After 22 years in business, Keith Marzek, owner of Nickel City Shirt Co., is consolidating his screen-printing and embroidery operation into one building. Marzek purchased 3763 Delaware Avenue in Kenmore (formerly Graser’s Florist) as a way to successfully re-emerge from the pandemic, while embracing a ‘new normal.’
“Things fell apart two years ago,” said Marzek. “I thought to myself, ‘What am I going to do? I could lose 90% of my business. I knew that I had to survive, and fight. I called a staff meeting. It was their idea to lay off everyone immediately and go on unemployment. Then, as business started to pick up, I began to bring them back onboard one by one. During the downtime, I decided to learn more about the analytics of business. I knew that I needed to consolidate my two locations – one on Kenmore Avenue in Buffalo, and the other in Niagara Falls. I had the Kenmore location for ten years, and expanded with the Niagara Falls location in 2018 because we had run out of room. Purchasing this Delaware Avenue building was a long time coming. I realized how important it was to do something like this – to purchase a building and bring everything together under one roof – with an apartment upstairs for additional income.”
Listening to Marzek describe how he reinvented the business during the pandemic was heartening. One of the things that he did was to come up with a plan to create custom online web stores for his clients.
“People always say that they like to support local, but you have to make it easy for them,” he told me. “It’s easy for us to produce the goods, and we made it easy for our business customers to process the online sales. It’s one of the things that saved us over the last couple of years. We do a lot for the school district. We provided the service side, with a local person to talk to. The process allowed organizations to host online fundraisers since there were no in-person events, bake shows, or selling cookies. We had to be inventive – to find ways for more businesses to work with us, because they weren’t walking into the shop during the pandemic.”
Marzek said that it was during a 4 hour drive back from Pittsburgh, just as the pandemic hit, that he was able to formulate many of his decisions in his head. He knew that he had to do whatever it took to make it work.
“I started the business in my buddy’s basement,” he said. “I wasn’t going to let that go. I also knew that I had to take care of my staff. I told them that I would do anything that I could to help them, and that we would find a way to make it work. I had their back, and they had mine. My staff is an amazingly tight-knit group – I couldn’t have done this without them. And pretty soon we will be back to meeting customers in person. It will be nice to see someone in person – I look forward to that day. I’m also excited to have all of our resources in one space again. We’re going to keep it all moving forward.”
Although Marzek is in the process of remodeling, he has already moved his Niagara Falls outfit into the Delaware Avenue building. He’s also currently conducting business from that location, although customers will not be able to actually walk into the shop until April 1. But that date is right around the corner – a corner that Marzek made damn sure was going to see come to pass… come hell, high water, or even a raging pandemic.
Get connected: Nickel City Shirt Co. | 3763 Delaware Ave. | Kenmore, NY 14217 | (716) 207-3803 | Facebook