[C]LARENDON — When headlines reporting “Major Fire at Vermont Country Store Warehouse” hit the internet last month, the Orton family that owns and operates the retro retailer knew it had to reassure customers the blaze had ravaged a backup stockroom rather than its main off-site call and distribution center.
But that meant the self-described “Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find” would have to publicize the fact it has a main off-site call and distribution center. And for anyone running a $100 million-a-year company founded on the sepia-tone image of marketing and mailing everything from the counter of a historic red-clapboard flagship store, such a task can be tricky.
“We don’t want our customers to get the impression they’re not going to get personal service,” says Ann Warrell, community relations and communications manager.
So begins the Vermont Country Store’s challenge this holiday season — acknowledging the blaze consumed 5 percent of its inventory while accentuating that everything else not only remains open but also requires dozens more seasonal workers to juggle the remaining 95 percent of stock as well as box upon box of replacement items arriving daily.
“Our projection is to have a record season,” says Eliot Orton, part of the fourth and latest generation of family storekeepers. “We’re hiring.”
Back when the late Vrest Orton established the business in 1946, he was inspired by childhood memories of his father’s turn-of-the-century general store in North Calais.
“Most of the men came in the evenings to wait for the horse-drawn stage that brought the mail from Montpelier,” the founder is quoted in store publicity. “It smelled of harness, coffee, smoky kerosene lamps, tobacco, and sugar maple wood burning in the big stove.”
Starting with a 36-item catalog sent to the family’s Christmas card list at the end of World War II, Vrest Orton went on to buy an 1827 building in Weston, population 545, and open a store, only to see it go national in 1952 when the Saturday Evening Post — then the most read magazine in the country — published an article titled “The Happy Storekeeper of the Green Mountains.”
Three-quarters of a century later, Vrest’s son Lyman, 77, and fortysomething grandsons Cabot, Gardner and Eliot still stock nostalgic lotions and notions. But the enterprise has grown from its Weston hub to a second store in Rockingham, head office in Manchester and call and distribution center in Clarendon — giving the operation a foothold in each of the state’s four southernmost counties.
The business was preparing for a best-ever season when a Clarendon retiree watching a John Wayne movie looked out his front window the night of Oct. 20 and spotted flames shooting from a 16,000-square-foot warehouse across the road.
Forget the fact the local volunteer fire department, helped by a dozen neighboring units, quickly extinguished the blaze without any injuries. Initial police scanner chatter and press reports made many believe the nearby call and distribution center had been incinerated.
“The Vermont Country Store didn’t burn up,” Eliot Orton repeats today. “The fire will be largely unknown and unfelt to most customers.”
But it’s proving a challenge to staffers who simultaneously must restock and ship out products while fielding and deflecting press questions.
How large is the overall operation? How many people work there? How many catalogs are mailed — is it in the “tens of millions” claimed by Martha Stewart on her television show?
“We tend to not want to talk about us being a big company,” CEO Jim Hall replies. “We talk about the store, we talk about the heritage.”
And when that doesn’t appease, they introduce another family member.
“Pixy stick?” asks Cabot Orton, offering candy. “How long has it been since you’ve had one of those?”
Although the store won’t disclose staff numbers (a 2010 New York Times article reported the company then employed about 450 people), brother Eliot will say, “this time of year, we almost double the size of the workforce.”
So much so, the business is continuing to advertise for help.
“We tap out the labor supply,” Cabot Orton says. “We’re all packing boxes and answering the phone.”
Call and you may find yourself speaking with one of the brothers or fellow leaders on the administrative ladder, all of whom are happy to report the weather in Vermont as well as, yes, you really are talking to them.
“In the end there wasn’t anything that burned up that we can’t replace,” Hall tells customers who’ve heard about the fire’s resulting $2 million inventory loss. “The majority of our product is made in the United States so we can get more relatively quickly. Vendors are doing backflips to get us product for Christmas.”
A few particular items will require patience. Take “Evening in Paris,” a recently revived fragrance popular from its creation in 1928 until its discontinuance in the late 1960s. The tens of thousands of cobalt blue bottles charred in the blaze can’t be replaced until early next year.
“She’ll have to wait a little longer to get that,” Eliot Orton says.
Specially, “will ship by 02/04/2019,” the store’s website notes. But Warrell, ever the spokeswoman, finds a phoenix amid the ashes.
“Valentine’s Day,” she suggests.