Late in the game, Quality Supply expanding

By BILL SCHWANKE of Missoula.com

So why would Dave and Suzanne Peterson - who appear to be closing in on retirement - invest in a building that will nearly double the size of their Quality Supply business on West Broadway?

"We have kind of run out of room in the building that we're at," Dave Peterson said recently. "We looked at the possibility of relocating and that seemed very scary, trying to find a better location and something that we could afford.

"So we had always thought about the Ziegler building and Suzanne kept after me for several months to call Mark Ziegler and just ask him if he would be willing to sell."

Dave was hesitant but finally made that call in September 2006, telling Ziegler about his need to expand, hopefully without moving, and asking if he would consider selling.

"He told me 'no,' he didn't have any interest whatsoever," Peterson recalled, noting that he asked Ziegler to call if he changed his mind.

It was barely three months later that Peterson heard from a realtor friend of Ziegler's saying the building might be for sale. About two weeks after that the deal was struck.

Suzanne said all of the ATVs, power equipment and the small engine shop will move into the old Ziggy's building along with the warehouse that serves four Quality Supply stores and currently resides in the back of the current Missoula building.

The corporate offices, which the Petersons have leased on South Russell for the past six years, also will move into the newly acquired building.

Moving the warehouse next door will open up an additional 16,000-square feet of retail space in the original store once a wall is torn down.

What they will wind up with is a total of 79,000 square feet, up from the current 42,000.
Another key to the expansion will be a much larger parking lot.

"The two parking lots will be connected," Suzanne said, "and will afford much more space for our customers and easier navigation."

While the parking lots will be connected the buildings will not.

If things continue to go smoothly the Petersons expect to begin moving some inventory into the new building in early January at the latest. The offices should move in mid-January.

Once everything else is ready the couple plans to have a grand opening sometime in April.

Then they have to overcome the temptation to fill all of the new space too quickly.

"It's always a temptation," Suzanne said. "Having been a buyer for a lot of years the first thing you say is, 'what can we add?'"

In the current store they don't have enough room to display adequately what they already have in stock, so that will be addressed first.

"But we will have enough new space that there will be things that we probably (will) expand and get into a little better," Suzanne added.

Some of those decisions will be guided by what they're hearing from their customers.

Quality Supply has been around since the late 1960s. Dave Peterson's family moved to Helena from South Dakota in 1960. His parents then moved to Bozeman in 1963 when Dave's father went to work for Bob Nelson at a store called Quality Wholesale with the idea that he would open a Missoula store a couple of years later as Nelson's partner.

Dave, like Suzanne a University of Montana graduate, was in the Air Force at the time after going through the ROTC program. When he left the Air Force in 1972 Dave's father convinced him to come back to Missoula and work for him in the store.

Dave and Suzanne were married in 1980 and Dave convinced her to also work at the store.
For a number of years Quality Supply had been hauling merchandise to Dillon, especially during haying season, to serve ranchers in the Dillon and Big Hole areas.

The Petersons decided to build a store there in 1984, the same year they bought Dave's parents' share of the business. The expansion continued with stores opening in Hamilton in 1995 and Butte in 1997.

Suzanne's previous retail experience had been in men's clothing, so when she went to work at Quality Wholesale she started in the clothing department. She had a degree in clothing and textiles with the idea of getting into fashion merchandising and buying.

It definitely was a learning experience.

Suzanne and Dave Peterson of Quality Supply: in Missoula are looking forward to nearly doubling their local store's space as the new year gets under way. BILL SCHWANKE/Missoula.com

"I remember that one of the first times I was going through the department and looking at Carhartt and Wall's - both brands of BrownDuck - and wondering 'why would somebody spend $10 more for the Carhartt than they would for the Wall's?'" Suzanne laughed.

Five years later they dropped Wall's and now Quality Supply is the second-biggest Carhartt dealer in Montana.

When she took over the clothing department Quality Supply sold only men's wear. Women were telling Suzanne they should carry clothing for them as well, so they started. Now they also carry children's clothing.

That wasn't all she learned.

"I've learned about things I never dreamed," Suzanne said. "I was a city girl and I learned about vaccinating animals and I could sell some vet products. I think I've sold everything in the store except maybe a chain saw. I've sold mowers. I used to cut chain.

"It was an adventure."

Asked about the notion that it's not good to be a business partner with a spouse or best friend, Dave laughingly said, "That's all true!"

