Recent stock market volatility aside, corporate earnings reports from the past several weeks suggest America”™s largest companies are thriving, while its small businesses have continued to struggle to secure capital and new customers.
The Mancini family apparently didn”™t get the memo.
Richard Mancini Sr., the son of Italian immigrants, is a lifelong resident of Somers and is entrenched in the local real estate industry as owner of Mancini Building Corp. and Mancini Realty, both based in the town.
Mancini Sr., who goes by Rick, took over the family business from his father, Pio Mancini, the founder of Mancini Building Corp. Rick runs the construction business along with his brother, John Mancini, and runs the family”™s realty business with his wife, Joan Mancini.
While it would have been only natural for Rick”™s son, Richard Mancini Jr., to follow in his parents”™ footsteps, he gravitated instead toward the telecommunications industry, where he quickly became manager of a Sprint Nextel Corp. retail store in Somers.
His time as an outsider would prove short-lived. When Sprint closed its Somers branch in late 2010, Rick and his son seized on the opportunity to secure the lease for the vacant store and together they founded yet another company, Mirinet Communications Corp., named for Mancini Jr.”™s daughter, Milan, and his son, Richard Mancini III.
As an authorized dealer of Sprint cellular devices and tablet computers, Mirinet Communications, at 80 Route 6, has all the looks of the former occupant. Mancini Jr., president of the company, even hired back the associates who lost their jobs when Sprint closed the store.
What has changed, though, is the name above the doorway. While Mirinet Communications is an authorized Sprint retailer, it is independently owned and operated, not to be confused with a franchise.
“Everything is independently owned,” Mancini Jr. said.
After forming Mirinet in February and securing the lease, the family “hit the ground running,” Mancini Jr. said.
“From that point on it was a matter of build-outs and renovations,” said Rick Mancini Sr., who owns Mirinet. Its grand opening was July 21.
In explaining the jump from real estate to telecommunications, Mancini Sr. said that with the cell phone industry experiencing such explosive growth, it was an opportunity he and his family couldn”™t pass up.
“Ten years ago when you left the house you grabbed your car keys and your wallet,” Mancini Sr. said. “Now we can”™t leave the house or go anywhere without your cell phone.”
Mancini Jr. said he hoped to succeed where the previous tenant failed, thanks at least in part to his roots in Somers and to his understanding of the customers and their needs. “Everything is hands on,” he said. “We spend at least an hour with everyone we sell a phone to.”
