Third-generation store Star Beacon closing after selling school supplies, crafts since 1936

Star Beacon Products, the go-to place in Grandview Heights for school supplies and arts-and-crafts materials for nearly 90 years, is going out of business, a victim of the pandemic.

The third-generation family business, which opened in 1936, is scheduled to shut down on Aug. 31. The store started a liquidation sale on Tuesday.

"It's very difficult. It's very emotional. ... It’s just a been a large family business," said Barb Rohrbacher, who has been involved with the store since she was 10 and is the mother of the store's current owner, Frank Schirtzinger.

Rohrbacher's husband, Tim, has been helping keep the store open in recent months along with other family members and friends.

Rohrbacher largely blames the pandemic for the store closing along with a loss of sales to big-box retailers.

In the first summer of COVID-19, sales were cut in half as schools shut down and went remote, she said.

"You've already got all the products and the bills are due," she said. "All of a sudden you aren’t making any money."

Then, the supply chain problems began.

“It’s hard to get stuff in," Rohrbacher said. "We're still getting shipments that were ordered a year and a half ago."

An order of tissue paper placed more than a year ago arrived just last week, for example.

Star Beacon operations date to 1936

Dave Schirtzinger and Pat Maloney founded the store in 1936 Downtown on Long Street.

In the 1950s, Maloney sold his share of the business to Schirtzinger, who moved it to its current location at 1104 Goodale Blvd., according to the store's Facebook page.

Schirtzinger's son Phil took over for his father in the 1980s. He, along with cousin Brian Maloney and friend Dave Senters, made school supplies and arts and crafts the focus of the store.

Frank Schirtzinger, Phil Schirtzinger's son, has been running the business since 2017 following his father's death. He has had a focus on early education and day care materials.

Business brisk as liquidation sale begins

The store's parking lot was full Tuesday as a steady stream of customers took baskets of pens, colored pencils, paper, educational toys and games, art supplies and other products to the cash register.

Workers hauled boxes of items that shoppers purchased to their cars.

One after another, customers expressed their feelings to the family and employees.

"Star Beacon has been a staple for us," said Kathy Rayner, director of the Care After School program that provides services to students in Worthington. "It's sad."

Kay Trout of Urbana has been coming to the store 20 to 25 years. She is a kindergarten teacher who also leads professional development courses for teachers.

After learning that the store would be closing, she headed there first thing Tuesday morning, where customers began to line up 30 minutes before the store opened at 10 a.m.

"It's just a wonderful place," she said. "I'm so sad they had to close the doors."

Trout said Star Beacon carried unusual, hard-to-find items.

"You'd never know what you'd find," she said.

"I'd tell everyone about it," she said. "It is definitely a teacher favorite."

Every year, the store had a Christmas sale. It would open up a back room the beginning of November, setting up a red Christmas tree and filling shelves with toys, puzzles, books and other items for children.

The store plans to extend showroom hours to provide customers time to shop, including on the Sunday of the upcoming state sales tax holiday the first weekend of August.

Store never recovered from pandemic

Rohrbacher said the family began talking in March about closing the store.

"We kept hoping things would turn around," she said. "We tried different things to make it work.’’

Sales have yet to get back to pre-COVID levels, suggesting that at least some schools are moving away from the organized sales they used to hold for students who needed school supplies.

"It is very hard for a small family business to compete with the big box stores," she said.

 mawilliams@dispatch.com

@BizMarkWilliams

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Grandview school supplies, craft store Star Beacon to close