"It's always good to have the mayor cutting up ribbons and talking you up," says Mayor Anthony M. Masiello.
The natural tendency among these inner-city businesspeople to shore one another up makes the city of 300,000 feel like a giant entrepreneurial support group. Raccuia counts exactly one employee who came to Integrity through any venue as impersonal as a newspaper ad. Integrity driver Edward Romanini is an old friend from -- where else? -- the Butler, where he played baseball and "hung out with Napes," as he refers to Naples. (Romanini's older brother did his hanging with Delprince.) Another driver, Ed Nagy, operated a Ferris wheel at one of Hammerl's earlier ventures, a traveling carnival. Paul Nasca, one of four sales reps, played baseball both against Raccuia (in high school) and beside him (in college). Naples, who lives half a mile from Raccuia and is godfather to his son (an honor Raccuia returns), was a financial analyst at the local branch of the Federal Reserve Bank when Raccuia suggested he come aboard as a partner and buy 25% of Hammerl's interest. "I was looking for a change," says Naples, who had worked at the Fed for nearly 14 years after graduating from Canisius College, also Raccuia's alma mater. "And it looked like we could really build something here."
By "here" Naples means Integrity Distribution; but he might as well be talking about Buffalo itself. Paladino diagnoses the city as "a community that collectively doesn't have any self-esteem." But the members of this business circle share a (guarded) optimism that is reflected in city government, most blatantly in the renaming of its redevelopment agency from the Buffalo Enterprise Development Corp. to the Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp. "I liked getting the word renaissance in there," says Alan H. DeLisle, who made the switch when he became president of the organization, two years ago. "It gives me something to shoot for."
Raccuia and DeLisle both worked for Anthony M. Masiello, who was then state senator. (Masiello is now in his second term as Buffalo's mayor.) Like so many Buffalo connections, the one between Raccuia and DeLisle has continued to bear fruit: DeLisle helps Raccuia identify fertile spots to prospect for new customers. For example, DeLisle pointed Integrity's owner toward one downtown area that the city has been trying to seed with dot-com companies. Figuring the newcomers will need to rent office furniture, Raccuia has worked to gain a literal "early mover" advantage there. "If we do one of those offices, we can use that as a referral for other companies moving in," says Raccuia, who signed on his first dot-com customer more than a year ago.
And if he needs referrals, Raccuia can collect them from the highest echelons of city government. "We come from the same neighborhood, and we share a similar past," notes Mayor Masiello, who frequented the Butler with his boyhood buddy Bonifacio, now a council member. The Butler's West Side environs, not surprisingly, are well represented in city hall. The mayor's brother, Mike, who -- for reasons involving an unlikely combination of yellow galoshes and a country-club golf course -- is referred to as Boots by Raccuia, is director of stadiums and auditoriums. Buffalo's Sewer Authority, the sole city agency among Integrity's customers, is run by one of the CEO's former neighbors. And when Integrity's drivers are ticketed or city snowplows block the company's docks, Raccuia places a call to the director of parking enforcement. They're old friends. From the Butler, of course.
Visiting city hall with Raccuia, I ask him the whereabouts of a rest room. A man walking down the hall toward us stops and motions me to follow him. Unlocking the door to an apparently exclusive washroom, he introduces himself as Michael A. Seaman, city treasurer and a Butler alum. I emerge to find Seaman and Raccuia analyzing each other's golf swings.
When Delprince visits city hall, he doesn't swing in the halls, but he does stride through them like a one-man parade, blowing kisses and slapping backs. Oddly enough, it's the same way he floats through one of his stores, except that the city hall folks don't work for him. Still, Masiello sounds at times as if he's trying to sell his services to the retailer. "It's always good to have the mayor cutting up ribbons and talking you up," Masiello points out.
In fact, it's Delprince who introduces me to Masiello. Emerging from a meeting with Council Member Bonifacio, we pause in city hall's marble-floored lobby to admire the bust of Buffalo native Grover Cleveland. "Is there anybody else you'd like to see?" Delprince asks. I mumble something about the mayor. "Let's go," he says, turning and bounding up to the second floor. When Masiello comes out of his office, he seems unsurprised to find Delprince hovering. "Mr. Mayor," Lifestyle's founder begins. "How are you?" While I talk with Masiello, Delprince corners the mayor's executive assistant, Peter Savage. He and Savage are old friends from -- well, you know. Savage's son, Peter III, works on Bonifacio's staff, and his wife did a stint at Lifestyle Street Gear.
Heading back downstairs, Delprince seems a touch giddy. "I could spend the entire day here," he says. For a moment, it almost feels as if he's back at the Butler, hanging with his pals. Then he catches himself, remembering how far he's come. "Yeah, I could," he says. "But unfortunately, I'm not making any money being with you."
Joshua Hyatt is a senior editor at Inc.
For a detailed list of Inner City 100 companies, please see The Inner City 100: America's Urban Superstars.
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