Subcontent Archive | Page 2 of 16

Click to hear Amir's story

Click to hear Sam's story

Hi, my name is Sam Wood. My partner Bob Smith and myself both own Smitty's Maintenance & Repair in Palmer, Pennsylvania. We do full collision, we work with all insurance companies, we also have a separate shop which is a complete mechanical repair. Anything from a tire repair to an engine replacement; we can pretty much handle anything that happens either in or outside your automotive needs. BOB: My name is Bob Smith, my partner Sam Wood and I have owned Smitty's Maintenance & Collision. We've been in business for over 41 years; we've dealt with New Tripoli Bank for about 16 years now. We both started this business with the motto that “if we do good work for a fair price and keep up with technology today, that we'd always be busy” and we're very fortunate we're busy all the time. SAM: We were with a big bank before. Every time that we needed to do any improvements in our business, it was always a big ordeal going through the loan process. BOB: When we came into this business, we knew that technology was changing and it seemed like we needed somebody that would listen to us and understand where we were and New Tripoli Bank really made that fit. SAM: My partner Bob and myself were talking about doing some major improvements to our body shop business, which included all kinds of new equipment, that will take us into the next 10 years or so in this business. BOB: Cars are changing every single day and it was going to require a fair amount of financing to do that and we went to New Tripoli and talked to them about that. They were very accommodating on getting us where we needed to be quickly and easily. SAM: I was talking with Dave about it and he told me ‘we like the direction your business is going so let's move forward with it.’ I got a hold of Dave Sherwin, Bob and I sat down and talked with them about what we needed and where we wanted to take this business. As simple as that we were moving forward with the whole project. It was the most pain-free experience we've had. BOB: Small business still needs to have that connection to the people they're dealing with and I really feel that both us and New Tripoli Bank strive to have that personal touch and that's what really makes the process so easy to work with. SAM: I’ve recommended New Tripoli Bank to multiple different businesses that I had dealings with. They do whatever it takes to move your business forward. They absolutely are vested in your business, they're there for you all the time.

Click to hear Maria's story

My name is Maria Medei and our business is Casilio Concrete. We're a family-owned business that's been in business for 83 years and we deliver and manufacture ready-mix concrete. We also have a trucking company that supplies us with all our raw materials and does stone deliveries for our crushing plant that recycles concrete block brick and stone. I started working on and off in the business in summers when I was in high school and through college. I came back to the business full time in 1981 and just worked my way up the ranks into the management part of our business. Before I started in management, my aunt was here running our business for a long time, along with my dad and my uncle, so there's always been a pretty dominant female in our business. We recently finished Lehigh University Science Center. We also did the Lehigh University dormitories. We did the Coplay Bridge a few years ago. We also did Werner Trucking, which was a very unique project in that the outside was all paved in about 15,000 yards of concrete. New Tripoli Bank has helped us a lot in accomplishing our business goals. We recently purchased a new plant in Nazareth. It was a turnkey plant, so we wanted to get in and running right away and I can't say enough of how helpful Bob was to get that done in such a timely manner. It was probably a three-week process from once we got our number until we were able to run and make concrete. When we buy something for a business it's not cheap. (laughs) Our trucks are expensive, our equipment we need is expensive, and New Tripoli Bank has always been there. We did about two or three months ago have a large check that came through that was a fraudulent check. In the morning, when I was looking at our account, I saw the check and I called Sundra right away and they closed our account. They helped us get our new account set up very quickly. I was worried that this was going to be a hard process but they made it so simple. They took care of that right away, it was just such an easy process for something that I thought was going to be so hard to resolve. We do probably 99.9% of our banking remotely. First thing I do when I turn my computer on in the morning is go on my bank accounts and I look at all of our accounts. I can pay all our loans online, I can transfer money online, I can pay bills online. It's a very efficient process to use the remote deposit, it's faster than writing up a deposit slip. Every day we're running checks through the machine, depositing them into the bank and they're there the next morning. I just think that the bank has helped our business grow. We had worked through some hard times a couple years ago and the bank was right there for us and I don't think we could have done it as well as we have without the help of New Tripoli Bank.

