After 33 years in business, a Patrick Springs business is preparing to close.
Stanley Fain, one of the owners of All Seasons, said he doesn’t view the closing as sad, but rather it marks an exciting time in his life because he is retiring. As a result, he is celebrating with a retirement sale.
“We all look forward to retirement, but we don’t want to retire. I’m just wanting to slow down a little bit. It’s just a matter of trying to navigate through and see what’s going to happen,” he said.
Fain, now 68, said the current workload is too time-consuming.
“I guess just age, and so I had made the decision that I wanted to slow down, and this is not the business that I can slow down in,” he said. “You’re either wide open or you get out, and I had to come on and get out.”
Fain also found a buyer to purchase the business.
“I don’t know exactly what they’re going to do, but from what they’re telling me I think it’s going to be good. They’ll probably do certain aspects of this, but the thing about it is our concept’s been here for 33 years. It doesn’t necessarily work like it did 33 years ago,” he said, adding he feels good about what’s going to happen with the building.
While he does not know when his last day of business will be, Fain plans to keep the business going until September. He said most everything in the store is on sale with a few exceptions, like produce and plants.
“It’s going to be first come, first serve until we sell out. So, if somebody came by say tomorrow and said, ‘Mr. Fain, what would it take to buy the entire inventory of the store?’ I would still do produce,” he said.
Fain said discovering he could sell produce about 15 years ago was a happy accident.
“What was happening was I was going to Florida buying a lot of plants at the time. I would have the chance to get wonderful produce down there, so I would for my personal use,” he said. “It would be sitting on the floor, and people would keep saying ‘How much is that?’ and I said, ‘It’s not for sale, it’s personal.’”
After this happened a few times, Fain said he decided to start bringing produce for sale back with him on his trips to Florida.
Fain said he and his wife decided to open All Seasons because they were selling a few plants out front of their former business, the Western Auto/True Value store on Slusher Street in Stuart.
“It grew so much, I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we see if we can’t do another shop and sell just seasonal merchandise?’ Everything at the True Value was busting at the seams, and we were selling so much of the seasonal merchandise. That’s how we came up with it. We were going to do a seasonal store,” he said.
Looking back, Fain said the trends changed dramatically over time.
“When we first opened up, we were pretty much going to be a seasonal” store “and Christmas was going to be a really big part of it. As time goes on, Christmas has kind of gone away, it’s not what it used to be,” he said.
In the store’s early days, Fain said his wife would have about 12 different themed Christmas trees set up during the holidays.
“Now, people just don’t do that. We migrated from the Christmas business,” he said.
In the store’s heyday, Fain said he and Jennifer also opened a satellite store in one of Martinsville’s malls to sell Christmas merchandise.
Fain said his favorite thing about owning All Seasons has been the customers. In addition to interacting with the customers, Fain likes the fact that they’re all individuals with stories of their own.
He said he “got to be” fairly close with them, “and of course, I enjoy the plants,” he added.
During his retirement, Fain plans to spend his time pursuing his outdoor hobbies and spoiling his grandchildren.
“I’m not a ‘sit on the couch watch TV’ kind of person,” he said.
