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Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
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Anyone who has ever attempted to remodel a bathroom or a kitchen knows the aisles at Home Depot and Lowe’s by heart. But how many of us have rediscovered, through a DIY project, the truism that you only have one hometown?
I haven’t lived in Rochester for many years, but this summer’s four-months bathroom ordeal led me to a family-owned business in Rochester that saved the day. It taught me that, no matter where I am or how long I have been away, I am still in of a club whose members call themselves “Rochesterians.”
Searching for a magazine rack that could be built into my bathroom wall, I discovered all the ones from Target and Home Depot and Lowe’s and Walmart and Wayfair looked suspiciously alike. They all featured the same cheap plastic bars holding the magazines in place and they were all shipped from Sarasota, Fla., with delivery times of about a month. I was under a looming deadline.
Late one night, searching online, I came upon Hammer and Nail Studios in Rochester. They listed a recessed magazine rack that looked so much better designed than the “Sarasota” model. So, I went to the “contact us” page and sent the following comment:
“Hello, even though I have a 585 phone number and still have my Rochester accent, I live in Pennsylvania and am trying to meet a deadline to install a recessed magazine rack. Do you have one in stock? As a former Rochesterian, can I cut the line and get one soon?”
The next morning I received an email reply from Hammer and Nail: “Not only can you cut the line, you are now first in line.” I don’t know of any other city where having lived there once makes you part of a select club for life. Here in Pennsylvania, our governor, Josh Shapiro, went to the University of Rochester. If I ever meet him I am sure I can disarm the formal conversation with, “Governor, do you miss Zweigle’s hots and Abbott’s Frozen Custard?”
My recessed magazine rack arrived within days. We immediately installed it. It looks great. But I was still curious. Who up in Rochester was making all these cool wood products that appealed more to the Etsy crowd than the Amazon bargain hunters? I wrote them again: “Can we talk on the phone?” Thus began my probe into a unique small business perched on the border of Durand Eastman Park in West Irondequoit.
Teresa and Nigel Ramoutar remodeled their house about four years ago. Like me, they encountered problems finding small but necessary items that were well-designed. Frustrated in seeking a wooden recessed toilet paper holder, they decided to make one themselves. Neither was a skilled carpenter. The only tools they had were a workbench and assorted hand tools in the garage. But they managed to make what they needed to complete their downstairs powder room remodel—and it looked great.
Sometimes necessity is serendipity. Teresa has a background in education management, but was not working at the time. Nigel is a Rochester Institute of Technology engineering graduate who has worked for a half-dozen local firms, but his gig with General Motors was ending. Could they make a business of their newfound interest in recessed shelves for the home? There was plenty of cutthroat competition on sites like Amazon, but the couple simply believed they could do better, especially if they watched costs carefully.
There is an old saying that reinventing your career is not so much finding a similar job but realizing that the skills you already have can be applied in a new, very different way. In their case, the combination of management and engineering gave them a path.
Hammer and Nail went into business in a corner of the couple’s garage. Teresa handled the finances, Nigel did the design and carpentry. From the recessed toilet paper holder they gradually expanded to other products.
“I didn’t know much about wood when we started, or carpentry,” Nigel admits. “So, I bought books and books of old carpentry techniques from used bookstores. Lakeside Lumber, in Victor, became our school room for learning about wood. We’d go there on Saturdays and they would patiently explain that to make our furniture the best we needed low-moisture hardwoods with fine grain like mahogany, teak, sapele and red oak.”
From toilet paper holders and recessed magazine shelves, the business grew to other products. Some of the products don’t seem to fit an easy explanation of how they decided to build them. Among these is a vinyl record cabinet.
“We built a cabinet for the vinyl records we listen to,” Teresa notes.
The couple met through an online dating service (the family now includes two children). Their first date was listening to old recordings from Trinidad. Both Teresa and Nigel share East Indian family roots from their generations past. Teresa’s family came to the U.S. by way of Guyana, and Nigel’s with generational stops in Trinidad and Tobago. Besides sharing old records, they try to keep the family culture alive by serving “home food” to their two children that consists of traditional East Indian dishes like curries along with Guyana prepared fresh fish.
Besides the vinyl record cabinet, the catalog lists wooden crafted floor stands for guitars and ukuleles.
“I play the guitar,” Nigel explains. “I need someplace to put it.”
The recessed locked display cabinet came from a customer who wanted it to display his art.
“About 50 percent of the items we make come from ideas suggested by our customers,” Nigel adds. “We encourage people to ask us to make custom items. If we can figure out how to build it, we’ll give it a try.”
Item by item, over four years, the Hammer and Nail catalog has grown to 40 items. The business has expanded from a corner of the garage to fill the entire garage. They are about to receive their first patent (a recessed retractable electric extension cord).
Nigel and Teresa are mindful of how lucky they have been. A couple who are both from immigrant families with a long history of migration: first from East India, then to Caribbean nations, and finally to the U.S. (where both were born).
Is the business profitable yet? “Some quarters it pays all our bills and some quarters we just break even,” Nigel says. “Luckily I have a day job as well!
“But it’s very satisfying in so many ways,” he continues. “It’s all ours—we started as a tiny business with one idea and lots of hard work, and our hope is to keep building it bigger to create jobs for many people. That’s our version of the American Dream.
“We are just one of the dreams becoming real in Rochester,” he emphasizes. “Do you know there’s a startup in the old Kodak Park that is making French fries that you don’t need to cook? Eat them right out of the bag. And the new company where I work, Adaptec, designs custom robotics and sorting systems from their offices in Henrietta and Corning. I’m very excited about the future. There is so much going on around Rochester and so many bright people.”
The city I remember living in so long ago saw the bankruptcy of Kodak, the decline of Bausch + Lomb, the departure of Hickey Freeman and the selling off of Taylor Instrument. There are many others too numerous to count. But the new Rochester is a very different place. With my 585 area code, my nasal-pronounced “A” and hard “R,” I’m happy to still be a member of the tribe.
Robert Lovenheim is a township supervisor in Pennsylvania and a former Rochesterian.
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