"I think it would be harder to go into business with a friend," Suzanne said. "At times it's difficult but what we have found to be most successful . . . is to take our strengths and each of us work in the area where our strengths are."

Within that framework Suzanne also has taken over the human resources area for Quality Supply because she enjoys getting to know the employees and is a problem-solver. It was an area that Dave didn't necessarily dislike, but he found it hard to devote the time needed to it with all of the other things he was doing at the store.

"She has obviously made this a job, which it should have been for a long, long time," Dave said. "Before that it was just patchwork; fix the problem as best you can and move on.

"Now we do have policies and procedures and people know where we stand," he added. "It's much better."

One downside to married couples being partners at work is taking the business home with them.
"Our kids would tell you that the main topic of discussion at most dinners was work," Suzanne noted. "But we've been lucky because it's been almost 29 years that we've worked together."
They have two children.

Oldest son Sean is close to graduating in history at Montana State University in Bozeman. He and his wife, Naomi, met while attending Loyola Sacred Heart High School in Missoula. They're expecting a baby in June.

Son Kyle, 22, is a Penn graduate and recently moved from Philadelphia to New York City where he hopes to attend New York University's film school and get into the photography end of movie making.
Neither currently has any interest in going into the family business.

Dave is especially amazed at how different Quality Supply is today compared to when it opened in 1965. He worked for his dad during that summer.

"We primarily sold tires, bailer twine, animal health products, a few tools," Dave remembered. "I specifically remember a guy walking up to the front door one day, . . . opening the door and looking . . . around this 10,000 square foot building," Dave said. "He said, 'what do you sell in here?'

"That was very apropos, actually," Dave laughed, "because our tools would be a pair of pliers and about 6 inches of space, then another pair of pliers and another 6 inches of space and another pair of pliers."

Things were very spread out because there was so little inventory, about $30,000 worth.
At that time customers were almost exclusively farmers and ranchers. As the operation grew and sales increased clothing was added along with power tools and equipment.

"We started reaching out to the Missoula person who owned a home and people who worked outside," Dave recalled.

In the mid 80s, when more people started moving into the country onto 5- to 20-acre or more plots, their jobs were in town but they also were raising animals. Those people became more and more important to Quality Supply as customers because they had expendable income for their "hobby farms."

At the same time the number of full-time farmers and ranchers was dropping.

Dave said Quality Supply definitely is not a full-fledged hardware store, and he doesn't foresee that it ever will be.

"We don’t get into appliances," he pointed out. "We don't focus on plumbing or electrical, which are big things in hardware stores. We don't focus on the small appliances and the knick-knacky sort of things."

Suzanne said they often refer to Quality Supply as a "lifestyle store" for people who like the outdoors and/or have land.

"We're kind of like a mercantile or a general store for them," she added. "We've got clothing. We've got toys. If you have pets we have just about anything (they) could need for their dogs and cats.

"We've got feed for your horses," Suzanne went on. "We carry furniture - not a lot of it, we'll never be a furniture store - but there is a little niche of our business that's devoted to that because there are people that come in who can buy that from us and it suits their lifestyle."
Some of their business decisions are based on gut feelings as well. And they belong to a buying group of farm-type stores and get ideas at buying shows about things they might add to their inventory.

When thoughts of retirement start to become more prevalent for the Petersons, they feel very comfortable with where their stores are in terms of management.

"We have an operations manager now," Dave said, "who has really taken a lot of pressure off me as far as the time that I have to spend. I was supervising the four store managers and . . . assistant store managers along with the buyers and the controller."

Now he supervises only the controller and two buyers while Rod Mica has taken over total operation of the stores.

"He is an excellent merchandiser and he has changed the look of our stores tremendously," Dave noted. "They look much better, much nicer, have a much better presentation and a lot more merchandise in them. He is a real master."

It has freed Dave up for activities outside the business. He has taken up golf, for example, but he still might not be as prepared for retirement as Suzanne is.

"She has lots and lots of hobbies," Dave pointed out. "She could stop working tomorrow and be busy 24/7. I've always worked and I've never had the time to . . . do much with hobbies.

"But I will learn," he concluded. "We all do. We'll find things to do. Volunteer work is always good. I do some of that now. Suzanne does a lot of it now. I like working in the yard. I enjoy that."

Click here to listen to the entire interview with Dave and Suzanne Peterson.