Swallen’s . . . just the name brings back a flood of memories. The new furniture smell of the Wooster Pike store when my parents dragged us kids along to shop for new appliances or furniture. My pining after the most incredible bike any 11-year-old girl could ever imagine, a purple five-speed with a funky ‘70s floral pattern on the seat. My dad taking forever to decide between two nearly identical pairs of blue work pants. Checking out the latest albums because Swallen’s had the best record department. Even when I was a kid with no money, we neighborhood kids “shopped” at Swallen’s, dragging discarded appliance boxes home to construct play houses.
If you lived in Fairfax back in the day, if you didn’t work at Swallen’s, chances are you had family members, friends, or neighbors who did. My sister worked there for a while as a cashier and my brother worked at the Super Warehouse for a few years. Many Swallen’s employees were fiercely loyal to the owner and founder of Swallen’s, Pat Swallen.
Wilbur Homer Swallen, known as Pat, was born in Washington Township in Stark County, Ohio on October 29, 1913, the son of Homer and Martha Swallen. His father, who was a farmer, died when Pat was a child and his mother then married a man named John Boyd, who was also a farmer. Pat graduated from Alliance High School in 1931 and continued his education at The Ohio State University. In an interview late in his life, Swallen said that he was told at OSU that he wasn’t college material. Nevertheless, he received a degree in Dairy Production in 1935. He began a career in the dairy industry, taking jobs in Columbus, Zanesville, and Hamilton, Ohio.
In
1936, Pat married a young Indiana woman named Coyla Burnell and over the next
several years they had four children, Donald, Joyce, Dale, and Bruce. In 1941,
Pat and Coyla purchased a home on Old Red Bank Road in Cincinnati.
Pat realized that the dairy industry wasn’t for him and began looking for “something more.” In 1946, he took a 70 cent per hour job as stockperson in the floor covering and small appliance department at Sears Roebuck. He learned to lay floor coverings there, but wanted the opportunity to sell, which he finally got during a sales rush. From that point forward, he worked hard to become the most successful salesman in the department. Each morning he stopped at the store’s candy counter and bought a bag of roasted peanuts. While his coworkers went to lunch, Pat stayed and helped lunchtime customers and ate his peanuts. Well into his Swallen’s years, Pat was still known for walking his sales floor, eating and sharing peanuts.
While still at Sears, Pat began installing floor coverings for friends and acquaintances on his own time. In time, friends began asking him for kitchen cabinets, appliances, and furniture. Pat and Coyla began selling this merchandise out of their Old Red Bank Road home. Merchandise was displayed throughout their house and even lined the driveway. Neighbors would help the Swallens by assisting with sales or caring for their children. The Swallens gained a reputation for giving customers a good deal and service after the sale. By 1951, the home-based business had become profitable enough that Pat left his job at Sears. He said that he never took a customer or lead from Sears when he left.
So, legend has it that Pat Swallen started his business in the basement of his home in Fairfax. Please allow me to nitpick a little. First, he sold merchandise on display throughout the interior and exterior of his home, not just his basement. You liked the nightstand in Pat and Coyla’s bedroom? You could buy it and the matching bedroom set! Second, that house on Old Red Bank Road is, technically, in (gasp!) Hyde Park, not Fairfax.
Not
far from the Swallen residence, an old gravel pit on Wooster Pike in Fairfax had been
vacant and for sale for some time. Coyla and Pat purchased the lot in 1953 and
built their first store with a 10-room apartment for the family above it. Pat
and Coyla sold their home on Old Red Bank Road in 1955, but some of their
former neighbors were among the first employees at the new store. As the store
grew, additions were made to the building.
In November 1959, Swallen’s opened its second store on Red Bank Road in Fairfax, across the street from the former Swallen residence. The new store featured merchandise like toys, bicycles, housewares, hardware, records, clothing, and sporting goods. The expanded Wooster Pike store carried merchandise like furniture, major appliances, televisions, and rugs.
