sal loretta. how are you? -lemonis: nice to meet you. -sal: nice to meet you. i'm one of the owners here. how are you doing? lemonis: good. i was just getting to meet fabio. sal: fabio's been with me a long time, so he's a -- my brother-in-law. i started the business when i was 17 years old in my garage, and it just exploded. and look at this. i mean... lemonis: so it's been a very profitable year so far? sal: yeah. i mean, when i mean "profitable," the businesses do well. the only problem is the debt. this place took a lot of money to build. lemonis: how much debt's on the books? sal: about $1.5 million. we couldn't pay the contractors, and we would have to use credit cards. there was no financing here. you go to the bank, and they say, "what are you building? a sports complex, embroidery? sal, what the hell is going on over there?" flat-out no. "too risky." lemonis: fabio, how do you describe the business to people? fabio: hmm. the business itself, it's complicated. there is a lot going on in here. it's hard to really just put it all in a nutshell really quic

at one point, they were bringing in around $2 million of revenue and making a profit for sal loretta and his partner nick. then, they had a big idea. [ baseball bat cracks ] first, they moved into this new building -- a 28,000-square-foot warehouse. and then, they began to create new businesses -- a sports complex for kids, an italian restaurant. sal: it's a multiplex of businesses that really work together. lemonis: that's what's called a mall. it was a huge idea, just not a good one. sal and nick got away from the business they actually understood. and with the bigger rent... so you actually owe him $120,000? ...their future looked bleak. sal was the idea guy, and nick was in charge of sales. nick: the biggest tool we use is yellowpages.com. lemonis: that was a job that did not suit him. you pay him his commission on a monthly basis, right? nick: i just get a salary. lemonis: these guys were barely hanging on. their core business, embroidery and silk screening... that's really good. ...was still doing $2 million a year. so i made a deal for $660,000 for half the business, and the w