FEATURED STORY FROM THE Best of BG – 2013 ISSUE
Aardvark
Right at Home on Main Street
Gary Bell was looking for a job with full-time pay in 1997 when his business partners told him they wanted to divest themselves of their share of a small screen-printing and T-shirt shop they owned in Rossford. It didn’t take Bell long to make a decision.
“I was looking for a job at that time, so I bought it,” he says. “I was sticking my neck out, but I knew how to do it — I’d taught a lot of kids how to do this sort of thing.” It turned out to be what you could fashionably call “a good business move.” Bell soon after moved the business to Bowling Green, and today Aardvark Screen Printing & Embroidery is located at 123 S. Main St. and is a stable part of Bowling Green’s downtown business district.
Bell had been training to own his own screen-printing business most of his adult life … he just didn’t know it. With a master’s degree from Kent State in industrial arts education in his hip pocket, he taught drafting, photography and printing at Crestwood High School in Mantua, Ohio, then worked in a print shop for three years assembling film to develop 4-color plates.
From there, in 1980, Bell relocated to Northwest Ohio for a two-year appointment teaching visual communications at BGSU. He proceeded to teach graphics education at Macomber-Whitney Technical Vocational High School in Toledo for nearly 10 years, and spent another two years at Penta County Vocational School.
It was during his time at Macomber-Whitney that he and two friends started an “after-school business” called Homemade Beer and Wine Supply. After a while, they were running a screen-printing operation out of the same building. One of Bell’s partners, an English professor at Owens Community College, came up with the “Aardvark name” and “it stuck in a millisecond,” Bell says.
“We were (beer brewing and winemaking) suppliers and were offering glassware and custom printing on coffee mugs and glasses,” Bell says. “But no one wanted the glassware. Everyone kept coming in to buy T-shirts. So we bought the T-shirt equipment and got started.”
Bell planted stakes in Bowling Green in 1997 in a cramped 1,500-square-foot space sandwiched between two other shops at the corner of College and Wooster Streets, right across from the BGSU campus. Aardvark Screen Printing’s business grew to the point that it grew out of the space. In 2006, Aardvark moved uptown to its current location when Falcon House sporting goods went out of business. The BG mayor and a ribbon-cutting ceremony greeted Aardvark’s downtown arrival.
Whereas Bell opened his original shop with only one employee other than himself, today he proudly points to the 11 employees that currently make up his payroll. His daughter, Kim Polinsky, doubles as his general manager and has worked with him since the 1990s. Two other employees have worked for Aardvark eight and 12 years, respectively.
Aardvark is more than a T-shirt shop. The store has a large retail area, also offering everything from varsity letter jackets to hats, golf shirts, ladies apparel, disc golf equipment, and more than 900,000 printed promotional products and party favors.Aardvark’s client lists include more than 100 area businesses; Bowling Green, Ostego, Elmwood and Eastwood high schools; youth sports teams; several community and BGSU organizations; area fire departments; and its next-door neighbors on Main Street.
Of the downtown businesses, Bell says, “We’re all a tight-knit group. We all run our own businesses, but we all operate on a first-name and cordial basis, and work together to identify and make improvements to downtown busines
Bell says one way to improve business in downtown Bowling Green is to increase the casual foot traffic by BGSU’s 16,000 students.
“More students downtown would really help,” Bell says. “As it’s been, students might come in your store specifically wanting something, but they don’t just come downtown to browse. “And we have a very nice downtown. It’s attractive and efficient, with parking close to the stores. It’s not the mall, but there are a lot of very viable businesses downtown.”