Today we’d like to introduce you to Bruce Bodo.
Hi Bruce, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It was 2014, I was underemployed over 50 and looking for something better to do. So was my best friend. We found this business was for sale and decided to buy it and that is how we got the Lamp Shop.It has been in business since 1941 and I am the 4th owner, my Wife ,Son and I now run the business and my best friend of 41 years who started this journey with me left because he found out he had cancer and was under treatment for the last year and just died last week. Me, my friend Darrin, my son Ryan and my Wife Bing are all creative people. I can fix just about anything and I have been teaching my son how to do that now, It has been a lot of work over the last 11 years with all the highs and lows that one would expect. We work on lamps, restorations of antique lamps, we also do stained glass work. We are one of very few people in our state who bend panels for slag glass lamps that have broken panels. We have also repaired other things like replacing cords on appliances, fixing several toys for kids. I worked on two animatronic antique department store Christmas figurines that were not working. A long list of boring and interesting projects we have done.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Darrin getting cancer and leaving us made this past year tough. Business wise covid wasn’t hard for us, we were booming in fact even with the shut down, but personally I lost my father to covid in 2020. We really couldn’t get funding to start this business so we had to do it ourselves. If anything, having to do this all ourselves has taught us to be creative and resourceful.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
It sounds corny or trite but I like taking a family piece that may not be valuable but means the world to them and taking this broken item and making it whole again and functional and seeing the joy in their eyes when we return it to them. We have made some people cry. I have a customer who is an older lady. She is alone now and she is completely loyal to us because I fixed her sewing machine. We are a lamp shop you may say. We are but we are also members of this community and she had a need and couldn’t find any body to fix it. No one fixes or repairs any more, except us it would seem. I fixed her sewing machine, that was a present from her late husband when they got married. He is gone now and she didn’t want a new one. She wanted the one her husband got her because for her, it was like she was with her husband again. That is what we do.
What were you like growing up?
I was an only child. We moved around a lot because of my Dad’s work. I am dyslexic which I think makes me more of a visual person and aids in my ability to fix things. I do like to read but I am very slow at it. Not much into sports but I was always tinkering with something.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thelampshopintroy.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelampshopintroy/
