<p>My name is Jarrett Seng, I'm the owner and founder of Raceseng, Inc. We're a small father-and-son startup business. We design and manufacture aftermarket performance products for a variety of European and Japanese sports cars. I'm a product designer by trade, my dad is a manufacturing engineer, and we brought both of our talents together and we formed a company called Raceseng that takes our personal heritage of racing together with our passions and that's what makes up the Raceseng brand.<br /><br />So early on in our business we needed money to help grow the business. We were making all the parts by hand after hours. There was very tedious work to do and we weren't able to grow because of how much labor we had to put into every product that we made and shipped. I couldn't find anybody that would be willing to give two guys working out of their backyard any money to start or help the business. Somebody referenced New Tripoli Bank to me. I went in with a bunch of our parts and met with the commercial lender there, showed her what we did and told her our story. That led into now the bank financing four C&amp;C machines for us and literally helping our little backyard two-car garage startup go to the space that we're in today. That led into now a 14-year relationship of working with New Tripoli Bank.<br /><br />From one small business owner to another, New Tripoli Bank is there to help small business owners. The bank has helped me through every phase of a question that I've had, they're an email away, it's a completely different relationship when you're working with somebody local like New Tripoli Bank. They truly are a partner that you need to help grow a small business.</p>

<p>Hello, my name is Amir Ammary. I'm the owner of A. A. Welding and Fabrication, LLC. We specialize in welding, concrete and excavation. I've been a customer of New Tripoli Bank for about 15 years and also been a commercial customer of theirs for about seven years. What we specialize in is welding &mdash; that can be anywhere between residential, with railings and arches &mdash; and then we get in the commercial line where we work on heavy equipment &mdash; shoring, I-beam work, structural work &mdash; and then going into industrial stuff, into conveyors, and then we get in the concrete, where we do a lot of flat work, street work, storm drain work, and then the excavation &mdash; just obviously digging out for trenching, basements and land clearing. My family has been dealing with New Tripoli Bank for at least 10 years before I started an account there. Even though I looked into other banking, it's just having the simple connection to be able to call John Hemak on the fly and say, "Hey, I need such-and-such," and he's going, "Okay, I will look into it," and it comes back within a day or two. Have an answer, have a plan. The ease of actually having the lender really guide me through the steps. New Tripoli is just easy for me. It's really nice to have a small bank versus a big bank. They kind of you know when you walk in. You're able to be acknowledged by your first name versus just a number on the board.</p>

<p>Hi, my name is Sam Wood. My partner Bob Smith and myself both own Smitty's&nbsp;Maintenance &amp; Repair in Palmer, Pennsylvania. We do full collision, we work with all insurance companies, we also have a separate shop which is a complete mechanical repair. Anything from a tire repair to an engine replacement; we can pretty much handle anything that happens either in or outside your automotive needs. <br />BOB: My name is Bob Smith, my partner Sam Wood and I have owned Smitty's Maintenance &amp; Collision. We've been in business for over 41 years; we've dealt with New Tripoli Bank for about 16 years now. We both started this business with the motto that &ldquo;if we do good work for a fair price and keep up with technology today, that we'd always be busy&rdquo; and we're very fortunate we're busy all the time.<br />SAM: We were with a big bank before. Every time that we needed to do any improvements in our business, it was always a big ordeal going through the loan process.<br />BOB: When we came into this business, we knew that technology was changing and it seemed like we needed somebody that would listen to us and understand where we were and New Tripoli Bank really made that fit. <br />SAM: My partner Bob and myself were talking about doing some major improvements to our body shop business, which included all kinds of new equipment, that will take us into the next 10 years or so in this business.<br />BOB: Cars are changing every single day and it was going to require a fair amount of financing to do that and we went to New Tripoli and talked to them about that. They were very accommodating on getting us where we needed to be quickly and easily. <br />SAM: I was talking with Dave about it and he told me &lsquo;we like the direction your business is going so let's move forward with it.&rsquo; I got a hold of Dave Sherwin, Bob and I sat down and talked with them about what we needed and where we wanted to take this business. As simple as that we were moving forward with the whole project. It was the most pain-free experience we've had.<br />BOB: Small business still needs to have that connection to the people they're dealing with and I really feel that both us and New Tripoli Bank strive to have that personal touch and that's what really makes the process so easy to work with. <br />SAM: I&rsquo;ve recommended New Tripoli Bank to multiple different businesses that I had dealings with. They do whatever it takes to move your business forward. They absolutely are vested in your business, they're there for you all the time.</p>

