Kristan Fjeldsted and Mark Fjeldsted

[00:03] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: My name is Kristen Fjeldsted My age is 64 years old. Today's date is May 7, 2023, and we are in Logan, Utah. My interview partner is my brother, Mark Fjeldsted

[00:21] MARK FJELDSTED: My name is Mark Fjeldsted and I am 53 years old. Today's day is May 7, 2023. We're in Logan, Utah, and I'm here with my sister, Kristen Fjeldsted And we are going to talk about the sportsman mainly and its origin from when it was began by our grandparents, who are Jack and Lucille Croft, and they began it in the 1947. And so we are in our 76th year of business. Kristen and I are in the business as partners and family members together now in our 76th year, and it's going great and ever been better. But why don't you continue with the beginnings, Chris?

[01:20] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Well, I don't have much more to. That's exactly right. The store started on West Center street in Logan, a little tiny building actually across from the bus station. We've been told that was before we were here and was started by our maternal, our mother. So it was our maternal grandparents, and there were four siblings involved with the Croft family, which was our mother's maiden name. And then in about 1964, I think we moved to our current location on Main street. We're in three individual old storefronts, but it's one big combined store. And I remember going there as a girl when some designers out of Brigham City came in and put wallpaper and interior designers. They were friends of Scott and Linda Croft. I think that came in and redid a lot of the interior. I think it's about that time that our parents, Russ and Barbara, fell stead bought or became working in the sportsman and then eventually bought out the other partners of my mother's family. Is that about right, Mark?

[02:34] MARK FJELDSTED: Sounds about right. And I think it's important to remember also and to understand that when it was in its original location on West Center street, that that was a bus terminal for Greyhound bus, as I recall. And I think our grandparents figured that would be a good location to begin because there was a lot of foot traffic and people coming through, or at least by the store. And they began with a lot of, it was more, the name of the store is the sportsman, and our grandfather Jack was a huge hunter and fishermen and was heavily involved and into that side of sport, outdoor sports. So he had, they had dogs and hunting dogs, and he fished, and that was what they sold a lot of at that time. Is that right?

[03:36] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Right. Yeah.

[03:38] MARK FJELDSTED: And then they came on some hard times. And that was when Grandma Lucille said, why don't you sell clothing? And in particular, women's clothing, because at the time, they had been selling, I think, guns and bows and arrows and fishing equipment and maybe some ski type.

[04:06] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Stuff, possibly for winter. Sure.

[04:08] MARK FJELDSTED: He was heavily involved in. We should talk about that, that he was involved in the ski, the beaver mountain thing, but they sold a lot of that sort of thing, and it kind of got to be tough for a while. And so they started selling more clothing. Right.

[04:25] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Right. I think that he got tired of counting all the little tiny flies. I mean, he could just see how intense that would be for inventory, the lures, the, all the little things involved with fishing. So I kind of think that's how he said, forget that after a couple years, probably. And I know they sold women's swimming suits, all the top lines that we've seen years ago, like women that are mother's age now in their nineties, that were modeling swimming suits on advertisements. I've had girlfriends send me pictures of their grandmothers and things like that. So, yeah, Lucille was a golfer, but we've really not, never got into golf equipment.

[05:13] MARK FJELDSTED: So I know that they sold, they ended up selling a lot of what they call them pedal pushers back then, but Capri length pants now. And our understanding is that that was what kind of saved the clothing side of things is what saved the business back then was that they started selling clothing and, well, I guess go through all the different types of clothing over the years that they sold. But that's, it's interesting because that's been our model ever since then. It was kind of the mixture of clothing for men and women and with, along with the equipment. And, of course, we've gone away from hunting equipment and stuck, stuck with the ski bike hike type side of the outdoor sports realm. But in the sixties, I just remember that, as you said, they moved into the kind of the three sided or three compartment building, all underneath the same roof at 129 North Main in downtown Logan. But the. So there was a north portion, a middle portion, and then a south portion. And the south portion is interesting to note that that was at one time, was probably at that time was Essie Needham's jewelers, which is still in town in our neighbors. But what I was going to say about that was that mom told me that she was expecting me when they knocked the hole in the wall going over there, which was, and I was born in 1969. Okay, so that hole in the wall was created to go into that south portion that third section in 1969, it sounds like.

