Corner store cornerstone

GIMLI — Walk into the store. Meander past the clothing, candy and candles. Find him in the corner, his eyes scanning the bookshelves, a smile on his face as a half-dozen people explore this side of the shop.

Wearing grey shorts and a light blue shirt, Stefan Tergesen, the fourth-generation proprietor of H.P. Tergesen & Sons General Market, is explaining his vision for what’s widely recognized as the oldest general store in Western Canada.

“First and foremost, I want everybody to enjoy being in here,” he says. “I want you at some point to look and go, ‘Oh, cool!’ after seeing something that gets your blood flowing.”

If you ever find yourself on the west side of Lake Winnipeg, some 80 kilometres north of Manitoba’s capital, and you realize you forgot to pack something, there’s a good chance you’ll find it at Tergesen’s.

Sunglasses, footwear, handbags, backpacks, jewelry, watches, toys, Gimli-related merchandise, kitchen linens emblazoned with cheeky phrases — other than fancy electronics and groceries, the 5,000-square-foot shop seemingly has everything.

“Not the same old thing” and “nothing changes but the merchandise” are a couple of the slogans the store has used over the last three decades, Tergesen says. “We don’t want to sell you all your clothes,” goes another. “We just want to sell you your favourite clothes.”

“The most common complaint we hear is, ‘Oh darn, it fits,’” Tergesen quips.

Beyond his jovial demeanour, what stands out most when talking with the business owner is his love for the clientele. Not surprising, since serving customers is a Tergesen family tradition that dates back more than 125 years.

Hans Pjetur Tergesen, an Icelandic settler who arrived in Manitoba in 1887, fell in love with Gimli and saw an opportunity to open a business in the community. Trained as a tinsmith, he built his store at the corner of 1st Avenue and Centre Street in 1898, where it still stands to this day.

The store opened on Jan. 1, 1899, and became a family business some years later when H.P.’s sons, Joe and Robert, joined the operation. After their father retired, the brothers built a partition down the middle of the store. Joe continued with the general store on one side, while Robert ran a pharmacy on the other for a few decades.

Joe kept the general store running until his retirement. He had two sons of his own, Joey and Terry, neither of whom initially expressed interest in the business. Terry settled in Winnipeg with his wife, Lorna, and their five children (including Stefan). Terry practiced architecture and Lorna worked as a book publisher’s representative.

Joe fell ill in 1982, and Stefan’s older brother, Soren, stepped in to help around the store. Ownership was divided between several family members at that point and Terry bought the other shareholders out.

Tergesen’s wasn’t particularly popular at that point, Stefan recalls, but Soren began to build the business by bringing in new products that appealed to younger customers. By the early 1990s, Soren was encouraging Stefan to join him.

Stefan was dividing his time between waiting tables and travelling the world,and he wasn’t sure about making the move. But when Soren was killed in a car accident in 1991, Stefan stepped in.

He hired a buyer named Joanne Liang and over the next 10 years, they grew the business 20 per cent or more annually. Stefan had no business experience at the start, save for the lessons he’d learned over 15 years of waiting tables.

Now he encourages young people who are interested in business to get a job at a restaurant. “You’re going to learn how to manage your own cash, you’re going to learn about customer service … You’re managing your own little thing. (It’s) a great training ground.”

Today, Tergesen’s brings in half of its annual revenue during the four-month period from May through August. There are around 20 staff members (including Lorna who, at 88 years old, shows up most days to oversee the book section).

Tergesen trains employees to be outgoing and chatty with customers and to avoid hard sells. If a customer wants help, Tergesen advises, they’ll ask for it.

“My main goal was (to) make it fun,” he says of his approach to managing.

“If this isn’t fun to do, why am I doing it? So we really did a good job of finding the right kids, creating a fun atmosphere … (and building) up a clientele that feel like they have an ownership to the store.”

The entrepreneur’s sense of fun crossed into the mischievous in 2016 when security cameras captured images of a young man breaking into the store in the middle of the night and stealing a number of watches.

Tergesen posted surveillance footage of the theft on Facebook, asking friends and clientele to share it. The video was shared more than 8,000 times in about 24 hours and around six people identified a suspect and contacted Tergesen.

Before passing the information to the police, Tergesen sent the suspect a Facebook friend request. The two messaged each other and the young man told Tergesen he was turning himself in.

Local media reported on Tergesen’s unorthodox response and the story went viral, with numerous publications, including Buzzfeed Canada and the Washington Post, reporting on the caper. It also caught the attention of the writing staff at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, with the show’s host joking about the incident during one episode’s opening monologue.

“It’s like my favourite show in the world and he’s talking about me,” Tergesen says. “(That was) really cool.”

Samantha Hampton, president of the Gimli Chamber of Commerce, says in addition to Tergesen’s sense of humour and the lengths he goes to maintain his heritage building, he epitomizes what it means to be a community-minded business owner.

“Something that’s always stood out to me is Stefan’s work ethic and his commitment to Gimli as a whole,” Hampton says.

“Stefan understands something that’s incredibly important in a community like Gimli: our businesses, the tourism industry and community organizations … (are) all connected. When one succeeds, it very much has a ripple effect throughout the community.”

Tergesen, 64, is contemplating the store’s future and what retirement might look like. He has no children, so he’s been checking in with a few cousins to see if they might be interested in taking over once he’s ready to move on.

The future is uncertain, but Tergesen is pleased with the way things have gone over the last 35 years.

“When I took over the store, we were nine or 10 years from our 100th anniversary,” he says.

“I remember thinking, somehow I’m going to screw this up before we get to 100 … And now here we are at 127.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca