On a Sunday night in February 1964, the proprietor of Don’s Hobby Shop watched the Beatles perform on television. Early Monday, he was on the phone to suppliers, ordering every Beatles wig he could lay his hands on.

Don Spicer sold out.

More than 40 years later, the proprietor of Don’s Hobby Shop caught wind of a new trend during the Calgary Flames’ march to the 2004 Stanley Cup finals.

Customers were crying for bright orange fright wigs to wear in emulation of Flames’ defenceman Mike Commodore’s monstrous red afro.

Dave Olecko, Business Edge
Scott Bennie of Don’s Hobby Shop says he was fortunate that key employees (not pictured here) decided to stay on when ownership changed hands.

Remembering the sales credo of his predecessor, Scott Bennie rushed in dozens of Commodore wigs and moved 250 of them, saying: “I just could not keep them in stock.”

Moral: Success in retail means spotting fast-breaking sales trends and capitalizing on them, whether it’s wigs, wands, vampire teeth, theatrical eye-shadow or Donald Rumsfeld Halloween masks.

“Don was a master of inventory control,” said an admiring Bennie, who purchased the 55-year-old Calgary business from its founder 18 months ago. “He knew exactly what to buy and he never stopped shopping for better (wholesale) prices.”

In tribute to the irreplaceable Spicer, Bennie, who’s 30 and embarking on his first retail venture, has retained the original name.

“I’d change my name to Don before I’d change the name of the store. It’s an institution in Calgary,” laughed the new owner, who recently moved the shop from its ground-floor space in the downtown Lougheed Building to new and larger digs at 1515 Centre Street N.

A born entrepreneur with numerous successful ventures under his belt, Bennie first learned that the store might be up for sale from his father Sandy, who happened to be Spicer’s accountant.

Sandy’s first-hand knowledge of the books convinced him and his son that Don’s Hobby Shop had been built on sound financial principles and practices.

After a few meetings, a deal was struck. Terms of the sale remain private, although the younger Bennie confessed: “I can tell you I have a sizable loan and it’s going to take several years to pay off.”

But before the deal went down, Scott decided to learn the business from the ground up – by working in the store, at the elbow of the venerable master.

“The entire business was inside Don’s head,” recalled Bennie. “He never touched a computer.”

During their time together, the younger man soaked up Spicer’s merchandising theories, his purchasing strategies and his tried and true systems of inventory control.

“We will continue to use some of those systems, even though they’re all handwritten. They might seem archaic, but they worked for 55 years,” Bennie explained. “I’m not going to change them.”

He is, however, creating a computer database, personally entering each of 27,000 items now in stock. It’s a tedious process that won’t be completed until long after the Halloween rush has subsided.

The original Don’s was a traditional hub of hobbydom, catering primarily to builders of model railroads, aircraft and automobiles. But throughout the 1960s, Spicer sniffed changes in the wind and began stocking more theatrical supplies as the hobbyist fad began to fade.

Today, 95 per cent of the store’s large client base comes to Don’s Hobby Shop seeking weird and wonderful costumes, from fake raccoon caps with mechanically wagging tails to Grinch outfits.

Most of southern Alberta’s best-known theatre groups are regular customers, as are local film production companies.

Just before Bennie finalized terms of the sale, Spicer told him something the younger man hasn’t forgotten: “If operating a retail store was easy, everybody would be doing it.”

Fortunately, key employees stayed on when ownership changed hands, including Spicer’s assistant, Charlie Ross. Bennie describes Ross’s expertise as “vital” to the continuing success of the business.

Although he’s paying three times the rent for his roomy new storefront, Bennie believes the move to Centre Street will be advantageous in the long run. Loyal customers had complained for years about the difficulty of finding affordable downtown parking “Besides, the downtown core is really geared to Plus-15 traffic. In winter, everyone walks the Plus-15s. I think that has hurt street-level retailers,” said Bennie, who declined to discuss his annual sales figures.

As of last week, he was busy getting the interior of the store in shape, in anticipation of the first visit from the Old Master.

Spicer was due to stop by the store and his designated successor wanted every hair on every wig to be precisely in place.

(Tom Keyser can be reached at tomk@businessedge.ca)