Click to hear Connie's story

Click to hear Sharon and Steph's story

SHARON: Hi I'm Sharon Bagonstose. STEPH: Hi I'm Steph Fenstermacher and Sharon and I are co-owners of the Buttered Crumb LLC here in New Tripoli. SHARON: The Buttered Crumb specializes in old-fashioned, made-from-scratch baked goods. STEPH: Things like molasses cakes, shoe-fly pies, sticky buns, different crumb cakes. SHARON: Cookies, kiffles, you name it, we make all kinds of baked goods. STEPH: Some things had changed at the company I was working for and my sister was talking about early retirement and we just decided to start a bakery out of the basement of my home. SHARON: My sister had approached me about this idea about opening up a home-owned bakery. Growing up in a large family, I was the oldest of five children. We did a lot of cooking for our family. STEPH: I didn't grow up in this business unless you count cooking for a family of seven. I was attracted to I guess just naturally it's something that I've always enjoyed doing. SHARON: I also loved home ec. class when I was in high school, to this day I'm still using some of the recipes that I had over 40 years ago. STEPH: One of the things that we're really proud of is our involvement with the Lowhill Food Pantry. We realized that we were making 500 Christmas cookies to feed about 40 people. So one of us got the braniac idea that we should contact the Food Pantry and see if we could donate those cookies. As of last year we were making over 2,000 for the Food Pantry at Christmas time. Anytime we've had tips over the last five years we've donated those, we don't keep those for ourselves, it's just something that we give back. SHARON: One of the things we got involved in a couple years ago is the Great Allentown Fair. Two years ago we started sponsoring one of the baking contests. This year we will be judging the Shoe Fly Pie Contest, so we're really excited about participating in that. STEPH: When we first started this business, we started out of my house. SHARON: And we were amazed at how fast we grew. We outgrew her home probably at least two years ago. We started looking for properties and we went with the New Tripoli Bank. We love the fact that it's a local bank. STEPH: New Tripoli Bank has been critical to getting us to the place we're at, giving us a mortgage for the building we're standing in. SHARON: We recently took out a small loan and the loan officer actually came here. It was such a busy day for us he offered to stop in here and have us finalize the papers and sign everything, which to me was wonderful that he saved me a trip. STEPH: New Tripoli Bank I really appreciate the fact that they give you a personal touch. You walk into the tellers and they know you by name. Or if you go through the drive thru it's "hey Steph how you doing today, when's the business opening?" SHARON: We were grateful to our friends, our family, our customers, the bank, everybody that I've just mentioned has helped us grow this business to a point that we never thought it would be. STEPH: In an industry that typically has a high fail ratio, they've taken a chance on us and just want to say thanks to New Tripoli Bank because we wouldn't here without them either. And one of the things that I love the most and actually my puppies love the most is when we go through the drive thru they each get a dog biscuit.

Click to hear the Fire Company's story

I am Bill McQuilken, I am a firefighter with the New Tripoli Fire Company, and I'm also President of the Fire Company. My name is Gary Kuntz, Jr. I'm the current Fire Chief at the Community Fire Company of New Tripoli. I served as Deputy Chief under Chief Peter Christ for the past 11 years and this is my first year as Fire Chief. BILL: The New Tripoli Fire Company actually started with a bunch of guys that got together in 1944 to discuss putting together a fire company. We received two army vehicles which we converted into fire trucks. Lehigh County commissioners approved the organization and we became the Community Fire Company of New Tripoli. GARY: We currently operate out of a brand new, state-of-the-art facility. We've incorporated an EMS unit into our facility; we have EMS coverage 24/7. We are the main hub of EMS and fire service for Lynn Township. We're doing very well with approximately 30 firefighters on our roster. We currently have five junior firefighters and we continue to grow as an organization. BILL: One of the most difficult things for all organizations across the United States has been dealing with the COVID pandemic. As a fire company, we were no longer able to raise funds, such as our annual "Guns & Cash Bash," hall rentals, and different types of events, which are vital to keeping our equipment maintained and keeping us afloat. We were able to still work through this, through different types of fundraisers, and attract some new firefighters to the organization, and continue to serve the residents of all of our surrounding communities without any interruptions. GARY: Our organization has served Lynn Township and the Northwestern community since May of 1945 in cooperation with the New Tripoli Bank. I know some of our original founders were highly involved with the Bank and the Fire Department BILL: They were there to help establish us, not only back in 1945 but all through the years. They've helped guide us financially, they've supported us with our fundraisers, they supported us over the years with the purchase of our trucks and our buildings. GARY: Our new building, our apparatus, gear for our members; the bank has been a big part of our organization since the beginning. BILL: I've had quite many meetings with Brenda in the customer service office since I've become president. She's guided me through many different types of issues and I had to be placed on lots of different accounts, and the bank has been of wonderful help. GARY: So, again, I would like to thank the New Tripoli Bank for being a partner with our organization, for being there for us in time of need. Whether it's monetary need, advice, just being a vital part of our community and helping our organization grow and flourish, and helping our members to provide fire protection for the Northwestern community.

