On Saturday, it will be 30 years since Bill and Pamela Slocum took over Paddywack Promotional Products, surviving by keeping things simple and batting away competition from overseas.
Paddywack was established in 1988, with the Slocum family taking over on November 25, 1993.
The Slocums' daughter Alison, 37, who grew up in the business, is now its general manager, a well as being mum to two youngsters, Hazel, four, and Edmund, one, with partner Colin Westerlaken.
Bill, 67, just reckons he feels "very tired" - and grateful - after racking up three decades with the business, but has no plans to retire.
Paddywack specialises in customised and branded promotional products, from baseball caps to drink bottles to T-shirts.
The Slocums said the business had survived against great competition from products overseas thanks to a loyal customer base and by focusing on what they did best.
"It's an epic, epic milestone," Alison said.
"I used to run around here when - gosh - 30 years ago I was seven when they bought the business. And I used to spend all my time out in the carpark, playing with all the toys.
"The fact that I'm here 30 years later trying to get Bill out the door and on to the golf course more is quite the feat. Especially when we survived COVID, kept it lean and we're coming out the other end now, finally."
"Onwards and upwards," Bill reckoned.
A former St Edmund's College student, Bill worked in radio for 15 years before buying Paddywack. He started as the office boy at 2CC and rose to become its program director.
Pamela and Bill met at 2CC where she was the copywriter. She ran the successful advertising agency Ideas and Directions and even wrote the catchy jingle for Paddywack:
Paddywack, place your name on anything
Paddywack, will make you famous
Monogrammed in caps, put your name on this and that
There'll be absolutely no one you're the same as
The business is the middle-man between customer and manufacturer of the products.
Bill still has many items "out the back" in the Paddywack archives, including a promotional umbrella for The Canberra Times, featuring cartoons by Geoff Pryor and documents from the historic first Assembly election in 1989.
The store is in Tennant Street in Fyshwick, in a quiet bend in the road overlooking the Molonglo River corridor.
The family has strong roots in the Canberra small business community. Frank and June Slocum had the pharmacy in Yarralumla for more than 20 years. Mrs Slocum died in May last year aged 98, her wake held in the same room at the Hyatt Hotel where she and Frank celebrated their wedding in the 1940s.
June Slocum's legacy of great customer service lives on in son Bill and grand-daughter Alison.
"We remember all our customers," Alison said.
"Someone will come in here after 20 years and Bill will be like, 'Hi Gary!' And that's, I think, what sets us apart from the rest."
Bill agrees.
"The business name has always been well-respected in Canberra and surrounds and we've maintained its integrity," he said.
