They started with a mission to be the most honest and the best, but when the Sellaro brothers of Morgantown opened their overhead door service in 1986 they never dreamed how big that mission would pay off.
When their family sold their grocery store business, Anthony, John and James, who worked at the store, knew they needed a new plan.
Their uncle, who owned a garage door business in New York, gave the brothers some training and suggested they start their own business here in Morgantown.
“And that’s what we did,” Anthony said.
Over the next 38 years, they built Sellaro’s Overhead Door Service on University Avenue in Star City.
“It’s been a rollercoaster – up and down,” Anthony said. “We were able to stay pretty small for 10 years or more and then as we got busier and busier we had to put people on, and it was good for a long time.”
Anthony recalled a moment years ago when they received a call from a company in Flatwoods who wanted them to come fix their garage doors because other companies they had tried never fixed them correctly.
“They said they heard we were the best and I’m going like, oh my god, Flatwoods heard we’re the best – it’s everywhere!
“I’m proud of that – very proud that we made a business that did that,” he said.
In the last five years, finding good employees who will uphold their standards has become a challenge, Anthony explained.
“It’s a different time, it’s a different era now,” he said. “I’m 67, my brother is 66, the other brother is 65, and we just decided it was time – we’ve given enough to it, you know?”
Instead of closing the business outright, Anthony said they tried to sell it, but were unsuccessful.
Currently they are not taking new customers and plan to be fully closed by the end of the year.
According to Anthony, one of their employees will continue to do garage door service work once they are fully closed and will take over their phone number.
“We still have rentals, residential and commercial, so that will keep us busy,” he said of retirement plans.
“I don’t want to stop because I’ve seen people retire and stop doing something and then they just age really, really quick and die, you know. I want to keep active.”
They plan to build an office in one of their apartment buildings for their rentals and still have 38 years of stuff to move out of the current location.
“We’ve been at it a long time,” Anthony said. “We’re sorry to say to Morgantown, ‘we gotta go.’”
