Published: June 15, 2009 01:42 am      

TONAWANDA: Town couple turns hobby into side business

TOWN OF TONAWANDA — For some people, painting models and playing games with them is a hobby. Since Philip Viverito’s retirement from Niagara Mohawk, it has become his way of life, and his peers will soon be honoring him for it.

His love of history and model making started more than 40 years ago, when his uncle was working with a Lewiston lumber company to do some work on Fort Erie. But when his interest became a bit more sophisticated, it got harder to find the right model.

“I started scratch building because I couldn’t find the pieces that I wanted,” Viverito said. “You can get a lot of what you want on-line or through mail order, but you’ll probably pay 100 times more than if you make it at home.”

He didn’t stop there. Making up the rules to play the games — creating a new game from the ground up — became the next logical step. Eventually Viverito’s mother asked his wife, Lynn, what she thought of being married to a grown man who still played with toys. Lynn found a creative way to explain her acceptance.

“She told my mother ‘I know where he is, I know who he’s with and I know what he’s spending his money on. How many of his brothers can you say that about?’” Viverito said.

In the 1980s her support went from mere acceptance to financial backing. When Viverito decided to publish a book of rules for a game he created, the response he got was lukewarm at best. So Lynn cashed in her 401K from a previous job and started LMW Works — her own publishing company — to put the volume out herself. She’s now the publisher of all of Viverito’s work and has expanded to business to other up and coming game book creators who show promise.

“We had other authors come to us saying, “We like how your books look. Would you publish ours?” Lynn said. “We have two new books coming out this summer, which is about all we can manage because we have to pay up front.”

Making the games requires a knowledge of the period, something Viverito draws from the immense stacks of history books lining the shelves in his garage. And when he’s asked to host a presentation, the models come with a history lesson. He begins the talk in a classroom, without the model to back him up. Then he says something along the lines of, “Now let’s go take a look at what I mean,” and takes the kids to see the city that was just being discussed scaled down to understandable proportions.

The buildings are made primarily of light-weight plastic veneer, both for durability and to reduce the cost of shipping. The weight often makes parents a bit squeamish about their children touching them, but once Viverito picks one up and slams it on the table a few times fears of anything breaking go by the wayside.

The recreations are so believable, in fact, that Geico Insurance used Viverito’s model of the city of Troy in a commercial. The company was filming in California and asked that the model be shipped there, but as chance would have it the piece was being stored ten minutes away from the studio by one of Viverito’s associates on the west coast. Now his work is even making it onto the small screen.

“It hasn’t aired here, but my daughter lives in Canada and she says she’s seen it. It’s also played in Europe, so I guess Geico thinks there’s more interest in history over there,” Viverito said with a laugh.

His work has also been seen overseas in other ways. The game books LMW Works sells have ended up in places like Great Britain, Canada and Spain.

“The books have even been republished in Italian and Spanish, so I guess people must like what I’m doing,” Viverito said.

Hobby companies are particularly susceptible to the bad economy since hobbies are likely the first place a person is able to cut back. The Viveritos have seen several of their friends in the business pushed out in the last few years, but for now their cottage industry is still trudging along. They travel all over the U.S. and Canada — sometimes with all expenses paid — and Viverito will soon accept the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society East’s Legion of Honor award. Simple business practices, knowing how not to overextend themselves and keeping good customer relations are the things the Viveritos cite as helping them stay around.

“We have never borrowed money for the business,” Viverito said. “And we’re honest with people when we’re selling books, not just repackaging things with a new cover like you see a lot. That’s how we successfully created a company and we able to list more and more books.”