After 77 years in Batavia, Olmstead’s TV signs off: ‘The vast majority of customers became friends’

Mom and pop businesses are something special in a community, and when one closes residents feel the loss.

Batavia resident Glenna Degaetano believes the loss of local retailer Olmstead’s TV, which has now closed after 77 years of business in Batavia, has left a hole that may never be filled.

“It’s sad to see the store go here and the windows covered,” Degaetano said less than a week after the iconic store closed on Dec. 29. “It would be nice if someone bought the store. There are a number of mom-and-pop stores here in Batavia and you feel like you lose a little bit of yourself when one leaves. You move here and see strong businesses and as years go by things inevitably change.”

Gene Olmstead, 75, of Batavia, elected late last month to close the store at 221 W. Wilson St. that his father Lee Olmstead launched back in 1946.

The second-generation retailer said he started working in his dad’s store when he was 10 years old and never gave a thought to doing something else.

“I started helping my father when I was 10 and I’ve been doing this since the early 1960s. In the interim, I was also a full-time fireman,” Olmstead said inside his store the week after it closed to the public. “The main thing we did was sell TVs. We did repairs for our own customers, but the main thing we did was sell TVs.”

Olmstead’s journey in the television business has been marked by a huge revolution in technology as well as a pricing structure that he says makes modern TVs a real bargain. One of the first tube TVs made by Motorola sold for around $350 back in the day with maybe a 9-inch screen, which makes a modern 55-inch flat screen selling for $600 a steal.

“When I started there were still the tubes in television sets and then the manufacturers went to solid-state circuit boards,” he said. “The flat screen LCD TV was something that really represented a huge leap. If I could have imagined back in the ‘70s and ‘80s when we had to use a dolly hand truck to move a large projection TV that I’d be able to carry a 55-inch TV now by myself that wouldn’t have computed.”

Olmstead said the store usually sold a few thousand TVs a year and that he “could have sold a lot more if I went with more of the low-end, off-brand products.”

“I always sold better-quality TVs because I had loyal customers I took care of, and they expected me to sell them the best,” he said. “With the big-box retailers we always matched price, plus we delivered, we hooked it up and if they had a problem they knew where to call. The individual customer service was something we were selling, and the vast majority of customers became friends.”

Olmstead said that televisions “have become more of a commodity item and don’t require a specialty shop” as they once did.

“The manufacturers know that unless there was something extremely revolutionary coming out in the near future – which I don’t see – they don’t need the small, independent business,” he said. “We tended to cater to what are called ‘early adapters,’ the first person to buy a color TV or a flat panel of OLED. They needed the small dealers for that because that’s where manufacturers got their start and the small dealers would spend the time to explain things and help educate the consumer about a given product. At a Best Buy or Walmart they just walk in and there it is.”

Olmstead said since making the announcement he was closing the shop he’s “been flabbergasted by the number of people who have come in saying ‘This is the only place I’ve ever bought a TV in my life and what am I going to do?’”

“I’ve had women calling up crying and others cuss me out,” he said.

Some customers are so loyal they ordered new TVs they are planning to pick up even after the store has closed.

“I have a number of them (TVs) here on the floor in boxes,” he said. “People told me they don’t need a TV right now but figure they’re going to need a new one eventually and wanted to buy one more.”

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.