Click to hear Jenae's story

My name is Jenae Holtzhafer and I'm the founder and executive director of the Kindness Project. The Kindness Project is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that serves children that are experiencing foster care by providing tangible goods and also enrichment opportunities for free. We are 100% donation-based and volunteer-run. We have over 100 volunteers and we've been able to serve over a thousand children across eastern Pennsylvania. The Kindness Project started in the end of 2017, when my husband and I started licensing to be foster parents. Our original intention was to create a foster closet which would have all the things kids need when they go into foster care. What we realized through the process is that families who are fostering them many times don't have the extra financial resources. We thought that this was something we should try to pursue; to provide support for families who really want to do this and not have the financial burden stop them from saying yes to taking children into their safe and structured homes. So in October of 2017, we began collecting donations in our dining room and little did we know that starting something out of plastic tubs in our dining room would lead to having a two-acre property that would allow for so much more for these children that we are serving. And what we see ourselves as now is a foster care community center, not just a foster closet, so we're really excited about the special events we're going to start having; free tutoring, free piano lessons, we've partnered with community organizations to provide free horseback riding and free swimming lessons. So many things that children typically don't have an opportunity to do when they are in the foster care system. As a small non-profit with limited resources and limited volunteers, we really needed to work with somebody who could make that process easy. We worked with other banks in the past and it was just so impersonal, so difficult at times, and when we met with New Tripoli, we walked out of there feeling so relieved that we'd finally found a bank that was just easy. We set up our accounts, the mobile app is fantastic; I barely have to go over physically to the bank which is huge for me because my time is limited. I love that i can just deposit checks through my phone late at night. If I do have to go to the bank, they're always so pleasant and they treat me like somebody they've known for 10 years. We really love New Tripoli not just for the ease of using their services but also that they truly care about us. We run a mini golf tournament every fall and they always sign up to be part of that, which just shows their commitment to us as a non-profit. That to us means the world because I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of other banks that would do something like that for a small nonprofit and so we could not be happier having chosen New Tripoli Bank as our bank partner.

Click to hear the Millers' story

ANDREW: Hello, I'm Andrew Miller.
JOHN: I'm Jonathan Miller, together we operate Blue Mountain Farms. Here at Blue Mountain Farms, we are a wholesale greenhouse, we sell annual potted plants to the Eastern Pennsylvania/New Jersey area. We sell to garden centers, fundraisers, and churches.
ANDREW: We grow seasonal plants, we start off the year with tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, lilies, a lot of that product goes into the local churches. Going into the Fall, where we raise a lot of the hardy chrysanthemums. After the Fall we move into Christmas season which we carry poinsettias, we also do some fresh greenery items which people can put outside, and some of that goes on to the cemeteries as well.
JOHN: My grandfather immigrated from Switzerland, and he started in East Hanover, New Jersey. He was there for many years, and then he moved the business here to Schuylkill County in 1974.
ANDREW: So, I grew up in the greenhouse business at a very young age, working with my grandparents and my parents. There's always something to do on the farm.
JOHN: In the last 10 years we have tripled in size. We have 180,000 square feet inside greenhouse space, and about 12 acres of outside production.
ANDREW: I've grown to enjoy the business. When you're in the greenhouse business, you see your product growing, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment. JOHN: When COVID hit, that was right before the Easter of 2020, we lost all of our sales to all the churches and all the garden centers had to be closed in the state of Pennsylvania. ANDREW: Every business has its hardships with the supply chain issues, fertilizers, plastic containers, soil, labor, just trying to battle all those things in the last couple years, it's been a lot. JOHN: We were very thankful for the PPP Loan to get us through that time. I worked with New Tripoli Bank and John Hemak, it was really easy and seamless. ANDREW: They try to understand your personal needs. New Tripoli really doesn't nickel and dime you with all the little fees JOHN: With the ATM, I can bank at any time. Sometimes I drop off the deposit at 10 o' clock at night. I can do a lot of stuff from the mobile app and if I need to, the bank is there to help me. ANDREW: I personally used them for my home mortgage loan and they were very easy to work with. They tend to listen to you more and understand the roles of farming. They're just a small community, and that's one of the features I really like about the bank. JOHN: New Tripoli Bank is just easy to deal with, they understand your business and they will listen to you.