By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
A new name has popped up in downtown Bowling Green – Three Cord. Pop into the shop at 123 S. Main Street and the faces and décor seem awfully familiar … just like Aardvark Screening Printing.
Among those smiling faces inside is Gary Bell, the founder and owner of Aardvark, and now, happily, he says, an employee of Three Cord, a printing firm headquartered in Archbold.
Earlier this year as pandemic restrictions took hold, Aardvark’s business hit the skids.
Aside from some jobs already ordered and paid for, business went down to almost zero, Bell said.
Kim Polinsky, Bell’s daughter and the shop’s general manager, said that February and January usually are the shop’s off-season. “We need March, “ she said.
But instead of the expected spring rush, they got the pandemic.
School and club sports were canceled. The businesses downtown were on ice. Festivals and family gatherings weren’t happening.
“The bottom dropped out of my market,” Bell said. He wondered what he would do. At 73, he was old enough to retire. He had a lot of expenses. He was ready to pack it in.
“At the time there was no end in sight,” Polinsky said. “There was no way for us to stay afloat even a couple of months.”
She approached Three Cord about buying some of Aardvark’s equipment. They told her, she recalls, “if we work together we can keep it going.”
It was, Bell said, “an offer I couldn’t refuse, and so here I am.”
Bell dissolved the Aardvark business and was absorbed by Three Cord. The name on the sign changed, but the business not so much.
Three Cord, Bell said, has a large print shop in Archbold, so all the work will be done there. They also have a full art department.
Three Cord has a more extensive sign business, so that will be offered as well.
But local orders will pass through the BG shop.
The business goes back more than 30 years. Bell was teaching graphic arts and printing at Toledo’s Macomber vocational school. He and two partners started the business, which sold beer and wine making supplies. The Rossford-based enterprise started printing on glassware. The partners departed and Bell, who has also taught in Bowling Green State University’s College of Technology, moved what was now a printing business to Bowling Green at the corner of East Wooster and South College streets.
When Falcon House, an established sporting goods shop closed, Bell moved the operation downtown.
Polinsky said working with Three Cord is a good fit. They two are a family run operation. “It’s a real family feel.”
“It’s going to be seamless for the customers,” he said. “Same smiling faces out front with new products and new ideas.”
Business, he said, is slowly starting to pick up in most areas. Even with the Black Swamp Arts Festival canceled, the event still had a commemorative t-shirt printed to sell to fans as a fundraiser.
Not being the owner now suits Bell fine. “It takes a whole lot of load off my shoulders, not having to make payroll every two weeks. I like it. I’m too old not to like it.”
And he still enjoys what he does. If he didn’t have the shop, “I don’t know what I’d do.”
