Mon, Nov 23 2009
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Laboring together “We like to get away,” she said. “We visit and visit, and it’s a different outcome than if you were to stay in your seat and contemplate the same issue.”
Pat Pickering said she finds it amusing that her husband asks her out to dinner because, as he says, “I haven’t gotten to see my wife all day.” “I always laugh because we’re together all day, but we get to working on something and we’ll look up and say, ‘My goodness, it’s 3 p.m. Where does the time go?’” she said. Even divide RuthEllen and Michael Simpson, who opened The Finishing Touch in 1981 in Pittsburg, find the same to be true in the framing business. “People think because we work together, we’re connected at the hip,” RuthEllen Simpson said. “Not true. Tonight over supper is when we’ll actually talk shop, because today he’s been up on second (floor) and I’ve been down here on first (floor).” They divide their work duties evenly, with Michael Simpson doing most of the molding and his wife doing most of the matting for the business that they opened “on a whim with a $10,000 loan.” “As newlyweds, we helped my brother at his frame shop in Kansas City,” RuthEllen Simpson said. “We decided to open our own in Pittsburg, and we laid it all on the line together. We even found a house to rent a few blocks away so we could walk to work in the early days to save time and money.” She said she worked a second job during the first few years to keep “a roof over our head and food on our table.” These days, business is so good that RuthEllen Simpson couldn’t remember what day it was. “We are probably one of 10 or 20 top frame producers in the U.S., volume-wise,” Michael Simpson said. In addition to retail customers and a newly developed contract with Miller’s Professional Imaging to frame online photo orders, they hold contracts with numerous conservation organizations across the nation — such as Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever — to frame hundreds, sometimes thousands, of prints for annual fund-raisers. But the couple said perhaps the best benefit of working together is that they could involve their daughters, Beth and Sara, in their business, from the time they were small and could play at the store on days off school to their teen and early college years, when they could work at the store and learn business and communication skills. Family affair Ron and Barbara Rhodes, who opened their first small grocery store in Pittsburg in 1976 and now employ 85 people, expressed similar sentiments. “It grew from a couple-owned business to a true family-owned business,” Barbara Rhodes said. Two of their children, Drew and Tim, returned to Pittsburg to take an active role in the store, while Matt, who lives in Kansas City, is included in all e-mails and major decisions. 
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