70 Years of a Simpler Life
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About 36% of businesses last 10 years. That’s according to a study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which estimates just 21% ever get past their teens.
Seventy? They don’t even have a stat for that.
So it’s understandable Lehman’s is going to dedicate an entire year celebrating 70 years in business. The secret to the coupling of success and longevity? The service aspect. That’s according to Glenda Lehman Ervin, director of marketing at the store started by her late father Jay.“
When Dad started, he was the only employee,” she said. “And quite frankly, he didn’t like to tell customers no.”
Lehman’s was founded in 1955, originally providing nonelectric household goods to the local Amish. The store is sharing the 70th anniversary with Walt Disneyland in California, Velcro and the microwave oven.
General Motors, meanwhile, that year became the first company to have $1 billion in revenue in a single year. Lehman’s didn’t reel in quite that much, but it got off to a good start. Now, if not making billions of dollars, the country store is reaching millions of people.
Lehman’s has thrived through the decades by weathering storms, figurative and literal. In fact, it was some of those tempests, with Jay Lehman piloting it through some rough seas, that begat some major growth.
Those events seem to happen every two decades or so, beginning not long after the store opened with the 1973 energy crisis, triggered by an oil embargo spawned by conflict in the Middle East.
It translated into long lines at gas pumps here in the States and sparked fears of an oil shortage as winter loomed. People suddenly faced the possibility of not being able to heat their homes, and Lehman’s had an answer for that.“
People wanted alternative sources to fossil fuels,” Ervin said. “My father wanted to make sure he had black wooden stoves for sale. He was one of the few local dealers who had them in stock.”
Fast forward to 1999 and the turn of the millennium. Driven by mass media coverage of what turned out to be a complete nothingburger, people all over the globe thought the world would shut down as the year flipped to 2000 because computers apparently were not programmed to accompany that.Mass hysteria ramped up as the calendar turned, with hordes of people suddenly seeing themselves in a survivalist world and not knowing exactly how to survive. Again, Lehman had all sorts of answers.“
What would we do here in Ohio in January if there was no fuel for months at a time,” Ervin said. “We were inundated with orders.”Two decades later COVID-19 hit, and the world went inside. People, as Ervin said, first got bored and then got desperate. They saw grocery shelves emptying and the need again arising to be self-sufficient.
Lehman’s filled both voids with things like puzzles to keep people busy and baking supplies to keep them fed.“That’s what our ancestors did,” Ervin said. “It was a way of life.”
Each time Lehman’s got scores of new customers, all discovering Kidron’s once-hidden gem and then coming back time and again.Also disrupting things, once for customers and once for the store itself, were the blackout of 2003, which cut power to a huge number of Americans including most Ohioans for up to four days, and the flood in 2011, which caused the store, which had no flood insurance, a ton of damage.
Lehman’s had everything anyone needed for heat, food, light and water during the blackout and was up and running full speed just days after the flood, making sure its customers had what they needed in normal times.Through all that, a lot has changed — the store does sell some electronic items now, though still not many — and a lot hasn’t. Ervin said some of the same product lines available there in 1955 are still available now.“
What retailer does that?” Ervin said.Ervin also spoke of Lehman’s selling history. The store, it turns out, also has made some. Lehman’s renowned catalog — among its biggest-selling items — was enshrined nearly a decade ago in the Smithsonian Postal Hall of Fame.Four years ago the store was bought by HRM Enterprises, a family of businesses that includes the Hartville Kitchen, among others. That move, according to Ervin, was to ensure Lehman’s legacy of business.
Little if anything changed with that transaction. Lehman’s still thrives with its original principles in mind.“What we stand for is a simpler life,” Ervin said.“
It’s not the fastest. It’s not the easiest. It’s the antithesis of now-now-now, fast-fast-fast. Almost everything Lehman’s sells takes more time and effort.”
As for the actual 70th anniversary, that date has come and gone. Lehman’s doors first opened Jan. 2, 1955. The celebration, if one time could be zeroed in upon, will be the second week of July, when the store will have a birthday party with its favorite people.“
Obviously,” Ervin said, “we couldn’t do it without our customers.”