"In celebrating its 35th anniversary, local outdoor store J&H Lanmark is taking a hike to set up a second camp on Romany Road in the Carl Myers building, in addition to going virtual with an e-commerce Web site.
"I'd been looking at (the location) for three or four months and with the closing of Phillip Gall's it began to make more sense," said J&H owner George Lathram II, who bought the store roughly one year ago. "That 40502 area was their customer base, so it made it more urgent."
The grand opening of the store's new location is slated for Oct. 13.
First opened on North Broadway by former owners Danny Johnson and John Hall as J&H Army Surplus in 1972, the store saw a transformation in the early 1990s when Hall bought out Johnson and opened the current Moore Drive location.
Lathram was celebrating his 16th birthday in 1993 as his father's best friend, Hall, prepared to open the current J&H location and called offering him a job performing "janitorial duties" at the store. Lathram worked at the store for the next six years until graduating from UK. He bought J&H last fall from Hall, whose health no longer permitted him to operate the store.
At last year's Christmas party, Hall spoke and told the employees they were the reason the store is still in business well into its fourth decade. It's "the personal touch," Hall said in an interview.
"I've told people one difference you can make is the service you give, because a lot of people don't know what they want or what they need and they need somebody to help them," he said.
Two of the employees have been with the company since the Moore Drive location opened in 1993, and Lathram said the store has maintained a knowledgeable and loyal customer base even through the emergence of large national retailers.
"The sales have grown year over year since he opened this location. The big box stores haven't hurt us," Lathram said. Retaining his current customers at the store near Nicholasville Road and New Circle, hiring new employees, stocking the Romany Road location and building relationships with the new customers has put a lot on his plate.
"Everybody is pretty overwhelmed, but when you're as excited as we are, it's fun," he said. Concerns about being able to fill the shelves with apparel at the beginning of the big season for outfitters with little notice quickly waned, Lathram said, as representatives from The North Face and Patagonia called offering extra supplies after word came out of the closing of Phillip Gall's last month.
Despite the shuttering of a competitor who had been in business for 105 years, Lathram hasn't worried that opening a store on their former turf may be a losing proposition.
"Phillip Gall's had a strong business," Lathram said. "I think, for whatever reason, their expenses could have been a reason why (they shut down). I know what the rent is over in that area, and it definitely is not a cheap place to open up shop," he said. "The Lexington market is a big market for outdoor clothing, and there is plenty of growth potential there, and we hope to capture some of that business that used to go over to Woodhill on Romany Road."
In fact, the closing of his competition has lead to expansion of big-ticket items at his 10,000-square-foot store. "Since Phillip Gall's went out of town, there has been a strong demand for high-end climbing and camping equipment. We saw an immediate increase in our business when Phillip Gall's closed their doors in that department," he said. "I really thought a J&H would do well on Romany Road, and then when our competition got out of the business, it made much more sense to go ahead and move forward with it."
Most of the second floor of the new 6,000-square-foot location will be devoted to camping and climbing equipment to capture that growing market. The new location, Lathram said, will overlap somewhat with the current store but will feature higher-end items as well as separate departments devoted to products for children and dogs. Just as at the current location, customers will be allowed to bring their dogs into the store.
Lathram said the Romany Road area is "near and dear" to him. He hopes to capitalize on the neighborhood's proximity to downtown and UK, he said, as well as the foot traffic prevalent in the area. The company's Web site can be viewed at www.jhoutdoors.com.