Building the Valley: From play time to real time, Nicole Vigilante marks 5 years running Trovo in New Kensington

When playing with her younger brother and sister as a child, Nicole Vigilante remembers them all pretending to run a store in their father’s basement workshop.

The trio imagined they were working in a hardware store, answering calls and taking orders for nuts, bolts and washers.

“I can remember the smell of the varnish as he would stain stuff,” said Vigilante, 50.

She has been doing it for real for five years now, after leaving behind her career as a dietitian for “something fun,” running her home decor shop, Trovo, in downtown New Kensington.

“I always wanted this. I always wanted a little shop,” Vigilante said.

All the wooden items in the store are made by her father, Savino Cicconi, an Italian immigrant. Her daughter, Nina Vigilante, 19, does the artwork.

“I didn’t really think I would love it as much as I do. I still do,” Nicole Vigilante said.

“I love talking to people. I love finding the treasures.”

She opened in November 2019, after Thanksgiving, on Small Business Saturday. She celebrated the shop’s fifth anniversary on Nov. 30, which also was Small Business Saturday and her mother’s birthday. Sharon Cicconi, 62, died in August 2012.

“I wonder what she would think of this,” Vigilante said.

A New Kensington native, Vigilante is married to Anthony Vigilante, a lawyer who serves as solicitor for the city and the New Kensington- Arnold School District.

In addition to their daughter, they have two sons, Giovanni, 24, and Marco, 21.

A native of the city’s Mt. Vernon neighborhood, Vigilante graduated from Valley High School in 1992 and earned a degree in clinical dietetics and nutrition from the University of Pittsburgh in 1996.

She started her shop on the online site Etsy in the spring of 2019, where she said it went well.

The name, Trovo, is Italian for “I find.”

“It speaks to who I am and what I do,” she said.

“We find and save forgotten things and send them off to a new life.”

After Autumn Walker, owner of BoHo Bath & Bubbles by Apothecary Soap Co., suggested Vigilante do a pop-up in New Kensington, Vigilante’s husband said she, instead, should just open a permanent spot in the empty corner storefront of the building they own on Fifth Avenue at 10th Street.

“It just seemed to be perfect,” she said. “Then the world shut down.”

But Trovo did well despite the pandemic in 2020, with online sales to people who were stuck at home.

Anything made from wood at Trovo — such as lamps, little tool boxes, picture frames, cardinals and Christmas trees — likely were made by her father.

“He loves to create, and he doesn’t know how to sit still,” Vigilante said.

Cicconi, 76, was a 5-year-old when he came to America from Italy with his parents and brother in 1954. He learned to be handy from his father, a cart maker.

“My dad has a lot of quotes,” Cicconi said. “I remember him saying, ‘Your eyes have to be thieves.’ If you see something, you should be able to make it or do it.”

Cicconi retired from the Plum School District in 2007 after teaching art for 35 years.

An artistic thread runs through the family, as his son, Dante Cicconi, is a landscape architect and his other daughter, Marisa Magnusen, is a photographer.

“Nicole has a great eye for decorating and a great eye for displaying things,” he said.

Cicconi’s workshop is now in a garage. He didn’t start selling his creations, which he made for his family, until Vigilante opened Trovo.

He hasn’t been taking a cut of the sales, saying he doesn’t need the money.

“I think she’s done a great job. She’s always finding stuff for me to do,” said Cicconi, who often can be found at the store, keeping Vigilante company.

“It keeps me busy. I enjoy doing it.”

The rest of Vigilante’s inventory comes from estate sales, flea markets and online auctions. Sometimes, she is contacted by people who have things in a closet but not enough for an estate sale.

“I like to say sometimes things find us,” she said.

But she also enjoys finding things herself, calling going into a dirty and forgotten basement a treasure hunt.

“I love going in there and seeing what time forgot,” she said.

She has added some “vintage inspired” items, such as aprons and posters, greenery and a popular branch bar.

She also has items featuring the Trovo name and the New Kensington ZIP code, 15068.

“I do cram a lot in here,” she said.

Describing what she offers as “not very fancy,” Vigilante said her goal is to move things along into the hands of people who will use them and love them.

“That’s the best feeling,” she said. “It just really fills my heart when stuff like that happens.”

Her sales numbers are split about evenly between the store and Etsy.

She has things in the store that aren’t online, including items such as Kensington Ware, which she has found will sell in the store but not online.

“I use social media a lot to promote the business and tell our story,” she said. “I try to be genuine, and people connect with that.”

One of Vigilante’s favorite things in her store has been there since the start, a Smith Premier 1 typewriter from 1896. Because of its ornate markings, she refers to it in the feminine.

“I just think she’s really neat. I wish she could talk,” she said.

“Where have you been? How did you get here? What did you create?”

It gets a lot of attention but hasn’t sold.

When it does, Vigilante said, “I’ll give her a little kiss and send her on her way.”