With
the success of the first two stores in Fairfax, expansion was inevitable. In
the 1960s, Swallen’s opened stores in Western Hills, Winton Place, Tri-County,
and Downtown Cincinnati. To help finance these new locations, Swallen’s sold
debentures, which are unsecured bonds, to both employees and non-employees. Pat
Swallen promoted the debentures to employees as a retirement investment that
would help them share in the growth and success of the company. Investors
received interest payments on an annual basis. Employees received a bonus
interest payment, receiving up to 13 percent interest. Non-employees received a
merchandise discount in addition to the interest payment. In 1974, the Cincinnati
Post said, “Swallen is . . . an
innovative businessman - innovative in financial matters and employe
relations.”
Swallen’s stores had a distinctive aesthetic. Actually, they had no aesthetic. The stores had bare cement floors, exposed duct work, concrete block walls, and metal shelving. Pat Swallen himself said, “You couldn’t make our stores more ugly if you tried.” Customers didn’t seem to care, as long as they were getting good values and finding the merchandise they needed. As their later jingle declared, “Anything you want, everything you need, you’ll find it at Swallen’s.”
Pat
Swallen was a Christian. He said he was hesitant to speak about his faith
because he didn’t want to appear to “exploit my religion for financial gain.”
During his lifetime, Pat Swallen’s stores never opened on Sunday in honor of the
Sabbath. At one time he was president of the Gideon Society, a Christian
organization best known for distributing free Bibles and New Testaments and
placing Bibles in hotel rooms. He kept copies of Bibles and Christian texts in
his office to distribute to employees and customers. A Presbyterian, Pat Swallen
was a lay preacher who frequently spoke in churches of various Christian
denominations throughout the Cincinnati area. Swallen’s also had a full-time
chaplain on staff.
Swallen’s
continued to expand into the 1970s, opening two stores in Columbus, a store in
Mansfield, and a store in Middletown. Not
every Swallen’s store was a success. The Downtown Cincinnati store closed in
1979, hampered by an inadequate setup for vendor deliveries and customer
pickups. Swallen’s never gained a solid footing in the Columbus area and those
stores closed in 1982 due to disappointing sales. Nevertheless, Swallen’s
continued to expand in the Greater Cincinnati area in the 1980s with the
opening of the Northgate and Florence, Kentucky stores.
Despite
being millionaires, Pat and Coyla had a fairly humble lifestyle. They certainly
could have moved to Indian Hill (or at least to Mariemont), but continued to
live in their apartment over the Wooster Pike store in Fairfax. No limousine or luxury car
for Pat Swallen; he drove the same kinds of cars other Fairfax residents drove.
Ever the farm boy, he kept an orchard and garden here in Fairfax. He would can
or freeze some of the fruit and give away the rest. One of the Swallens’ few
indulgences was travel.
On June 15, 1986, Pat and Coyla Swallen celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with an open house given by their children. Pat had a debilitating stroke in March 1987. On June 27, 1987, Coyla passed away after a lengthy illness. Pat Swallen suffered another stroke on February 21, 1988 and passed away at his home above the store on Wooster Pike. Longtime employee and friend, Vito Sylvester, said, "If the word Christian could be used to describe anyone it was Pat. He was friendly, thoughtful, compassionate, generous, and had a wonderful sense of humor. His creed was the Golden Rule to which he lived by more than anyone I've ever known."
Don Swallen succeeded his father as president of the company. Shortly after Pat Swallen’s death, the company moved furniture, major appliances, and televisions from the Wooster Pike store to the expanded Red Bank Road store. Later in 1988, the company announced an expansion of the Western Hills store.
What
may have been the biggest change after Pat Swallen’s death occurred in 1990
when the stores began opening on Sunday. Swallen’s chaplain Ed White said, "I
think they would have done anything to not open on Sunday. But they were forced
into it."
The first signs of trouble with Swallen’s came in 1993. Large national retailers like Walmart, Kohl’s, and Best Buy were moving into the area. A local market research executive was later quoted in the Cincinnati Enquirer as saying, "The ability to go out and buy a can of peas, a case of diapers, a desk, and a shotgun all in one place is not very important . . . what is important is carrying a variety of television sets."
The company hired Brian Wygle, an outside retail consultant, who stepped into the role of acting CEO. He found the company’s culture to be “a little sleepy” and likened their business model to walking backwards on an escalator, "As long as you're moving a little faster, you're OK, but you're not really getting anywhere . . . I don't think they kept up with the times.” He suggested changes that included hiring staff from other retailers, reconfiguring the sales floors, implementing a low-price guarantee, employee incentive programs, and computerizing operations. They also engaged local broadcaster Bob Braun as their spokesman and created a new corporate logo.
