Ann Arbor News
Purchase Radio Supply signs off this weekend Parts store served local customers for 77 years
Thursday, February 15, 2007
BY STEFANIE MURRAY
News Business Reporter
After 77 years of selling ham radios and thousands upon thousands of resistors, transistors and reams of wire and switches, Ann Arbor's Purchase Radio Supply will close this weekend.
Dan McCollough says he and his wife, store owner Ola Jeanne Purchase McCollough, are ready to retire and move to Minnesota to be closer to their children and grandchildren.
"I would have liked to find someone to take over and run the business, but it's hard to find someone who's willing to be here six days a week,'' said McCollough, 71. "That's what it takes to run a small business.''
McCollough is not yet sure what will happen to Purchase Radio's electronic parts and equipment - he's still negotiating the possible sale of it all to a local man who may open a new storefront - but most parts will likely end up on the online auction site eBay.
In the meantime, McCollough is discounting some products and will offer to sell items in bulk. He's hoping to sell as much as he can in the next few days so he has less to pack and move.
Already, McCollough is anticipating it'll take four to five weeks to pack and move. He needs to be out of the building by the end of March, as he and his wife plan to sell it.
The store was originally started by ham radio operator Roy Purchase in 1930, in a space on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor. The shop moved several times before settling in its current location west of the railroad tracks on Hoover Street, in 1957.
Little has changed since then: Dusty antique radios line a shelf near the tin ceiling, seven rows behind the register are filled top to bottom with worn shelves and drawers housing the tiniest of electronic components and amateur radio magazines are available dating back to the late 1940s.
It used to be a wholesale operation, but today retail sales dominate its business.
"There's not too many stores like this in Michigan,'' McCollough said.
Longtime employee John Ransom - who ran the sister store Purchase Camera Shop for many years until it closed in 1990 - said there used to be several small, locally owned radio and electronic parts stores in Ann Arbor, but all have closed. Competition from Internet-based businesses is especially stiff today.
"That is kind of what ate their lunch,'' said Dan Romanchik, past president of Arrow Communications Association, a local amateur radio club. "These Internet and mail order outfits can carry a huge stock of stuff and now with next day delivery, it's almost no big deal to get stuff.''
Over the years, Purchase Radio's clientele included everyone from amateur radio operators to Boy Scout troops to high-tech spin-off companies out of the University of Michigan.
But slowly, the products that crowded the short aisles inside Purchase Radio are disappearing.
"It's been good knowing you - thanks for all your years of service,'' one customer said on his way out the door earlier this week.
Indeed, longtime customers like Jeff Stevens, 50, of Grass Lake, will miss the shop.
"When I needed something quickly, I could call Dan up and he'd have it,'' said Stevens, a private electronics design consultant who has been visiting Purchase Radio since he was 8 years old. "This place is an institution.''