22 Hartford Business Journal | January 11, 2021 | HartfordBusiness.com
Market Adaptation
S. Windsor's TicketNetwork pivots to volatile face-mask business
By Liese Klein
lklein@hartfordbusiness.com
T
hat old saying about crisis
and opportunity is a way of
life for entrepreneur Don
Vaccaro of South Windsor.
He saw the COVID-19
pandemic crush one of his
businesses — then add new life
and purpose to a second one.
"It has actually been very exciting
for every milestone and hurdle,"
Vaccaro said. "Being at this time in
this business — to solve a problem
that makes folks happy — is a great
thing."
Vaccaro's new business is
supplying low-cost N95 face
masks to doctors, dentists and
businesspeople, in part utilizing
the staff and resources of
TicketNetwork, his sidelined ticket-
brokering company.
TicketNetwork, located 75 Gerber
Road East in South Windsor,
employed 470 people at its height,
Vaccaro said. The company was
doing so well buying and selling
tickets to live shows that it joined
other major state employers in 2019
to announce it would increase its
minimum hourly wage to $15. (The
company also drew some negative
attention from New York Attorney
General Letitia James, who agreed
in July 2019 to a $1.55 million
settlement in a lawsuit accusing
a TicketNetwork affiliate of duping
concert-goers.)
Then the COVID-19 pandemic
crashed and burned the
live-entertainment industry.
TicketNetwork laid off a total of 147
people in June and another 56 in
September. Vaccaro doesn't expect
the live entertainment business
to recover for a year or more and
he said some venues may never
reopen.
Now a little more than
100 employees are left at
TicketNetwork's South Windsor
headquarters, some of them
working entirely on Vaccaro's other
enterprise, Connecticut Biotech.
TicketNetwork did receive a $4.4
million potentially forgivable loan
CONTRIBUTED
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UCONN
TODAY
PHOTO
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CONTRIBUTED
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (right) tours Connecticut Biotech's South Windsor facility where the company makes face-mask frames and sells N95 masks.