[07:15] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Sounds great. And that's probably when they came in and redid that to make it a lady section. They wallpapered it and painted it and put the lights in or so. Yeah, I remember when it was Needham's and walked up that ramp, because the safe was at the top of the.

[07:28] MARK FJELDSTED: Ramp where the dressing rooms are right now. Right.

[07:31] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Big building safe right there.

[07:33] MARK FJELDSTED: So, yeah, we went years and years later, when me and our brother John were redoing the wood floor up there, we ran into the concrete that's underneath that, and we wondered why that was the case. And we asked dad about it. He said, well, that's where the safe for Needhams used to be.

[07:49] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yeah, yeah. Good idea. Above the store is interesting. For years, the story above the store was the Logan hotel. And for many years, when I came to work, Mabel. Mabel. I can't remember what was her last name?

[08:08] MARK FJELDSTED: I never knew her last name.

[08:09] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: She has a short little last name, and she was a tiny woman, about 5ft tall, had a black pillbox hat with the shade coming over the front. And she had a nice big beauty mark on her chin. She had piano leg legs. Skinny little, teeny piano legs. And she'd have open toe, like wedgie's, with black nylons, with the seam up the back, and this tie skirt. And she had a lot of rouge and makeup on, a lot of lipstick. And. What a. What an interesting woman. But she was the lady in charge of the hotel Loganhouse, which we now is still part of our building. And have. We have two floors of some low income housing, as well as just regular apartments. And the upper two floors of the building, because we own the full building, the family does, and the sportsman is on the main floor. But over the years, we'd have people. I'd come to work and walk across the back parking lot, and there'd be funny men out on the above, on the fire escape, sitting and smoking. And these. They were probably World War two veterans, or. I don't know who they were, but I was young and I was so embarrassed. And they'd say, like, hello, sweetheart. And they kind of catcall to me and mom or anybody who walked across the parking lot to go to the store. And it was so embarrassing and I hated it. But that is the way it was in the sixties and the early seventies, because men just did that, you know, but they don't think they do that much anymore. But the whistle, the whole thing, it would just like every day. So, anyway, I do have memories of that and going to work. I started working when I was 14, and grandmother Lucille taught me how to gift wrap at the Christmas time. And I remember being petrified because she wanted the boxes perfect. We didn't waste one inch of paper. We didn't waste one inch of tape or ribbon because they came from the Depression era and you didn't waste anything. And so it was hard to keep the paper wrapped perfectly and tight. She wanted a really firm box, and she stood right next to me and above, you know, just kind of right on top of me to make sure I did it right. And the customers would sit there and look at us and watch me. And I was. It was hard. I was so embarrassed. And when you're 1415 and 16, you're just really self conscious and. But that's what I did. Started working when I was that age and been working ever since pretty much in one aspect or another. When did you come in?

[11:01] MARK FJELDSTED: Well, I started. Well, I was going to say she's taught us all. And you remember the three tape, the three piece of tape rat. Right. So one on the. On the bottom of the. On the back of the bottom of the package and then two on the ends. Right. One on each end.

[11:17] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: And that was it. Yeah. You got three pieces.

[11:19] MARK FJELDSTED: Then a simple ribbon. I started working there when I was in high school. And at that time, mom and Dad had also had purchased the art stop, which is the building directly to the north of the sportsman. And there's a ton of history with that building as well. It was a barber shop, and it was a kind of like a drugstore. I mean, over the years, it was even a clothing store. But anyway, it was an art supply business at that time. So I went in and I would vacuum there and at the sportsman and just do odd jobs in high school. So this was the mid eighties and then at that time also. I don't remember the year. Maybe you do, but we opened the store in the mall.

[12:08] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Right.

[12:10] MARK FJELDSTED: Because I just remember at that time also driving product to and from the mall, from the store, from the downtown location. So it was in the mid eighties that I started, which I would have been about, probably about 14, 1516. I don't remember exactly.

[12:31] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Like 79 or 80 or.

[12:33] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah. And we didn't. We didn't. Or dad didn't open that store immediately after. It was. It was a few years after it opened, but anyway.

[12:43] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Seventies.

[12:43] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah.

