The giant banner celebrating the Penguins’ 2009 Stanley Cup championship, hoisted at Pittsburghs Mellon Arena at last weeks season opener, is a source of pride for thousands of area hockey fans. It’s also a professional highlight for a local businesswoman who says she was “never a hockey fan at all.”
Kathleen Ronczka, who started Signature Flags of Ambridge with her sister Gerri Taylor more than 20 years ago, has learned to appreciate what an association with the NHL champions has done for her business.
Signature Flags has built a 19-employee business from the sisters’ basement sewing machines. In addition to sewers, including several at-home workers, the company includes a laser cutter, computer designers and other staffers who create custom-lettered hockey jerseys, parade banners, and other gear for schools and companies throughout western Pennsylvania.
Headquartered in a converted grocery store on 17th Street in Ambridge, Signature also created personalized Penguin jerseys that were presented to diplomats attending the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in September.
The ongoing relationship with the Penguins stems from Ronczkas relentless yearlong writing campaign with the teams management.
“I wrote a letter a week for over a year, to any name I could get,” Ronczka recalls. Finally, In 1991, the shop received a call from Mario Lemieux requesting 50 Lemieux jerseys that he could distribute as gifts. Signature Flags later designed the Lemieux banners that were raised when the Penguins star retired. The shop also continues to embroider Penguins player game jerseys, adding names, numbers and captains’ designations, and last year created 16 replacement banners honoring Penguins scorers, MVPs, and team titles at Mellon Arena.
The sisters sold the business five years ago when Taylor retired. Ronczka remains as general manager. “Ill never retire,” she says.
Source: Kathleen Ronczka, Signature Flags
Writer: Chris OToole