Nigro’s adds a new chapter with the Grand Opening of Kansas City Tack on Saturday, October 17!
As Nigro’s Western Store celebrates 70 years in business in 2026, the family is excited to mark the occasion with the return of a former – and significant – part of the busines with the Grand Opening of Kansas City Tack. While Kansas City Tack is technically an all-new venture, complete with it’s own building that houses dozens of new lines of merchandise and hundreds of new products, the world of equestrian retail is familiar territory for the Nigro family.
The story of Nigro’s Western Store began in 1956, when Tony Nigro Sr. (father of David Nigro Sr.) opened a family western store where he sold saddles, tack, and western wear. Over the years, the store evolved with its customers. Horse ownership became less common, so western wear took center stage, and tack eventually went away.
According to David Sr.,
Kansas City Tack
3300 Merriam Lane
Kansas City, KS 66106
“We got out of the tack business about 15 years ago because people couldn’t really afford to keep horses anymore. It became very expensive to board them and buy all the feed and supplies you needed for them.”
But now, everything has changed. Many cities and municipalities have made it easier for people to keep horses – even in their backyards. For the last several years we’ve had people calling every day asking whether we stock tack. It seemed like the timing was right, so we decided to get back into the tack business – and in a major way.”
Building Kansas City Tack
To help transform the old general store behind Nigro’s Western Store into Kansas City Tack, the Nigro family hired Ed Moore Construction to work as the Designer and General Contractor. Like Nigro’s, Ed Moore Construction is a long-standing local, family-owned business. In fact, both families have been friends for nearly 70 years! So, when it came time to transform the old general store into Nigro’s new tack shop, they knew exactly who to call.
The vision for the new tack shop was to create a retail space that had an authentic and rustic feel while also looking polished and built to last. The old general store would need a complete overhaul and every little detail made a difference. . Ed Moore started the project by ensuring that everything about the building was structuraly sound and brought up to code, including structural upgrades, new wiring, updated plumbing, and more.
The Nigro family and Ed Moore worked together to come up with a final design for the space that would accommodate all the many lines they planned to sell at the tack shop integrated with a look and feel that would appeal to Nigro’s customers. A new front sales counter was custom-built to meet the tack shop’s needs, and the exterior walls were fitted with a wide variety of merchadise shelves and display hooks suited to the merchandise that would be displayed. New custom cabinetry and countertops were crafted and installed in the space, and reclaimed wood siding and paneling provided a rustic look that helped to tie the entire space together.
With the build-out completed and the huge variety of tack merchandise fully stocked into the new display areas, all agreed that the Kansas City Tack shop build-out turned out even better than what the Nigro family and Ed Moore Construction expected. According to Ed Moore III, Vice President of Ed Moore Construction,
“I think the space looks better than what we imagined. I can’t picture anything more fitting for Nigro’s heritage and what they sell. We can’t say enough about what it meant for us to be asked to be involved in the project, especially since we got to assist with finalizing the details and creating the final vision. The relationship with the Nigro family is absolutely critical to us, and we were willing to work hard to accomplish what they wanted for the store. The project is done, but we’ll be back on a regular basis as customers – that’s how important this relationship is to us.”
