Erie woodworker Armando Reyes on how his Erie business survived
Watch Erie businessman Armando Reyes, a custom woodworker, who found local clients stuck at home during COVID wanting to change their surroundings.
Greg Wohlford, Erie Times-News
Darrell Roberts had about a dozen people on the payroll shortly after opening Triple D’s Tasty Grill in the Liberty Plaza in early 2021.
The restaurant remains open, but these days it’s just Roberts and one other person behind the counter.
More: Search our Erie County Restaurant Revitalization Fund database
Restaurant hours have been trimmed, expectations altered and ambitious breakfast plans set aside. But more than a year and a half later, Triple D’s is still standing.
Owners of small businesses tend to agree on one important point: Starting one is rarely easy.
Long hours are the norm, and conventional wisdom holds that it often takes years to turn a profit. Some never reach the point of solvency. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 45% of all new businesses fail within five years.
It’s no surprise then that COVID-19 — which reached Erie in March 2020 — and the economic disruptions that spilled over, including shutdowns, stay-at-home orders, supply-chain disruptions, worker shortages and inflation, have proved challenging for some of Erie County’s newest businesses.
More: PPP loans injected millions into Erie County workplaces. Here’s who got the most
The Erie Times-News spoke with the owners of five businesses that have launched, re-launched or expanded since March 2020.
During a period when numerous Erie businesses have both opened and closed, all five remain in business.
But like millions of Americans, whose lives have been affected by sickness, death, shortages and high prices, these young businesses have been shaped by the virus.
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Primo Tailoring: Choosing not to give up
Louis Geramita, 25, had every reason to worry when he opened Primo Tailoring in 2020 in the Performing Arts Collective Alliance at 1505 State St. and when he moved a year later into a storefront owned by the Erie Downtown Development Corp. at 421 State St.
Lockdown orders had long since been lifted by that time. But the long-term trend of more casual clothing had been fueled by the new COVID-shaped reality of remote work. For many, T-shirts and sweatpants had become the new definition of business casual.
In short, the demand for suits and dress clothing seemed to have found a new low — a worrisome conclusion for someone in the business of high-end clothing.
Despite that, Geramita said business is good and getting better.
“We have two tailors and myself, my wife who works in the business, and a couple of other people we are thinking of bringing into the business,” he said on a recent afternoon.
Even though many businesses, including Erie Insurance, Erie County’s largest employer, were slow to return to the office, Geramita said some people found they had clothes that needed to be altered as they began to emerge from their homes.
Geramita doesn’t stress over what the evidence suggests about his business model.
“We knew what the obstacles were and how to tackle them,” he said. “The way we wanted to tackle the clothing industry wasn’t coming from a place of necessity but from a place of want. We are trying to hit that level of affordable luxury for people who don’t have to dress up for work but would like to. And when they do dress up, they want to look and feel their best.”
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Geramita, whose store makes custom suits, provides tailoring services and sells shirts, suits, socks and ties, said he’s probably the most expensive source for men’s clothing in the Erie area.
“I have heard it said that it never pays to be the second-most-expensive person in town,” Geramita said. “You are either the cheapest — which is a full business model that you dive into from the beginning — or the most expensive.
“But to be one of the middle players who are competing on price, eventually you kill margins until you have nothing for yourself,” he said.
Geramita said he thinks of his business as a destination, a place that customers might seek out regardless of location. And he likes to think that his location is playing a role in the rebirth of downtown Erie.
In an era of worker shortages and record inflation, Geramita could hardly lose sight of the challenges ahead.
But he also knows that he’s living his dream.
“I have always wanted to own a business, whatever it was, and clothing, fashion and tailoring are what I am passionate about,” he said. “In my mind, I don’t think we can fail until we give up on it. So, we are just choosing not to give up.”
More: Here’s a list of restaurant, entertainment businesses in Erie awarded $5,000 COVID grants
Triple D’s Tasty Grill: Adjusting to a new reality
When Darrell Roberts, a longtime food truck operator, opened Triple D’s Tasty Grill in the Liberty Plaza in 2021, he had high hopes. In May 2021, Roberts talked about his vision of the American dream, which included owning a business, a car and a house.
“I’m just trying to make my American dream come true,” he said then. “I think the American dream is for everyone as long as you work for it.”
About a year and a half later, Roberts said he still feels good about the future of his business, which specializes in wings, Philly cheesesteak sandwiches and burgers.
But the reality of the business does not match up with his original vision.
“My challenge has been just keeping employees,” said Roberts, who started out paying $14 an hour. “The pandemic changed that a lot. Mindsets are different. People don’t take work seriously like they used to. I have people come in and leave right away.”
Roberts said his staff has been reduced to just himself and one other person.
“How did I lose 12 employees?” he asked. “I have been open for a year and a half.”
Roberts, who was busy on the afternoon of Oct. 12 adding parmesan cheese and other toppings to an order of chicken wings, acknowledged that the work isn’t for everyone.
“It can be fast-paced. You have to be a people person,” he said. “I think the pandemic has stirred up a lot of people. Most people don’t want to work eight hours anymore. I don’t get it.”
