Winner
Retail
Rich Kaman fell in love from behind the counter at the taffy shop.
He was the manager of the shop back then and a summer employee at Cedar Point. So was the beautiful girl who ran a small art stand nearby and sketched people’s portraits in five minutes flat.
And although more than 40 years have passed since that first summer, Kaman is no less in love now than he was then with Tricia, whom he married in 1970.
Today, the pair owns and operates Kaman’s Art Shoppes Inc., the largest amusement and theme park concessionaire in the nation. Rich Kaman serves as vice president and handles the business side. Together, the duo has developed more than 20 specialty art and photography products, but their primary service remains the classic art stand portrait, and if you have ever had your caricature sketched between rides on the roller coaster, odds are good that it was at one of their locations. Their stands are now in dozens of parks across the nation — including Busch Gardens in Florida and Virginia, LEGOLAND in California, SeaWorld in California and Florida, and, of course, Cedar Point — and they employ thousands of workers, many of them seasonal, just as they, themselves, once were.
Because the park industry is particularly volatile — reliant on the season, the weather and the economy — the Kamans first developed standardized training, although not at the expense of individual artistic expression, to maximize the business. Then, he created his own reporting tools so that critical information, including sales and payroll, could be reported from any location on the company’s intranet, where data is constantly updated. And despite the recession and the bite it has taken from the park industry, Kaman’s Art Shoppes is still moving forward.
Turns out, you couldn’t draw a better business story, either.
How to reach: Kaman’s Art Shoppes Inc., (440) 709-1909 or www.kamansart.com
