When Danny Killion was younger, he robbed from banks, but when he went to prison, he discovered that he could use his creative talents to make money.

“So I started working around here and had construction jobs and stuff like that that I hated, but I would go along the rivers after work and I would find all this cool wood. And because I got heavily involved in art projects when I was in prison, this was kind of my saving grace,” said Killion, now the owner of Weathered Wood.

He opened his shop, Weathered Wood, nine years ago in the heart of downtown Troy, where he takes driftwood from the Hudson River and creates furniture, lamps and wedding arches, beautiful additions to people’s lives.

Supporting small business has been even more important over the last year. He says while owning a small shop can be a 24/7 responsibility, people of color face added, unique challenges.

“So I think that’s the significance of supporting women-owned businesses, Black-owned businesses, LGBTQ-owned businesses, because it's already a struggle to be a small business owner, but it's a struggle in life, in general, to be in one of those groups,” Killion said.

A big part of what he does is wedding rentals, and last year, with the wedding industry taking a huge hit, so did shops like Weathered Wood.

“We did probably 35 weddings in 2019. No weddings in 2020, a complete loss of revenue, but nobody was coming out either, so no farmers market traffic, no retail traffic at all. We were dead in the water,” Killion said.

The shop barely made it through the pandemic, but now business is picking back up. Because while the pandemic may have put Killion's revenue on hold, nothing can stifle his passion to keep creating.