by Gary Schenkel | Mar 9, 2014 | Business
Welcome to the second in a three-part series of posts about products manufactured and available for purchase in Champaign County, Ohio.
For this post, I take you to Williams Hardware in Urbana, a locally-owned store that’s part of the Do It Best cooperative of independent hardware and home improvement stores.
This post features products made by two long-time Urbana manufacturers. The first product (I hope) will soon be back in season, replacing snow shovels and deicer.
A W.B. Marvin adjustable window screen
Until then, adjustable window screens made by W.B. Marvin Manufacturing Co. of Urbana sit back in the stockroom.
Pete White, W.B. Marvin’s general manager, said that in the past year the Urbana plant has produced more than a million of the screens in various sizes for national and international markets and retailers that include Home Depot, Lowe’s, True Value, Kmart, Ace and Big Lots. They’re also available at the Urbana Walmart store.
“We sell more than we ever have,” White said.
And just seven years ago, W.B. Marvin, founded in 1915 by William Marvin Johnson, closed its doors. The company started out making lightweight window fans before introducing metal rail adjustable screens in 1936, screen window fans in 1945 and later space heaters. Due to supply problems for the heaters, the facility shut down.
Then along came Thermwell Products Co., Inc. of New Jersey, maker of Frost King weatherstripping and insulation products. Thermwell acquired W.B. Marvin in January 2008, reopened the Urbana facility and put the plant’s laid off employees back to work. And Thermwell has since purchased additional property for future expansion.
Richard Van Buskirk of Williams Hardware with a Desmond Stephan grinding wheel dresser.
W.B. Marvin’s summer line of window screens formed the perfect complement to Frost King’s winterizing products, Mel Gerstein, Thermwell president, said. “It would be a tragedy to allow the Marvin name and quality reputation to disappear.”
You’ll find the other locally made product in Williams’ tool section – a grinding wheel dresser made by the Desmond Stephan Manufacturing Company, which has been in continuous operation in Urbana since 1898.
Desmond Stephan, touting the only complete line of wheel dressers, markets across the U.S. and in 17 other countries, mostly through industrial distributors that sell to foundries and small machine shops.
Three Cheers for Local Hardware Stores
Besides Williams Hardware, Champaign County has two other Do It Best stores – Downing’s Hardware in Mechanicsburg and Skelley Lumber Co. in Urbana.
I’m a fan of local hardware stores. Home repair-impaired and the owner of an old house, I value the personal attention I get when I cross the threshold of Williams or Skelley’s. (I’m sure the same could be said of Downing’s, though living in Urbana, I haven’t shopped there yet.)
They save me time and sanity. I carry in odd, antiquated, worn out pieces of plumbing, or what not, and I soon leave with advice and replacement parts. I’ve found that at big box stores, I wander in search of a sales associate and a solution to my home repair dilemma.
What local stores do you depend on?
I’ll be back with one more post for this series — and then a post about the changing of the guard and continuing of tradition in a Champaign County business that’s been a landmark since 1893.
by Gary Schenkel | Mar 1, 2014 | Business
Walmart draws a fair share of accusations across small-town America. Among them: Walmart sells low-priced merchandise from China and forces local retailers out of business.
As a well-known spokesperson for thankless, dirty jobs, Mike Rowe recently took some of the flak for Walmart when he voiced a commercial announcing the mega-retailer’s pledge to buy $250 billion of U.S.-made products over the next 10 years.
Sonja Ropp of the Urbana Walmart store holds two of the American Baking Classics products made by Bundy Baking Solutions.
Responding to the negative comments left on his Facebook page and explaining why he did the spot, Rowe wrote:
“Dozens of American factories are going to reopen all over the country. Millions of dollars will pour straight into local economies, and hundreds of thousands of new manufacturing positions will need to be filled.
“There’s a lot of merchandise currently in Walmart that’s manufactured right here in the USA.”
Made in USA – in Urbana
Did you know that the Urbana Walmart store sells products that are manufactured right here – in Urbana, Ohio?
If not, don’t feel bad.
When I asked Sonja Ropp, Urbana Walmart zone merchandising supervisor, if I could snap a photo of her holding an American Bakeware Classics brand 12-cup muffin pan and half sheet pan, she was surprised. And not just by my request.
Until I told her, she had no idea that the products, and others on the shelves behind her, were made by Urbana’s own Bundy Baking Solutions.
The world’s leading baking corporations have long recognized Bundy for the quality and durability of its commercial baking pans and associated products. Now home bakers are discovering Bundy’s quality through the American Bakeware Classics consumer line, made since 2013 for Walmart.
Wendi Ebbing, marketing manager for Bundy, says that the company makes other consumer brands, such as USA Pan, for retailers that include Williams-Sonoma, Target and Bed Bath & Beyond.
“We are known as experts in manufacturing baking pans and we’re thrilled to bring the same quality that commercial bakers have come to appreciate into the home,” Ebbing said.
What other Champaign County-manufactured products are available at local retail stores?
Share your answers in the comments section below.
And stay tuned for upcoming posts.
Today’s bonus: A downtown Urbana retailer shares her view of Walmart at the end of a previous Champaign Uncorked! post. It may not be what you’d expect.
by Gary Schenkel | Sep 19, 2013 | Agriculture, Events, History, Music, Tourism
I’m looking forward to a festival-filled fall weekend in Champaign and Union counties.
