40 licenses. In 2011, Fresh Brewed received its NFL Players Association license, which then allowed them to secure its MLBPA license. Now the company is the official partner for ESPN’s “30 For 30” series of documentaries and also has licenses for several universities, including AU.
Recently, the company has partnered with the Cavaliers on their “Defend the Land” merchandise. The creative team at Fresh Brewed Tees came up with the slogan in 2014 and it’s become a phrase the whole community has latched on to. In addition, the Fresh Brewed Tees store at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport is the only official off-site location to purchase Cavs playoff merchandise.
