Hard choices close Eastland business but owners, staff still here to stay

EASTLAND – Sometimes, the hard choice is the best choice.

But that doesn’t make it any easier.

After nearly 50 years, Eastland Office Supply is closing its doors. Owners Richard Barron and his wife LaQuita took the business over 16 years ago. The decision to close was not made lightly.

“It was very difficult. I mean, I lost a lot of sleep,” Barron said.

The circa-1922 building sits on the north side of the courthouse square and is owned by the Barrons. At the back of the store, the Barrons display historical pictures illustrating the varying iterations of the Eastland County Courthouse, and in a few of the images you can see the building in its early days.

But while the business is closing, that doesn’t mean the Barrons are going anywhere. Their other businesses, particularly TXOL Internet which provides service for Eastland and other communities in the county, will expand into the space.

But for the office supply, it’s the end of the line.

“We've decided to do a complete liquidation. We've got a website, EastlandOfficeSupply.com, that has leads as to what's going on with the sale and lets customers sign up so they'll stay in touch with what's going on with it,” he said.

Everything must go

The invite-only sale was held Wednesday, though Barron said they won’t turn anyone away if they only just then signed up through the website. The sale to the general public starts Thursday and he anticipated it could last up to eight weeks.

What brought such a long-established business to this point? There was the economic fallout of the pandemic, but really Barron cited the snarled supply chains as the biggest battle he’s had to fight since Covid.

“Fifty percent of the suppliers that I bought from are no longer in business,” he said. “It made it to where I was spending a lot of time hunting things and trying to find that new item that would make retail, work.”

RadioShack was one of his major suppliers, he recalled how the electronics giant had gone bankrupt three times during the period he’s owned the office supply store.

“And they just sold again for the fourth time,” he added.

Fighting the 'Amazons of the world'

Many companies took advantage of the pandemic to refine their online sales portals. But for a local business like Barron’s, there was no way for him to compete with that scale.

“Covid successfully taught people that they didn't have to go outside and shop, they didn’t have to go to stores anymore, they can shop online,” he said, adding how that situation only exacerbated the supply chain issues pulling down his business.

“The problem you run into is the Amazons of the world, the online marketers of the world, they're doing what they do and they're just cutting a supply chain down, making it smaller and thinner for brick-and-mortar stores,” Barron said.

“I mean, even in Abilene, Bed Bath & Beyond. They shut their doors, locked up and went home. Sears? The list goes on and on.”

Trying whatever sticks

For Barron, it’s not like he didn’t try to diversify. Beyond simple stationary, pens and packing materials, Eastland Office Supply did its best to think outside the cardboard banker's boxes they sold.

“We've tried a lot of things, we used to just do electronics and office supplies. Over the past four years I've sold outdoor pellet grills, I’ve sold appliances,” he said. “Nobody usually goes to office supply looking for appliances, but we had them.”

The focus wasn’t on only turning a profit but also staying relevant to the community. The obvious way to do that is by supplying something it needs.

“To be in retail, you’ve got to move your product and if you're not moving product, you're not making money,” Barron said. “You can't stay open.”

When he and LaQuita took a hard look at what was taking the most effort but providing the least return, it became apparent that the office supply business had fallen into that column.

“We decided that we want to grow our other businesses, expand what we do there, so that we can still be relevant in the community,” he said. “It's important that we're still here for the community.”

Supporting the community

To that end, Barron said while the community will lose its office supply store, those who worked for him there wouldn’t lose their jobs.

“All of my employees are staying with me, every one of them,” he said. “I'm keeping them all, they're just going to be reassigned.”

Running a small business in a small town is more than a job, it’s as much a part of the family as an uncle, a child or even a beloved pet. So having to set those feelings aside and make the hard choice was a difficult moment.

“I cried about it, we cried together about it,” he said. “And it's still emotional for me because I do care about the community, I don't want to see a vacant building downtown.”

He’s determined that the storefront won’t remain empty for long. Eastland, in his mind, is too vibrant to fall into that cliché.

“You know, that's the story of all the small towns, businesses leaving all over the place, and I don't want to see that,” Barron said. “And I really don't plan on that happening.”

This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Hard choices close Eastland business but owners, staff still to stay