GARMENT DISTRICT — A sewing machine repairman who works out of the basement of a West 37th Street building claimed he got stiffed for months on more than $3,500 worth of sales and repairs he did for couture fashion label Marchesa before the brand finally ponied up.
Between May 21 and Aug. 17, Jameer Sulaiman said he repaired sewing machines and mannequins, performed oil changes and replaced machine parts at the Marchesa factory on West 26th Street to the tune of $1,500 — of which he didn't see a dime until this week.
The high-end company, which has outfitted stars like Rihanna, Sarah Jessica Parker and Emily Blunt for red-carpet events, also took two sewing machines from him in September worth $1,850 that it never paid for, he said.
Repeated calls and emails to the New York City-based brand requesting payment for his services were unsuccessful for a full nine months, until a reporter inquired about the unpaid bill Wednesday — and Sulaiman got his check the next day.
“I do a lot of work all over for a lot of big companies, but I never ran into something like this,” said Sulaiman, 64, who has done work for customers like ABC Carpet & Home, as well as a range of fashion, bridal and sportswear companies, from his shop Wednesday.
He sent invoices to the company requesting a total of $3,576 and called his contact at Marchesa repeatedly in the months since his last job with the designer brand, to no avail.
After his contact there told him to call the company’s accounting department, he started leaving messages “all the time” — but they still hadn't responded, he said Wednesday.
An acquaintance of Sulaiman's also sent emails on his behalf, since he is not web-savvy, but those also didn't yield results, he added.
But after a DNAinfo reporter made repeated inquiries about the unpaid bills on Wednesday, Sulaiman said Marchesa contacted him to say they had cut him a check.
“Usually [companies] pay you right away,” he said on Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for Marchesa said Wednesday that she referred an inquiry about Sulaiman’s invoices to the company’s billing department, but the department did not respond to a request for comment. The spokeswoman also did not reply to a follow-up email.
Additionally, an email to the contact Sulaiman's friend reached out to at Marchesa went unanswered Wednesday.
After moving to New York from Guyana decades ago, Sulaiman attended a vocational school in Manhattan and an evening trade school in Brooklyn to learn how to make machine parts, he said.
When he’d completed his studies, he worked for the Camatron Sewing Machine company — where he learned how to fix the machines — before setting off on his own.
He has operated out of a tool- and machinery-filled basement in a West 37th Street building, which he calls Jimmy's Machine Shop Service, for more than 30 years, he said.
