The business that would become a downtown staple started in a house in Powell with a showroom in the upstairs bedroom.

Marquis Awards & Specialties was launched in July of 1983 by John and Terry Collins. The couple is looking to sell and closed the doors of the Bent Street business last week.

Both said they enjoy the business, but they need to retire from it to have time to do all of their other projects.

“We have rentals and things to do and we’ve got some of those things that we haven’t been able to work on for years, because we’re here all the time,” Terry said in an interview earlier this summer. “And so that’s one of the big compelling reasons is as we get older, we aren’t moving as fast. It’s getting harder to do some of that because we do all of our own remodeling. And so we need to get to it before we can’t anymore — that’s kind of where we’re at with that.”

Their biggest worry is that they won’t find someone to take over the business, as so many groups and organizations have relied on their services for decades.

People involved with the county fair have always been important customers.

“Our first customer was Jon Carter who contacted us right before Park County Fair and wanted us to build a Best Fit Sheep trophy for him for the fair,” the couple recalled in a written recording of their history. “We were pretty excited — our first order! We had a booth at the fair that year and Keith Bloom, then AD for PHS, stopped by and told us he was very happy there was going to be a trophy store in Powell.”

The early years were tough, they said, and for the first three years of the business John continued his energy industry job as well.

The pantograph engraver was in their bedroom and the pair took turns doing the engraving — they said all the lettering had to be manually set with brass font templates and it was time-consuming.

But they gained customers, eventually enough to have John quitting his other job. After three years at a rented space on Second Street, they moved into their building on Bent Street, at a time when, they recalled, there were around 17 empty store fronts in Powell’s downtown, which kept prices affordable.

Terry said she couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to start a business from scratch, as they did, in the current climate.

With their own building — which includes apartments above — the business flourished. Over the years new technologies replaced old and they were able to do more variety of work — John has enjoyed custom jobs — and serve a wider community thanks to online sales. Through it all the couple raised their family and made time to participate in various boards and committees within the community.

In July the Collins’ celebrated 41 years of operation, from a home-based business to a thriving store. And last Friday they celebrated their final day of business with a lunch celebration to thank the community for its decades of support.

Terry said in a letter published in last Thursday’s paper that she anticipates many of the services they’ve offered will still be available in the area, “There is definitely a market and need for these services in the Big Horn Basin.”