By ELLIOT WELD
When Nancy Larick joined Larick Associates, a Port Washington company that dates back through three Larick generations, in 1980, she had a goal in mind of bringing the company to its 100th year.
This year, she reached that goal but never expected it to be during a global pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the economy.
Larick Associates is a promotional products company, which she said is an events-driven business and gets a boost from ceremonies like school graduations. With no in-person events happening at the moment, sales have taken a hit.
Although sales of a certain type of item have taken off.
“I’m just inundated all day about masks and sanitizers and gowns,” Larick said. “This is not a fun thing.”
With the reopening process in sight, Larick said things have begun to pick up somewhat, and she hopes to get back to business as usual by September.
Larick’s husband, Eric Mohr, a substitute teacher by day, began working with the company’s sales team in 2008. Mohr said that even before the pandemic hit, the biggest disrupting factor in the industry was the rise of the internet.
“It’s harder to develop a client relationship. You’re more of a consultant now,” Mohr said.
He went on to talk about how the customer interacts more with products through the computer interface rather than a salesperson, making his job more difficult.
As in most professions, Mohr said, video calls have become a big part of the day-to-day operation in the promotional products industry. He had just gotten off a Zoom call with clients before being interviewed.
The history of the company dates back to Nancy’s grandfather, Emmanuel Larick, who founded Larick Associates in New York City in 1920.
Emmanuel used to sell items such as leather products and calendars and hired a large number of salespeople. He would board trains to Albany to sell things to the passengers when sales stagnated.
Nancy’s father, Stuart Larick, had a different eye for the advertising specialties business (Nancy said this was what the business was called until about 20 years ago when it became known as promotional products).
Coming from an engineering background, Nancy said, her father was more of the intellectual type. He shrank the company’s sales team to its current size of three and began employing more conventional sales techniques, whereas Emmanuel Larick had used a routine where he would throw his watch at the wall to signify how durable his products are.
Nancy Larick joined the company with her brother in 1980. A native of Great Neck, she describes herself as part of the “Vietnam generation” and at first, did not want to be apart of an industry as commercial as sales. She worked as a publicist for authors for a few different companies and tried her hand at the business in France at one point. She said she views the role of the publicist as “fake sales.”
At her last job at a freelance publicity firm, she was not happy. On her last day she went and cleaned out her desk and then was fired by her boss in retaliation. One of the authors she had publicized wrote about racket sports. On that day, she gave him a call.
“So I dried my tears and he said ‘when can you come in,’ I was hired the next day,” Larick said.
She was sent to work for five weeks at the U.S. Open tennis tournament. Through connections she made there, she got a job in sales at the Virginia Slims tournament, a major women’s tennis circuit at the time. This was her first foray into real sales.
“I found that to be much more satisfying than doing publicity,” Larick said.
Around that time, Stuart Larick wanted Nancy to join Larick Associates. Although she had reservations, she joined after her work with the tennis circuit.
“I was terrified of starting with my father,” Larick said. “My father was the heavy who had gotten rid of all those other salespeople.”
Nancy Larick has kept the company going through trials and tribulations. Her father died in 1993 and at that point her brother, Robert Larick, who joined the company at the same time as Nancy, asked to be bought out, which turned into a messy process that lasted six months and the two did not speak for a time.
“We had to empty out our coffers to pay my brother back,” Nancy said.
The company eventually began making money again and last year hit its high sales goal. It was on track to hit the high goal again this year until the pandemic derailed that. Now Nancy Larick said the goal is to “not suffer too much.”
Mohr agreed that there are pitfalls to working with family and that one must keep personal matters out of the office to keep morale up and make the company look professional. He said that Larick Associates’ strength is in its customer service.
When asked what advice she would give to someone looking to get into the sales business, she said to focus on your staff and get people who think of the customer.
“I would say hire people you like and make sure you’ve gotten the most competent person and pay them, show them that you appreciate them. It pays to pay more,” Larick said.
