Summers From the Warehouse
Less than a month ago, Florida kids ditched the books and proclaimed, “School’s out for summer!” Every summer during middle school, my friends and I would scream the words of the famous Alice Cooper song.
Today’s kids likely never heard the song and if they did, it would be played a phone app with the words blasting through implanted earbuds. The delivery method may resemble nothing of the 70s, but the rite of passage, although evolved over the decades, still reflects societal norms, expectations and new-age competitiveness.
Riding bikes, tanning on the beach and family road trips have been swapped for standardized test prep, sports camps, art camps, pre-college experiences, even study abroad. These are teens we’re talking about, not college students or adults.
Families have adopted new summer traditions in the race to advance their children and give them the best shot at life after high school. Parents craft their kids’ summers with the noblest of intentions — to provide, provide and provide more — but traditions of summers’ past may find their way into prominence as today’s preteens and high school students grapple with skills that aren’t learned by holding a phone. Real-life skills of working, answering to someone who doesn’t know, love or even likes your child impart the wisdom that can’t be taught online or in schools.
Traditions are as diverse as families, but all are born out of a sense of pride that is years in the making, carefully crafted, curated and tended. Many family traditions continue through generations, whether it’s a favorite recipe, the manner in which you celebrate or your work ethic.
In my family, one significant tradition emerged from the seeds of an entrepreneurial spirit, an enduring love for animals, and a desire to formulate the best all-natural products for pets.
“All-natural” was a misnomer in 1965, when my father and uncle convened in the 10”X20” detached office outside the 1950s block home where my father grew up in the modest Euclid-St. Paul neighborhood of St. Petersburg, Florida.
Uncle Gene’s chemistry background blended with my father’s creativity and entrepreneurial spirit to formulate the first Kenic pet-care product, Pink Pup Shampoo. This was a nod to the popular retro style of the time, right down to the bottle design that depicted a perfectly coifed prissy-looking poodle.
By the mid-1970s Kenic Pet Products was housed in a somewhat larger, but still small space in south St. Pete. By the early 1980s, Kenic moved a few blocks north to a moderately sized building in what is now the Warehouse Arts District, a popular neighborhood of craft breweries, antique shops, restaurants, and still a healthy amount of industry.
By the time my brother Steve and I were tapped to be Kenic’s newest summer employees, the Kenic had moved yet again into the last space it would occupy in St. Pete: a 5000-square-foot building just a couple of blocks from its previous site.
For Steve and me, it became a tradition that we would work and learn the family business. Memories from those summers conjure up olfactory reactions, like recognizing the distinctive ink smell from the screen print room anywhere that smell was found, or as someone who detests the flavor and smell of black licorice, associating that scent blue Kenic Pet Shampoo, as that was the chosen scent for that best-seller shampoo. And, while us kids were forbidden to be anywhere near the flea dip due to its strong chemicals when those orders were being filled the scent wafted through the warehouse.
Scenes of box-making, bottle filling, stacking of newly printed bottles for drying, and packing shipments played repeatedly over the five summers I worked at Kenic before my senior year of high school.
Instead of hanging out at the beach or on the sofa at home playing video games, we learned every facet of pet product production — from how the bottles containing the more than 40 products were printed on a screen printing machine and carefully filling bottles with shampoo out of a 55-gallon drum — to screwing on bottle caps and packing product for the daily UPS shipment.
We weren’t just the owner’s kids during those summers. We were employees. We stood among, and took direction from, the 20-something workers my dad had hired for part of each of those summers, where I gladly I traded calluses and tired feet for a healthy paycheck at the end of the week.
My teenage intellect didn’t permit me to understand at the time the gravity of the experience of working in a family business. There was no interview process, and certainly no air-conditioned office. Instead, we worked alongside the nice 20-something guys who’d showed up at my dad’s warehouse, willing to trade Michigan winters for Florida heat, for the promise of a job.
This was our family tradition: learn the business, gain invaluable experience and walk away invested. We knew what it felt like to perform physical labor. Today’s parents, myself included, might scoff at the idea of their children spending a majority of their summer sweating in a warehouse with people they hardly knew. While these life lessons didn’t improve our SAT scores, they gave us incomparable wisdom and gratitude. Humility and the satisfaction of earning one’s own money can’t be taught in a classroom. I’ll never forget how it felt as a 17-year-old to purchase my own plane ticket to visit my cousins in New Jersey.
That last summer before my senior year of high school marked the end of my employment at Kenic. But, the lessons have sustained me in many ways throughout my life.
Not all families are meant to work together. Frankly, not all should. I’m blessed that my first boss was my dad, who had the foresight to provide an incredible opportunity to my brother and me. He trusted us to learn the jobs and execute the tasks efficiently. And, we learned the important lesson that being the boss’ kid didn’t give you an automatic seat at a desk in an air-conditioned office.,
Kenic Pet Products is now Glo-Marr Products, and its headquarters are now in Bourbon Country instead of the Sunshine State. But, the same family-centered principles endure. At its core, Team Glo-Marr is a family of dedicated staffers who strive daily to create, produce and package quality pet-care products for happy and healthy pets.
And, the tradition continues. This past summer, my 15-year-old son Samuel, grandson of founder Fred Nicolosi, requested that he spend part of his summer working in the warehouse in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. So, he packed his bags, boarded a plane and spent a week on his feet, sweating, making the same kind of boxes I made 30 years ago, and packing the UPS trucks. And, he couldn’t wait to spend his first paycheck, one that he earned.
Here’s to summers spent sweating in warehouses rather than at the beach, making money rather than receiving an allowance and learning business skills instead of how to take the SAT. Get to work and have a great summer.
