Working
Virginia Garrison

The WordHampton public relations firm celebrates its 10th anniversary this week.

Steve Haweeli, the owner, started the East Hampton business with little more than common sense and basic communication skills; he said, a bit of experience as a freelance writer and in direct mail, and lots of restaurant experience as a maitre d' and bartender in New York City. A history and English major who had never studied public relations, he still managed to predict what the press would want in a press release: information without "malarkey" delivered on time without taking up much time.

All those ingredients proved a fortuitous recipe for success, and Mr. Haweeli found a niche in publicity for the food and beverage industry.

His first clients were Nick & Toni's. the East Hampton restaurant popular with second-home owners, the Honest Diner, which Nick & Toni's owned, and the Montauk Yacht Club, followed by Estia, a restaurant in Amagansett. The list grew to 11 in the second year, the 33 in the third.

"The first five years were wild and woolly," Mr Haweeli said, explaining that he worked mostly by himself and "by the seat of the pants."

It took four or five years, during which a couple of part-timers and then Southampton College interns helped him out, before Mr. Haweeli had hired his first full-time account executive.

Today WordHampton employs seven people including part-timers. and it has outgrown the new headquarters on Three Mile Harbor Road into which it moved only last April. Growth has been deliberately gradual, Mr. Haweeli said, to ensure that clients' needs are well met.

Even so, "we are probably the largest restaurant p.r. firm on Long Island," he said, and perhaps the only one of its type on eastern Long Island. "I really feel we're the best," he couldn't help adding. Although restaurants are still the company's bread and butter, it does "general stuff" well too, Mr. Haweeli said.

WordHampton's 45 clients also include architects, real estate brokers, and jewelers, some of them in Manhattan and Nassau County as well as eastern Long Island.

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