Roberts, who worked for years as a teacher’s assistant and coach for the Erie School District, has learned to adapt.
He expected breakfast to be a big hit. When it wasn’t, he shifted to a later schedule.
“I have been changing my days and times since I have been open for the last year and a half. I just started a new schedule and I am going to stick with it,” he said.
Roberts said he’s resisted the urge to raise prices even though he’s paying more for everything from cooking oil to chicken wings.
A veteran food truck operator, Roberts said he has no regrets about opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant location during a pandemic and the economic turbulence that has followed.
“I am more of a spiritual kind of person,” he said. “I think it was all my timing. I do it when God is ready.”
After a slow summer, Roberts admits there are limits to his optimism.
“If I have to close down another day, it will be tough for me to stay in business,” he said.
Lake Erie Woodworks: Building things for people
Armando Reyes has made a living as a mechanic for most of his adult life.
But the 40-year-old Chicago native never lost his love of woodworking, which he learned alongside his grandfather, father, and uncles.
“They kind of passed it down along the lines of the DIY handiwork that they would do,” he said. “When we bought our house, I had to fix it up and started buying tools and built a little workshop. I took it a little further than my dad and my uncles did, really diving into different furniture types and styles. I kind of built it into a little side business.”
Eventually, with the encouragement of his wife, he decided, “Let’s treat it as a real business and see what happens.”
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In 2018, he started Lake Erie Woodworks, which makes custom furniture and cabinets.
Thanks to a series of stops and starts, during which Reyes went to work for a time in a friend’s home-remodeling business, it wasn’t until January 2021 that he committed himself full-time to the business.
It was the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 that prompted Reyes to hit pause on the business for a few months in 2021.
“It was a whole lot of unknowns and I did not want to take that risk,” he said.
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What he didn’t realize at first was that the public’s reaction to the pandemic would actually work in his favor.
“I think COVID and people being at home was the (impetus) for our business starting to grow,” he said. “It was people wanting to have new things for their house and fix all the things that they were seeing. Our business grew out of people being home.”
Remote workers not only had government payments in their accounts, but they also were spending more time in their homes and grew weary of their old battered decks, time-worn kitchens and leaky bathrooms.
“That was the reason to go to work with my friend in remodeling,” Reyes said. “He said they were busier than we ever wanted to be and I think it’s continued.”
Meanwhile, Lake Erie Woodworks has enough orders to keep Reyes busy for the next few months.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges.
“We are slowly growing,” he said. “It’s not a big windfall. I am still probably making less than I ever did as a mechanic.”
The problem, Reyes said, is that space is tight in his workshop at 1113 Walnut St.
“In order for us to add another person, we would need more space,” Reyes said. “It’s already tight with two people.”
Whatever the challenges, Reyes is proud of the business planted in the soil of a pandemic and a financial downturn.
“It’s my business and my work,” he said. “I get to be creative and build things for people.”
TRUTH, Materialistic Boutique: Dreams merge in cost-cutting move
Two or three days a week you can find Marcus Knight behind the counter at Triple D’s, sometimes working alongside his friend Darrell Roberts.
His presence there represents a dream that’s been altered to fit the challenges of the day.
Like Roberts, Knight, 36, is a Liberty Plaza business owner who in 2021 opened a branded clothing store called TRUTH, an acronym for Trust, Respect, Understand, Teach and Honor.
Knight, who spent time in prison in his early 20s, sees the store as a way to start building generational wealth while setting an example for his children.
More: The ranks of Black-owned businesses in Erie are small but growing
But financial challenges have prompted Knight to reshape his dreams.
Not only is he working part-time at Triple D’s, but he’s also moved his clothing store into another Liberty Plaza space operated by his girlfriend, Shateria Franklin, who opened Materialistic Boutique in the Liberty Plaza earlier in 2021.
The two stores share the rent and other expenses but operate as separate entities. Thanks to merging their businesses, the monthly rent was cut in half to $3,000, Knight said.
“The bills were outweighing, so it was the smartest move to put the stores together,” he said. “The finances got tight. It was about making smarter financial choices.”
In hindsight, Franklin and Knight recognize the advantage of launching their businesses at a time when government stimulus checks and larger unemployment checks had put extra money into the pockets of their customers.
“The timing was good in a way,” Knight said. “They were getting money out to a lot of people.”
Franklin credits COVID relief money with strong sales during her first year in business. More recently, inflation left many consumers focused instead on food, rent and other essentials.
“But my sales are down now,” she said. “I think people kind of got back in the flow of normal life and normal stuff. You are not shopping as much. I think that is where my business took a pivotal turn. You put (purchases) on hold.”
Franklin worked for years as a paralegal after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but said she’s is happier owning her own business, even on the slow days when the gap between one customer and the next is long.
“I am a passion-driven person,” she said. “I feel like if you like what you’re doing, then it’s not work.”
Franklin said that looking back to the early days of free-flowing cash gave her a taste of what she and Knight might aspire to when the economy returns to something that looks more like normal.
“We believe in it so much,” she said of the two businesses. “We have built a really good clientele. We do pretty well. We could do tremendously better.”
Jim Martin can be reached at jmartin@timesnews.com.