I invite you to join me at the Ohio Fish and Shrimp Festival at Freshwater Farms of Ohio, just north of Urbana, and the Covered Bridge Bluegrass Festival in Union County – both Friday through Saturday, September 20-22. Click on the links for details.
Both feature a hearty selection of live music and good food — and lots of family fun.
Not Your Average Harvest Festival
An unusual fall harvest celebration for Ohio, the Fish and Shrimp Festival marks Freshwater Farm’s annual freshwater shrimp harvest with lots of mouth-watering locally grown shrimp, as well as trout grown on the farm, too.
Music on the outdoor stage includes folk, blues, country, rock, reggae — and steel drum. Other features include a shrimp peeling and eating contest, games, self-guided tours of the farm, displays of native aquatic creatures, a chance to pet Ohio’s largest native fish, the sturgeon, and the debut of a new habitat for the farm’s resident alligator, Fluffy, who made a surprise appearance at the festival three years ago, delivered by sheriff’s deputies after they caught her in a local pond.
A Festival That Has It All Covered
The Muleskinners Bluegrass Band will perform at the Covered Bridge Bluegrass Festival.
Union County’s historic covered bridges set the theme for the Covered Bridge Bluegrass Festival. One of the bridges, the Pottersburg Bridge at 17141 Inskeep-Cratty Rd., North Lewisburg, will serve as the festival’s centerpiece and the setting for an elegant sunset dinner, a breakfast and a church service. The bridge also will serve as the stage for a variety of bluegrass bands and folk musicians.
Other festival features include guided bridge tours, a pie baking contest and auction, a marketplace of antiques and local artists’ work, painting classes, a vintage fashion show, old-fashioned games for kids, horse drawn wagon rides, appearances by folk artist Billy Jacobs and a concert by Nashville bluegrass band the Banjo Cats.
See you out and about this weekend.
by Gary Schenkel | Sep 16, 2013 | Business, Tourism
This summer my son Alex got to talk with people from New York to the state of Washington. Not to mention people from other parts of the world like Russia, Norway and the United Kingdom.
And he traveled a mere dozen miles from our house in Urbana, Ohio, to his summer job, guiding tours at Ohio Caverns.
I bring this up because we locals often take for granted the treasures in our own backyard.
My son Alex guiding a tour this summer at Ohio Caverns.
Plus we don’t fully grasp the economic value to our community of visitors who take an interest in what we’ve got around us, or under our feet. It’s bigger business than most of us probably imagine.
$40 billion. That’s how much money visitors leave behind in Ohio each year.
$60 million. That was Champaign County’s share in 2011, according to the Ohio Development Services Agency – $45.6 million in visitors’ purchases, $11.5 million in wages for visitor-related jobs and $5.8 million in taxes paid by visitors.
Melinda Huntley, executive director of the Ohio Travel Association, shared those figures in a recent presentation, “Tourism Is Everybody’s Business,” hosted by the Champaign County Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.
Her message: All businesses – not just those commonly considered tourist-related – benefit from attracting and welcoming visitors to Champaign County.
Opportunity to Grow
And with a more concentrated, cooperative effort, Champaign County’s income from tourism could easily be greater.
Huntley offered an example: Lake Erie lighthouses once promoted their sites individually. Then they banded together to market cooperatively, and their attendance climbed.
A similar situation is already happening in Champaign County. The 20 antique and vintage shops in downtown Urbana promote one another through Antique & Vintage Shops of Urbana.
United, they provide shoppers and visitors more choices, which has ended up convincing more people from the Dayton and Columbus metro areas to make shopping excursions to Urbana.
Another key to increasing tourism is developing more overnight accommodations so visitors can stay longer and experience more of what Champaign County has to offer – to name a few examples, Ohio Caverns, Cedar Bog nature preserve, the Champaign Aviation Museum, agritourism attractions like Freshwater Farms of Ohio, the Simon Kenton Trail bike path (which stretches south to Cincinnati and soon will be headed north), and a wide range of special events, restaurants and shopping.
How to Get Involved
The Champaign County Visitors Bureau is focused on growing our tourism economy. If you’d like to join the effort, contact Sandi Arnold, executive director of the Chamber and Visitors Bureau – 937-653-5764 or info@champaignohio.com. She’s looking for new members to join the Visitor Bureau’s advisory group, chaired by Pat Thackery.
How do you suggest attracting more visitors to Champaign County?
by Gary Schenkel | May 8, 2013 | General, Tourism
In the beginning, with the best of intentions, I created a blog. Today I return to Champaign Uncorked! anew.
As in the original vintage of Champaign Uncorked!, I will celebrate the people, businesses, organizations, attractions and special events that make Champaign County, Ohio, a place I’ve been thankful to call home for the past 30+ years.
Occasionally Champaign Uncorked! will step across the county line. Nestled between the Dayton and Columbus metro areas, Champaign County offers the best of small town living with big city diversity just a quick jaunt down the road. 
I invite you to check out a recently launched marketing alliance of the visitors bureaus of Champaign, Logan and Union counties – Ohio’s Ramblin’ Road Trip – which capitalizes on combined strengths and tourist attractions.
And I invite you to join me as I open this newly re-vinted blog and toast the sights, tastes and experiences of Champaign County, Ohio, and the surrounding area.
What are your favorite features or memories of Champaign County?
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