<p>My name is Kyra Hendricks and I'm from Kempton, Pennsylvania, and I am the owner of Wanamakers General Store, which is an old-fashioned general store and market that was built in the late&nbsp;1800's.</p>
<p>We offer everything from fresh locally made sandwiches, salads, we have a full deli, bulk foods, organic produce, locally-roasted coffee, interesting locally made crafts, toys; it's a one stop shop for convenience store items. Basically, you name it and we try and carry it. I'm the fifth owner of the store. I came to New Tripoli Bank when I wanted to buy out my former business partner and they helped me to get a mortgage for the business and the&nbsp;building.</p>
<p>Because we already did a lot of our business banking through New Tripoli, they were very familiar with our business practices and that made getting a mortgage through them a relatively simple and painless process.</p>
<p>Our philosophy at Wanamakers has always been to source things locally and then kind of move out from there, so it just made sense to also go with a local&nbsp;bank. What I like about going to New Tripoli is everybody in the lobby is very friendly and&nbsp;anytime I need any supplies, such as checks, or I'm kind of scrambling to get something&nbsp;accomplished, everybody goes out of their way to help me achieve that. I can always get a hold of a&nbsp;person if I need to talk to somebody in real time. If I have any issues with anything, it's resolved within a very short period of time. Again, it's a small town business and it just has that small town community feel.</p>

<p>Hi, my name is Jill Wenz. I'm the owner of Wenz Tax &amp; Financial Services here in Allentown. I operate the business with my husband and two children. We also have offices in Palmerton and Easton. We do individual and business taxes, tax planning, bookkeeping, and payroll. I was looking for a bank that would provide me with great service and I liked the fact that New Tripoli Bank had all the mobile banking features and the remote deposit scanner. I also like the fact that New Tripoli Bank wasn't charging me per item fees for checks. I have a really high volume of transactions during tax season, so that was a big factor. We also invest in real estate and we liked the fact that we had a local lender that we could work with directly. I was tired of the bank I was using constantly being bought out and having to change all my checks and routing numbers, so when I started looking for a bank I wanted a bank that was going to give me great service and be around. Everyone at the bank has been so helpful and so kind whenever we've come in to open an account. Any time we have a question, we get answers immediately. I usually tell people to use New Tripoli Bank because they're easy to work with.</p>

<p>My name is Maria Medei and our business is Casilio Concrete. We're a family-owned business that's been in business for 83 years and we deliver and manufacture ready-mix concrete. We also have a trucking company that supplies us with all our raw materials and does stone deliveries for our crushing plant that recycles concrete block brick and stone. I started working on and off in the business in summers when I was in high school and through college. I came back to the business full time in 1981 and just worked my way up the ranks into the management part of our business. Before I started in management, my aunt was here running our business for a long time, along with my dad and my uncle, so there's always been a pretty dominant female in our business. We recently finished Lehigh University Science Center. We also did the Lehigh University dormitories. We did the Coplay Bridge a few years ago. We also did Werner Trucking, which was a very unique project in that the outside was all paved in about 15,000 yards of concrete. New Tripoli Bank has helped us a lot in accomplishing our business goals. We recently purchased a new plant in Nazareth. It was a turnkey plant, so we wanted to get in and running right away and I can't say enough of how helpful Bob was to get that done in such a timely manner. It was probably a three-week process from once we got our number until we were able to run and make&nbsp;concrete. When we buy something for a business it's not cheap. (laughs) Our trucks are expensive, our equipment we need is expensive, and New Tripoli Bank has always been there. We did about two or three months ago have a large check that came through that was a fraudulent check. In the morning, when I was looking at our account, I saw the check and I called Sundra right away and they closed our account. They helped us get our new account set up very quickly. I was worried that this was going to be a hard process but they made it so simple. They took care of that right away, it was just such an easy process for something that I thought was going to be so hard to resolve. We do probably 99.9% of our banking remotely. First thing I do when I turn my computer on in the morning is go on my bank accounts and I look at all of our&nbsp;accounts. I can pay all our loans online, I can transfer money online, I can pay bills online. It's a very efficient process to use the remote deposit, it's faster than writing up a deposit&nbsp;slip. Every day we're running checks through the machine, depositing them into the bank and they're there the next morning. I just think that the bank has helped our business grow. We had worked through some hard times a couple years ago and the bank was right there for us and I don't think we could have done it as well as we have without the help of New Tripoli Bank.</p>