On
August 16, 1993, there was a five-alarm fire at Swallen’s floor covering
warehouse on Wooster Pike. 75 percent of the building and its contents were destroyed.
The fire was caused by lightning striking a transformer. The Cincinnati Post
reported that 300 or 400 people blocked the roadway to watch the fire. (I
have said before that Fairfax really turns out when catastrophe strikes.) Unbelievably,
lightning struck again on May 1, 1994, causing a much smaller fire at the
Swallen’s heating and air conditioning building across from the Red Bank store.
There were no injuries in either fire.
In
February 1995, the news broke that the Swallen family was negotiating to sell
the company to Yogis Burry, an investment firm led by Swallen’s former Vice
President of Finance, Sharad Buddhev. Despite reducing workforce, inventory,
and operating costs, vendors were reporting that Swallen’s was struggling to
pay them on time.
The sale was completed in April 1995. Buddhev became the company’s CEO and William Kagler, formerly president of Kroger and Skyline Chili, chairman of the board. Don Swallen remained with the company as president. The new ownership planned to emphasize service and eliminate less profitable product lines. In the weeks that followed, the workforce was further reduced. Vendors were now not only complaining that they weren’t being paid, but that their phone calls weren’t being returned. Some vendors had stopped selling to the company at all. William Kagler resigned from the company on October 25, 1995. On October 31, Swallen’s filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and immediately closed its Middletown and Mansfield stores.
In
a November 3, 1995 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, a Swallen family
member indicated that Don Swallen had left the company weeks before the
bankruptcy filing and no member of the family had served in a decision-making
capacity since the company was sold in April.
On November 30, 1995, the company notified employees that they had been without health insurance since October 19. Swallen’s self-insured their health insurance plan, but had failed to reimburse their administrator, Anthem, for claims paid on their behalf. Then, upon reporting to work on December 7, 1995, employees were handed notices that the five remaining stores were closing immediately. Notices were taped to the doors to notify customers. A going out of business sale began the following week. On January 24, 1996, the Red Bank Road store closed its doors for the last time. Fittingly, it was the final Swallen’s store to close.
For
the next several years, issues pertaining to the company’s debts were contested
in the courts. The company’s secured creditors had priority according to
bankruptcy law and were first in line for debt collection. Unsecured creditors
would receive the scraps after the secured creditors’ debts were satisfied.
Unsecured creditors included customers who purchased merchandise that hadn’t
been delivered and the folks who purchased the debentures that helped
build the company. The debenture holders, mostly Swallen’s retirees, filed suit
against the company’s estate, but ultimately received only a small percentage
of their investment.
There are a lot of opinions about why Swallen’s failed, mostly focused on management missteps following Pat Swallen’s death and the changing retail landscape. Whatever the reason for Swallen’s downfall, a recurring theme was that it wouldn’t have happened this way if Pat Swallen had been living. Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Laura Pulfer may have said it best. Pat Swallen, “who sent letters to employees reminding them of the true meaning of Christmas would never have canned people three weeks before the holidays with a cheesy Dear John letter handed to them by a security guard. . . . It was common knowledge that he had offers to sell his company, but he said he was worried a new owner might not take care of his employees.”
I can empathize with Swallen’s employees. Although I didn’t work for Swallen’s I worked for another much-loved local retailer, McAlpin’s, and endured the closing of a store where I had worked for 10 years and later the purchase of the company by another retailer. Both announcements caused employees, especially longtime loyal employees, pain. Over time, though, it seems we remember the good times much more than the bad. It is also encouraging that so many customers have such fond memories of McAlpin’s.
Swallen’s had an unfortunate and painful ending, but hopefully customers and former employees look back on the company fondly. I know I do. And hopefully the sad story of the company’s demise doesn’t overshadow the success story of the innovative, loyal, hard-working, Christian man who founded it, Wilbur Homer Swallen.
Thanks for this story. Memories of seeing the Salvation Army band in the grocery area as I tagged along with my parents are still vivid.
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