Newspaper Page Text
QEuGQgbji
Five©
& Dime
Anyone who grew up before
the 1960 s remembers 5 & 10s, with their wonderful
clutter of goods and toys affordable even to a kid with
a dime. And because most dime stores were relatively
small—at least by today’s shopping standards—they
were often full of recognizable and friendly feces.
The last F. W. Woolworth closed in 1997, but at
least one dime store —Vidler’s 5 & 10 in East Aurora,
N.Y—isn’t just holding on, it’s thriving. Thar’s largely
due to Ed and Bob Vidler, who run the store the
old-feshioned way, with friendly, fece-to-fece service,
the way their father did when he opened it in 1930.
“We can order something on the spot,” Ed says.
“If somebody comes in and says they need a special
tablecloth for a wedding, we try to get it. That’s
something national chains can’t do. They can’t give
that personal service.”
Paying attention to customers’ needs helped the
Vidlers survive the opening of a shopping mall near
u
A ride on Sandy the horse remains a favorite at Vidler’s.
East Aurora (pop. 6,673) in the 1960s —that and
learning how to tighten their belts when other stores
on Main Street were closing. Bob and Ed take special
ordering seriously, and customer-request sheets are
next to every cash register. Their staff is another factor
in their success —they hire people who like people.
Typically, employees give advice on sewing projects
Page 4
•American Profile
by BEN FANTON
or how to use the hand-held kitchen
gadgets the store sells.
“We don’t carry electric toasters
or blenders," Ed says. “Everybody’s
got that. We sell strawberry hullers,
cherry pitters, and pickle pickers.
People look at it and laugh but half
the time they buy it.”
Another part of their success is
keeping products current. “You have
to keep the atmosphere of the old
store,” Ed says, “but you have to
keep your merchandise current."
Vidler’s offers the look and feel of an
old five & dime but stocks the latest in
crafts. And they still carry items that
sell for 5 or 10 cents and even less. At
Vidler’s, you can buy one safety pin—
cost, 3 cents. They carry penny candy, and a dime still
buys a bag of popcorn or a ride on Sandy the
mechanical horse, a fixture at Vidler’s.
“We’ve had some good stories out of
Sandy,” Ed says. “About 20 years ago, the
horse broke down. It’s hard to get parts for
those things, so Sandy was out of action for a
while before we got her fixed. In the mean
time, we got this sad letter from a little girl
named Brianna. She wrote, What’s happened
to Sandy? I love that horse and I’d like to ride
Sandy again.' When it was fixed, I took the
letter to the local paper and had an article put
in that said, ‘Brianna, Sandy’s fixed. You can
ride her again for a dime.’ Local people got a
kick out of it. The girl moved away years ago,
but this past spring I got an announcement
of her graduation from a college down in
Virginia. She still was in touch.”
The Vidlers run 10-second commercials on nearby
Buffalo, N.Y., television stations. The ads feature
Bob and Ed, both in their 70s. In one, Bob feces the
camera with Ed in the background on the roof of
the store —as Bob says, “a Vidler on the roof.” Bob
ends another with, “come to Vidler s where you’ll find
78,243 items, including me and Ed.” Still another
' ''■vSSaife '
Bob and Ed’s dime store has been a Main Street fixture for 72 years.
shows Ed sweeping the sidewalk, while Bob says,
“Our father said if we gave folks what they want, we'd
really clean up.” Corny, but the ads attract shoppers.
The Vidler brothers are hometown fixtures in
other ways as well. They help celebrate Millard
Fillmore’s birthday on Jan. 7 because the 13th
president lived in town and had a law office in the
basement of what ’s now Vidler’s. On July 4, they
sponsor the kids’ part of the local parade, K-POW
(for Kiddies Parade on Wheels), and on the last
Saturday before Christmas, the street in front of the
store is closed off and some 2,000 people gather to
sing carols and enjoy hot chocolate, doughnuts,
and candy canes.
And the store their father founded will continue
into a third generation—daughter Barbara and a
nephew, Cliff, who have worked there for years, are
ready to keep going when Bob and Ed retire.
“They’ve been a major part of our community,”
says Christine Peters, deputy mayor of East Aurora.
“They’ve been a successful business but also a real
attraction as it relates to tourism.”
Think about it—an old-feshioned dime store has
become a tourist attraction.
Ben Fanton urites from his home in Wellsville. N. Y.