RUMFORD – J.J. Bartash has come by his entrepreneurial ways honestly.

As a high school student he frequently worked in his parents’ store, learning the retail trade. He worked at Bartash’s card and gift shop and at the adjacent video store.

He graduated from the University of Maine in Farmington in 2004 with a degree in business and economics, and now, the son of John and Barbara Bartash, has his own business in a block along Congress and Canal streets that houses several businesses owned by the Bartashes.

Harvey Fabrics and Moulding Design offers something that isn’t seen everyday in Western Maine – fancy frames or mouldings and specialty matting fabrics and papers to mat paintings, pictures, needlepoints, shadow boxes, or anything else that requires something special.

Bartash bought the retail and wholesale Long Island, N.Y., business in February with assistance from the town’s revolving loan fund and support from his family, who supplied space at 61 Canal St. Much of his wholesale business is from out-of-state accounts where he has dozens of customers, as well as sales to in-state frame shops.

Last month, he began the local retail framing portion of his business.

The service has filled a gap left when Scrappers Domaine and the Great Falls Frame Shop closed last year.

He decided on the Harvey purchase because he wanted a business that could be located in Rumford, but not rely solely on the local economy, he said. Before setting up shop – with thousands of rolls of fabric and moulding pieces, he trained at the Bayville, Long Island, business.

Business is about 60 percent wholesale and 40 percent retail, he said.

The Canal Street business isn’t his first venture.

Soon after he graduated from college, he and a friend of his father’s, Jerry LaPointe of New Hampshire, established J-Point Marine, LLC, a company that builds or has built, then sells, small sailboats. He worked for a marina during his college years where he gained boating experience. So far this year, he said eight craft have been sold to camps and boating dealers in and outside Maine.

Bartash likes creating things, whether it is sailboats or custom frames and mats, he said.

“It’s nice to be able to offer this service to the area,” said the 2000 graduate from Mountain Valley High School, who said he also sells wholesale and retail upholstery fabrics.

Although he lives in Monmouth now, he said he spends most of his time in his hometown.

“Bringing Harvey Fabrics here gives Rumford a different kind of business,” he said. “I moved away, but I’m still here.”

Right now, he runs his Canal Street business alone, but as the number of customers rise, he expects he will eventually have to hire an employee or two.

“I’m following in my parents’ footsteps, but I’m doing my own thing,” he said.