Jim Trimble, 64, started going to Wanamaker Feed and Seed because he raised rabbits. He’d ride his bike to the store and visit with the owners, Franklin Township residents Ralph and Alethia Prange. On occasions when they needed help, he’d work for them.
Then, in 1976, Ralph offered to sell Trimble the business, which carried feed, seed, water softener, salt, and a few garden tools.
“I was the ripe old age of 22, so he held it for me for a year so I could figure out how to make that happen,” Trimble said.
The two finalized the sale in late 1977 and Trimble, who had lived in Wanamaker since he was 5 years old, took over the store on Jan. 1, 1978.
Ralph didn’t retire, though. He stayed for another year as an employee to make the transition easier.
“He was very well liked and very well trusted,” Trimble said. “Ralph did a really good service for me because sometimes (the customers) would just walk past me and ask him a question and he’d point back at me and say, ‘ask him.'”
As the new owner of Wanamaker Feed and Seed, Trimble spent time studying, reading and familiarizing himself with the products. The assists from Ralph helped build the community’s trust in him, he said, but he could see that the shop needed to make some changes from the beginning.
In 1978, Wanamaker Feed and Seed’s customer base was “elderly,” so it needed to bring in younger people for the sake of longevity, Trimble said.
He first expanded the store’s hours, including opening on Wednesdays and staying open all day on Saturdays, then he worked on expanding the inventory.
The first big addition came in the first year or two of Trimble’s tenure, with the store adding flowers and vegetables for home gardeners to its inventory. It turned out to be a fortuitous move, Trimble said, as gardening became much more popular in the early 1980s.
“There were big, big gardens back then,” he said. “We would sell 1,000 pounds of sweet corn a year. Gardens were huge. People would can out of necessity.”
The community around the store was changing at the time, too. Much of the farmland was being turned into housing developments and the remaining farmers were buying one another’s land to grow their farms.
Suppliers tended to bypass dealers to sell directly to big farms, Trimble said, so he started looking for ways to insulate Wanamaker Feed and Seed from that distribution model. The answer, he figured, was pet food and pet supplies.
“The feed companies wanted to circumvent the dealership network and go direct, but the pet food companies couldn’t hardly do that,” he said. “There wasn’t very many 50-head dog packs out here.”
His hunch was right and selling pet food and supplies became, and remains, an important part of the business. Not only did it help the company deal with the feed distribution model, but it attracted non-farmers who previously had no reason to visit.
After the local hardware store closed, Trimble added a full hardware line to the shop to fill the gap in the market.
In 2000, Wanamaker Feed and Seed opened its Back Porch Garden Center in the former Wanamaker Post Office building. The garden center was renamed Back Porch Garden and Pool Center when it began carrying pool supplies after a local purveyor closed.
“I don’t like change, but change is inevitable and sometimes very healthy,” Trimble said. “When it comes to the business, I’ve kind of embraced the change because it’s survival. That’ll make you do things that you normally don’t do.”
Over four decades, Wanamaker Feed and Seed has evolved to be more than a feed and seed store. Many of its customers come in because they’re working on a project, getting something to fuel a hobby, such as gardening, or buying pet food. With the exception of folks who suddenly need to fix a leaky sink, they’re happy, Trimble said.
“We get to see them doing something they enjoy doing,” he said. “It’s not like being in a hospital or something. Their customers don’t usually want to be there. Our customers want to be here when they’re here.”
Trimble has been married to his wife, Peggy, for 39 years. Their three children have, at one time or another, worked for the feed store and one still does a couple of days a week. Peggy still helps in the spring, but she gets back to their grandchildren as soon as she can.
Q & A
Q: What is the greatest joy in your line of work?
A: I suppose the American dream. You own your own business and you’re in a community that supports you. You feel good about it.
Q: What is the greatest difficulty?
A: The constant balance of labor expense. You want to price yourself as competitively as possible, but you’ve got to make the profits. The paperwork load has increased so much over the years… the business side, not the socializing side, but the business side.
Q: Who did you turn to for advice when you took over your business?
A: The prior owner. I talked to him a lot. Everybody has an opinion, so I listened to all of them.
Q: Where did you go to high school and do you have siblings?
A: I’ve got three brothers. All four of us graduated from Franklin Central. They’re all older than me.
Q: What attracts people to this kind of business?
A: Just their daily needs. Pet food and large animal food. We still sell horse feed and those sorts of things. You have a lot of choices to buy your stuff anymore, so we try to have good customer service and be friendly. Hopefully, they’ll want to stay close and local and they do. They community is very, very supportive. We couldn’t do it without them.
Originally published in Southside Business Leader, 2019. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.