Patty and Gordon French may have found the secret to long life in business at their feed store on the Camas-Washougal border. It’s the ability to make the best of changing seasons.
“I call this the weather store because what we sell is based on the weather,” said Patty French, who bought the store with her husband in 1994.
The business was established two years earlier by Len and Janet Crawford. The Frenches came to the plate with her background as a banker and his as a petroleum engineer from an agricultural family.
The 7,000-square-foot store still sells standard feed and agricultural supplies, but has expanded to employ 11 people and offer garden equipment, home décor and apparel.
Forty percent of its business occurs between April and June, when it’s cold enough to sell stove pellets and rain gear but warm enough to sell bark and garden equipment.
For the rest of the year, the store’s 14 departments complement each other – when demand for one fades out, another is on the rise.
Product offerings especially changed in the last few years when the Frenches realized the agricultural community was shrinking and gas prices began to raise the prices of nearly all of their merchandise.
In response, the couple focused on selling smaller-ticket items to more urban customers. They also remodeled to add The Patty O apparel and home décor shop on-site.
“If you don’t stay with the times and reinvest in the company, it doesn’t grow,” said Gordon French.
On the flip side, high gas prices and the slow economy have brought in more local customers.
“People are discovering their local businesses” in the down economy, said Patty French.
Under the couple’s ownership, the store has grown from $210,000 in sales in 1994 to a projected $1.9 million this year. Most of that is reinvested into the business.
Nearly 11,000 people are part of the store’s frequent buyer program. The couple started the program with quarterly mailings in 2006, when the Homeland Security Act required they track anyone buying feed for animals that could be bred for consumption.
“That upset a lot of people,” said Patty French. “They don’t want their names in databases.”
So to sweeten that bitter but required pill, the Frenches used the database to develop a mailing list for coupons. It now gets about four additions per day.
“We turned that negative into a positive,” Patty French said.
LJC Feed and The Patty O
Gordon and Patty French, owners
3501 N.E. Third Ave., Camas
360-835-0164
Charity Thompson can be reached at cthompson@vbjusa.com.
