The East Hampton Business Service, which its longtime owner described this week as the “help desk” and “back office” for residents and visitors for nearly 50 years, has changed hands.
Mary Croghan of Amagansett will remain through the summer to aid in the transition, and Nahomy Maldonado, an employee, will stay on, but the business, at 20 Park Place in East Hampton Village, has been acquired by Jack Palmer, a Montauk resident whose family has roots on the South Fork.
Mr. Palmer, a Connecticut native whose grandparents built a house in Bridgehampton, previously worked in advertising for Fox Sports in New York City. When the Covid-19 pandemic mandated remote work, “I moved out here full time,” he said this week. “The world changed with that,” he said of the pandemic, “but I’d always wanted to be out here. I just could never figure out how to swing it. So when the world went remote like that, it really opened up the possibilities and allowed me to pursue what I really wanted to do.”
His prior work experience translates to the new business, he said. “We’re in a human interaction-intense business here,” he said of the Business Service, “so developing relationships and being a part of a community and all that kind of stuff, I think it always relates. At the end of the day, sales is everything, so developing those relationships is super important.”
The business remains a vital component of the village and East Hampton Town despite the technology now widely available in the form of computers and even smartphones. “One of the main services that we do here is wide-format architectural printing,” Ms. Croghan said. “In this environment you don’t have to ask why we do that, because ‘they just built it for $11 million five years ago and they’re paying $2 million to tear it down and they’re going to build another one for $31 million.’ That is the gift that keeps on giving in terms of plans and reproduction.”
The Business Service is also an authorized Federal Express shipping center.
“We do a lot of laminates,” Ms. Croghan said. “Some restaurants use us to print and laminate their menus, dessert list, wine list, and so forth.” Much of a local business’s needs can now be accomplished in house, she said, but “they still want to farm out the 10 copies of something, or a specialty report that might need to be bound.”
The first words from newcomers to the Business Center are often some variation of “I hope you can help me,” Ms. Croghan said, “and we greet them with, ‘How can we help you today?’ So we’re the help desk, and lots of times it’s printing off of their phone or scanning. Now there are scanning apps on the phone, but a lot of people come in and have documents that need to be scanned. Some of it needs a lot of handling, like old historical items. So basically, we’re still the back office. Obviously, over time and the influence of technology, some of those back-office services look a little different, but essentially it’s the same. It’s supporting whatever it is people want to do. It can be blowing up a baby picture for a 40th birthday party, or as I say, a 100-sheet set of house plans.”
And, she added, “I still have a typewriter.”
A native of Hanson, Mass. (“cranberry bogs and dairy farms,” she recalled), Ms. Croghan came to the South Fork in May 1976. “My college roommate married a guy from Southampton,” she said. “I came to see them on the weekend of the Kentucky Derby. I stayed, and eventually they moved on.”
“I just knew people,” she said of the birth of the Business Center, “and then so-and-so needed somebody to help with their billing, so I did that. Somebody else noticed that the plumber’s billing was looking kind of nice, and that person was an electrician, and could I maybe type up some of their proposals? It got to, ‘If there’s four of these guys, there’s 40 of them.’ So I rented a small space.” The Business Service has been in its present location since 2000.
“We’re going to keep offering everything that we’re offering now,” Mr. Palmer said. “I’d like to eventually get into the bookkeeping side of things, as well as potentially offering things like e-commerce services, helping with website design and things like that, helping to stay with the times and evolve for whatever local businesses need. We want to be able to help fulfill those as simply and as professionally as possible.”
“I just want to continue what she’s built, what she’s done such a great job of,” he said of Ms. Croghan. “I want to take that into the next iteration and generation.”
“It’s time for some fresh, young energy,” Ms. Croghan said. “I’ve been around since before there was a P.C. It’s time for somebody that’s more forward looking. As far as the future for Mary, I guess I’ll be sitting out in front of the Golden Pear with the rest of them.”
“I’m looking so forward to just getting that clam rake out and spending a little time at home,” she added. “That truly is my most significant ambition.”