Whatnot: Lansing, Iowa variety store carries astoundingly wide assortment of merchandise

0 Comments | La Crosse Tribune, Jan 04, 1999

LANSING, Iowa -- A cornucopia of merchandise, ranging from cookie-cutters to furnace filters, spices, birthday party favors, deer whistles, toys and coloring books, overflows from the shelves and onto the sidewalk at Horsfall's Lansing Variety.

If you can't find what you want, owner Paul Horsfall likes to say, it probably isn't made anymore.

"It's the best place around," Carl Hummell of Readstown, Wis., said last week as he and his wife, Evelyn, bought a pair of half-gallon bottles of liquid soap at a counter that was crammed with items on display. "It's a really interesting place. You can't go wrong." The Hummels shop there about every six weeks, Evelyn Hummell said.

Horsfall, 44, figures he has a million items in the century-old building, and finding space to put new shipments is a challenge. Outside the building, he promotes the store with brightly colored signs and tables of merchandise. "We have a perpetual sidewalk sale, weather permitting," Horsfall said.

One day last week, the tables outside the store were stocked with bags of bird feed, ice melter, coloring books, Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings trash cans, Christmas wrapping paper, plastic farm animals, wooden bird houses and crossword puzzle books.

Horsfall bought the former. Krieger's Variety Store at 300 Main St. in 1975. It has about 3,800 square feet of space, compared to the more than 6,000 square feet at the former Brown's Department Store at 360 Main St., which he bought in 1981. Horsfall gradually converted the latter from a department store to a second variety store as discount chains began carrying better clothing.

The former department store -- which now goes by the name Horsfall's Store -- has wider aisles and a more traditional look than the jam-packed Horsfall's Lansing Variety store. It has fabrics and more clothing than the original variety store.

"There's the novelty of coming here and finding a lot of things you can't find anyplace else," said Kathryn Van Brocklin, a sales clerk at Horsfall's Store. "And it spreads by word of mouth."

For example, Van Brocklin said, many women from area nursing homes head to the store to buy old-fashioned back-snap robes, cotton underwear and cotton stockings.

"In the summer, we get a lot of people traveling through town, just following the old river road," Horsfall said. The scenic community of about 1,000 people also attracts foreign tourists, and his stores recently had visitors from Brazil, Russia and France.

Besides its big selection, Horsfall said, Horsfall's Lansing Variety is known for carrying greeting cards at half the usual price, 100 different spices at 79 cents each, and low prices on close-out items he buys. And there are such unusual items as outdated dolls and sprinkler tops that fit on water-filled pop bottles for ironing clothes.

"We buy a lot of close-out items, and low-turnover items" that larger stores don't want to carry, Horsfall said. "Like some of the colors in the Sugar 'n' Cream yarn. We carry every color they make. Because every once in a while, someone will come in who wants something different."

"I enjoy it," Horsfall said of his business. "Our whole family thing is dictated by the store and how busy we are." He's usually there seven days a week. His wife, Dorothea, and daughter, Tara, also work at the store.

Horsfall was raised in Decorah, Iowa, where his father Paul Sr. managed Anthony's department store for more than 20 years. Horsfall was assistant manager at Anthony's before he bought the Lansing business.