<p>My name is Connie Sholl and this is Macungie's Posey Patch located in Macungie, Pennsylvania. We are a full-service flower shop. We deliver throughout the Lehigh Valley for birthdays, weddings, funerals, special occasions of any kind. We pride ourselves in making sure every customer's experience with us is a positive one. I did not grow up in the floral industry; I started part-time at a flower shop in 2000. I was a partner in an interior design firm and looked at this as a second career. Many of the principles of floral ranging were very close to the principle of interior design: color, function, form. We're very proud of all the work we do. When Coordinated Health hosted the group Boston at Musikfest, we actually created a flower arrangement that was a replica of the cover of one of their albums. We've also done work for the St. Luke's Auxiliary Ball and we also have done a huge heart that was nothing but roses for someone to make a special&nbsp;proposal. New Tripoli Bank has worked with&nbsp;us on every problem or situation with a human&nbsp;touch. During the pandemic especially, when we weren't delivering flowers, New Tripoli Bank were instrumental in helping us work through the incredibly chaotic period of the Paycheck Protection Program. Bob Kern worked with us on a daily basis and we were approved for the loan through New Tripoli Bank, which we appreciated greatly. We worked with many other banks throughout the Lehigh Valley who got sold to larger banks and became much more impersonal. We do appreciate working with New Tripoli Bank because you can speak to a human that actually lives and works in the Lehigh Valley and can understand your problems and the area itself.</p>

<p>SHARON: Hi I'm Sharon Bagonstose.<br /><br />STEPH: Hi I'm Steph Fenstermacher and Sharon and I are co-owners of the Buttered Crumb LLC here in New Tripoli.<br /><br />SHARON: The Buttered Crumb specializes in old-fashioned, made-from-scratch baked goods.<br /><br />STEPH: Things like molasses cakes, shoe-fly pies, sticky buns, different crumb cakes.<br /><br />SHARON: Cookies, kiffles, you name it, we make all kinds of baked goods.<br /><br />STEPH: Some things had changed at the company I was working for and my sister was talking about early retirement and we just decided to start a bakery out of the basement of my home.<br /><br />SHARON: My sister had approached me about this idea about opening up a home-owned bakery. Growing up in a large family, I was the oldest of five children. We did a lot of cooking for our family.<br /><br />STEPH: I didn't grow up in this business unless you count cooking for a family of seven. I was attracted to I guess just naturally it's something that I've always enjoyed doing.<br /><br />SHARON: I also loved home ec. class when I was in high school, to this day I'm still using some of the recipes that I had over 40 years ago.<br /><br />STEPH: One of the things that we're really proud of is our involvement with the Lowhill Food Pantry. We realized that we were making 500 Christmas cookies to feed about 40 people. So one of us got the braniac idea that we should contact the Food Pantry and see if we could donate those cookies. As of last year we were making over 2,000 for the Food Pantry at Christmas time. Anytime we've had tips over the last five years we've donated those, we don't keep those for ourselves, it's just something that we give back.<br /><br />SHARON: One of the things we got involved in a couple years ago is the Great Allentown Fair. Two years ago we started sponsoring one of the baking contests. This year we will be judging the Shoe Fly Pie Contest, so we're really excited about participating in that.<br /><br />STEPH: When we first started this business, we started out of my house.<br /><br />SHARON: And we were amazed at how fast we grew. We outgrew her home probably at least two years ago. We started looking for properties and we went with the New Tripoli Bank. We love the fact that it's a local bank.<br /><br />STEPH: New Tripoli Bank has been critical to getting us to the place we're at, giving us a mortgage for the building we're standing in.<br /><br />SHARON: We recently took out a small loan and the loan officer actually came here. It was such a busy day for us he offered to stop in here and have us finalize the papers and sign everything, which to me was wonderful that he saved me a trip.<br /><br />STEPH: New Tripoli Bank I really appreciate the fact that they give you a personal touch. You walk into the tellers and they know you by name. Or if you go through the drive thru it's "hey Steph how you doing today, when's the business opening?"<br /><br />SHARON: We were grateful to our friends, our family, our customers, the bank, everybody that I've just mentioned has helped us grow this business to a point that we never thought it would be.<br /><br />STEPH: In an industry that typically has a high fail ratio, they've taken a chance on us and just want to say thanks to New Tripoli Bank because we wouldn't here without them either.<br /><br />And one of the things that I love the most and actually my puppies love the most is when we go through the drive thru they each get a dog biscuit.</p>