The bands of brightly coloured papel picado hanging from the ceiling of Amols’ don’t simply replicate the shop’s busiest season. The ornamental crafts additionally categorical the enterprise philosophy of the shop’s house owners.
“Our merchandise are the true factor. They’re genuine,” mentioned Jeffrey Weiss, Amols’ proprietor and the grandson of its founder, Julian Amols.
Weiss defined his firm buys merchandise straight from the artisans who create them. Which means the papel picado and floral crowns that clients snatch up each spring for Fiesta are handcrafted.
Such high quality merchandise, Weiss mentioned, is what retains clients coming again for his or her Fiesta gear, vacation décor, and provides for any celebration that requires paper flowers and noisemakers.
The must-stop store for a lot of Fiesta goers, which developed from a enterprise dealing in magic methods and occasion gags, turns 75 this 12 months.
Based in 1949 by Julian Amols, the occasion provide retailer as soon as centered on gadgets often discovered at carnivals and faculty fundraisers.
Amols had tried careers as a boxing promoter, nightclub employee and vaudeville performer earlier than shifting to San Antonio from Baltimore. He labored briefly as a grocer earlier than spending a lot of the Forties touring Texas promoting the kind of gadgets given as prizes at festivals, in addition to bingo playing cards and cages.
Realizing folks have been prepared to spend cash on celebrations, Amols determined to deal with the occasion enterprise. He opened his first retailer on North St. Mary’s Road earlier than organising store close to what’s now Pearl.
After just a few years, Amols moved his retailer to 710 S. Flores St., the place the store grew to become a San Antonio establishment, the place to go for occasion provides. After greater than 5 many years at that location, the shop moved to 227 Fredericksburg Street within the 5 Factors space in 2018, occupying a constructing that after housed an auto dealership and later a house flooring enterprise.
“We simply outgrew that spot,” Weiss mentioned of the South Flores location. Although it was robust leaving the long-standing locale for sentimental causes, Weiss mentioned, the brand new spot supplies thrice the house.
Amols’ went from 11,000 sq. ft to a 32,000-square-foot retailer with warehouse house and ample parking. A mechanical clown that greeted clients on South Flores made the transfer to 5 Factors, the place it’s perched exterior the intense purple constructing.
By the point Amols’ modified its location six years in the past, its on-line gross sales had taken off, increasing the client base nicely past the locals who make purchasing there a household custom.
“We do a lot of e-commerce enterprise,” Weiss mentioned, explaining that a lot of the warehouse house is used for the sorting of on-line orders.
Referring to a few of their merchandise as artwork, Weiss, alongside along with his spouse, Maritza, who co-owns the household operation, mentioned they’ve spent many years creating relationships with native artists and artists in Mexico and Central and South America. They’d go to these international locations for concepts of what to inventory of their retailer after which accomplice with the artisans.
The couple began that enterprise apply within the Nineteen Nineties, just a few years after Weiss took cost of the occasion retailer and never lengthy after the 2 married.
“I’m not going to say nothing in right here was made in China,” Weiss mentioned. “However we attempt to promote what’s genuine, what’s made by hand and never mass-produced.”
Maritza and Jeffrey Weiss defined how a household they work with makes the lengthy sheets of papel picado, one of many retailer’s top-selling gadgets. The ladies draw the designs on paper and stack 30 or 40 sheets, then the boys use a chisel and hammer to chop it, they mentioned.
Holding a small bouquet of paper flowers, Maritza Weiss goes over the small print of the blooms and describes how every is exclusive. Such uniqueness shouldn’t be what some buyers anticipate, she mentioned, recounting how just a few clients have requested why a few of the flowers are barely totally different sizes or shapes throughout the similar bouquet.
“That’s as a result of it’s made by hand,” she mentioned. “In fact they gained’t be similar.”
On the retailer on a latest weekday morning, just a few clients shopped for commencement occasion gadgets, whereas others seemed over rows of paper flowers to make use of in wreaths and different décor. The quiet, gradual tempo of the shop that morning was nothing just like the busy season for Amols’ that begins in late February and lasts till round mid-Might.
Fiesta, the town’s greatest celebration that entails official occasions, peripheral events and 1000’s of revelers donning something vivid and vigorous, is the highest purpose folks store at Amols’.
“We’ve had some folks inform us that coming right here is a part of their Fiesta custom,” Maritza Weiss mentioned.
Clients are generally lined up exterior earlier than the shop opens, workers mentioned, likening the scene to Black Friday.
Among the many Fiesta-time buyers are lodges and eating places in search of festive décor for his or her companies, and royal courts shopping for provides for his or her pre- and post-parade events. And there are many people who come on the lookout for Fiesta-type clothes and floral crowns.
“They’re on the lookout for something that lights as much as put on to the night time parade,” Weiss mentioned.
To serve the additional crowds each spring, seasonal assistance is employed, bringing the full variety of workers to 25, up from the standard 15. That features each full- and part-time workers, Weiss mentioned.
Margie Pedraza has labored in customer support and buying for Amols’ for the reason that early Nineteen Nineties. That is her second stint on the occasion provide retailer. Pedraza first labored at Amols’ after Julian Amols employed her in 1983.
Again then, she knew Weiss as a young person who frolicked on the retailer studying from his grandfather.
“He has made it very totally different,” she mentioned. “It’s grown quite a bit.”
Weiss, who took over the enterprise when he was 23 and a latest graduate of Trinity College, mentioned he by no means considered working wherever else or doing something apart from the occasion provide enterprise.
He remembers listening to his grandfather make jokes and inform tales, educating him about enterprise and customer support whereas not making the teachings seem to be lecturing.
“I at all times liked it. I believed it was nice, simply being within the retailer,” Weiss mentioned, including he loved working alongside his grandfather at the same time as a toddler who was put to work stacking packing containers.
Among the many classes Weiss realized from his grandfather, who handed away in 2002, is to know your clients and their wants, and to grasp your stock, Weiss mentioned.
Like many companies which have survived many years, Amols’ has weathered some challenges, together with the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted provide chains and paused massive gatherings.
However the occasion continues. And Amols’ is able to provide it.
“Folks come right here as a result of they’re completely happy,” Maritza Weiss mentioned. “They’re celebrating one thing, they’re enthusiastic about one thing.”
“We get to be part of that,” Jeffrey Weiss mentioned.
Amols’
227 Fredericksburg Streetamols.com
