Blue Seal kielbasa and sausages are a popular item in western Massachusetts and northern Connecticut, and now, with their website, www.bluesealkielbasa.com, Blue Seal´s sales are beginning to penetrate other markets.

Chicopee was started as S&P Market in 1920 by Stanley Sitarz, his brother Jacob, and their partner Bartlomiej Partyka.

Their current plant was built in 1927 on what is now Sitarz Avenue, named for Stanley and his business.

Their strategy worked, and the demand for their specialty meats and kielbasa surpassed expectation.

Three additional partners, Antoni Budarz, John Szczepanski and Wladyslaw Kaminski, came on board to help with the expanding operation.

The Chicopee Provision Company, Inc. has survived 3 floods, a stock market crash, a World War that forced enormous restrictions on and rationing of meat, and now, in its 3rd generation, it is meeting the challenges of the 21st century head on.

Tom Bardon, Stanley´s grandson, is currently the president and treasurer of Chicopee.

Other members of the 3rd generation are also actively involved in the management of the company, including vice-president Alfred Mamuszka and secretary Annette Schlatka.

Office manager Carolyn Donnelly, daughter of Annette Schlatka, is the first member of the 4th generation to take part in the family business. Tom hopes she will not be the last.

"Unfortunately, the children and grandchildren of 5 out of the 6 original partners have decided that they don´t want to work in the business. But in the Sitarz family, I have children who I think will be interested in stepping in."

Tom had worked for the family as a teenager. At that time, his wage was a dollar an hour. Eventually, he went off to school, studied electronics, and then ran his own electronics store for 40 years.

During this time, he had served on Chicopee board, but wasn´t involved in the business on a day-to-day basis. When Jerome decided to step down, the company decided that it was important for leadership to remain in the hands of someone from one of the founding families. Tom knew it was up to him to keep the family business growing successfully.

Like many others who have returned to family businesses after many years managing their own companies or working for outside companies, Tom was in an interesting—and often beneficial—position: he was an "insider" who was able to bring in and utilize an "outsider" perspective.

In a sense, he was bringing fresh blood to the company, even though he was old blood in terms of his relationship to the company.

One of his first decisions when he returned to the company was to take advantage of new technology and available internal resources and get Chicopee online.

"When I came on board 2 1/2 years ago, the web site was the first thing I started working on. We had a gentleman working here in our office who was quite computer-literate, so we upgraded his position to include handling the website and processing the orders."

Blue Seal kielbasa is undoubtedly Chicopee´s best-selling product. It is sold regionally to groceries, hotdog stands, restaurants and individual customers.

Ultimately, Blue Seal´s popularity became the impetus for putting Chicopee´s products on line. When we talked to Tom recently, he told us that building the site was their response to customer demand for their products outside their traditional marketing area.

"For years, customers came in and asked if we would ship something for them, and, of course, we didn´t have that capability, so we said no. We looked into Styrofoam packing materials and found a good carrier to make sure we could get the product out there quickly once the site was up."

"Our product is well-known in this area. People have grown up with it, but then they move to Florida or Arizona, and they can´t find a product like it. If they know we have a web site, they´ll order from us."

"It´s unbelievable how a person in Texas will spend so much money on buying hot dogs. But they say `There´s nothing down here like the ones you guys make!"

It is important to note that Chicopee´s use of the Internet doesn´t just stop with their web site—they´re also using it to quickly access accurate information for their orders.

Making sure that customers get their meat fast and fresh is one of the biggest challenges facing Tom and his crew. The Internet has proven vital in this capacity since they can use online weather sites to look at temperatures around their company and, armed with this information, adjust their shipping methods accordingly.

"When we ship to places like Florida or Texas or Arizona, we´ll check not only what the temperature was on the day the order was placed, but what it´s expected to be in the two days following so we´ll know how much insulation or dry ice will be needed to keep the product cold and fresh. We had to do some experimenting with how thick the insulation needs to be. We use 2nd Day Express to keep shipping costs down."

Good, old-fashioned word of mouth has been truly successful in bringing customers to the Blue Seal Kielbasa website. Christmas is always a busy time for orders, and over the last three years, Tom has watched the number of online orders climb.

"The first December we were on the Internet, we did maybe 50 packages. The second December we did over 300, and last December we did over 600. Sometimes you´ll get an order from a customer for 5 gift packs, all shipping to different addresses. More people are doing their shopping that way."

"We´re quite pleased with the growth. It´s a niche product, but we do quite well."

Tom plans to expand these reciprocal arrangements to include other companies, and feels that it is important to keep the site growing.

"You´ve got to stay with technology. If you don´t change, you´ll be dead. Change is the most important aspects of business today, and you have to be ready to change quickly, because if you don´t, your competition will beat you."