[12:44] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: I remember when the mall was going to go in that dad, the first day they were going to open, he came to work hunched over because his back hurt him. He said he couldn't sleep all night. And he was so worried he got a back like the back pain because he was sure we were going to be out of business. Business. He was sure that everyone would shop at the Cache Valley mall with JC Penney's, who had been downtown, had moved out there for the. One of the anchors. ZCMI was another anchor, and like the Bon Marshall was the third anchor store. We didn't even know what all this terminology was, but a man by the name of John Price opened all these malls in Utah about that timeframe, and it started to deteriorate most of the downtowns in all across the country. And dad was so worried about that. And that's why I think eventually he got the sportsman in the mall.

[13:45] MARK FJELDSTED: Gotta be a part of it.

[13:46] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yeah, he wanted to be a part of it, which was a big problem because we're not very far away and we didn't need to have due service. It was extremely expensive.

[13:56] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah, he. I remember him saying that he started this within a few weeks or a month after he signed the lease and well, after they moved in, actually, he started to try to figure out a way to get out of the lease immediately.

[14:12] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Immediately. Started writing letters, wrote letters to John Price daily, like, let us out. Let us out. How much longer? We can't stand it. We can't. We're not making it. We can't. And then it was that time frame that all of us worked at the store. We all had to work. All six. There were six siblings.

[14:29] MARK FJELDSTED: Well, we had other locations too, though, up at Utah State. And I don't.

[14:32] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: That was before my years ago. Yeah, that was in the sixties. We had a cute little store in the bookstore.

[14:38] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah.

[14:39] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Or in the Utah state. Yep, we did. It was a little tiny store with just sweatshirts and stuff that would have been a fun store to keep if we ever could have. And I think they kicked us out of that.

[14:50] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah.

[14:51] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Years ago.

[14:52] MARK FJELDSTED: Do you remember the inseam location, too, which is just down the alleyway? You probably remember that a lot better than I do.

[14:57] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: We had the inseam on the west center street. That was just jeans. That was a big jean.

[15:03] MARK FJELDSTED: Was it west center or was it first north?

[15:06] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: I'll be first. Yeah, right around the corner. First north. First north. West on first north. Yep. It was a little sign store. It had a whole bunch of cubby holes and we would just jeans after jeans. Just all blue jeans. That was when Scott and Steve were still in the business.

[15:22] MARK FJELDSTED: Uncle Scott.

[15:23] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Uncle Scott. And Uncle Steve, we're still there doing that. Yeah, that would have been in the mid seventies. And. Yep, we had that store. That's true. We had that store and the sportsman. And then that went away. The inseam went away, along with the cottage and all the cottages on, on Main street. But up also with the inseam were the businesses. The. I think it was the girls. Oh, man. Some really cool. It was like the men's store was the competition and the girls store was the dressworks, both owned by a thing partnered with Mike Neuberger, and he started those businesses. And that's where Steve Stowers works. Steve Stowers worked at the competition, but Carol Ryan Stowers worked at the sportsman. Rhonda Christiansen worked for us, but I think she worked both places, too. I mean, all those kids in the sixties, early seventies worked at both places. Kind of hippie stores. That was a new, you know, small. All those went away, I think, when the mall came in because the cottage shoe store moved out to the mall, too.

[16:36] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah.

[16:36] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: And I think the competition even did.

[16:38] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah, they did.

[16:39] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: And felt's clothing was across the street and did felts, I can't remember. Felt smooth.

[16:43] MARK FJELDSTED: I don't think they did.

[16:44] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: They kind of opened and closed, so. But, yeah, we got out of the mall lease probably four or five years later. Do you think about that time frame finally they left.

[16:57] MARK FJELDSTED: Eighties, early nineties.

[16:58] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yeah. And we came back downtown, and dad and mom owned the business at that point. Steve.

[17:07] MARK FJELDSTED: Well, we never left downtown. Right.

[17:09] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Right. They were just. They were always here.

[17:12] MARK FJELDSTED: Always here.

[17:12] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: I was always here. And.

[17:17] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah, I think it's important to talk about Chris, just before that time that we talked about how the store, grandpa and Grandma started with hunting, and then they kind of evolved into equipment, but along with clothing, and then that clothing in the sixties and seventies kind of evolved into more of a western.

[17:42] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yep.

[17:45] MARK FJELDSTED: Vibe, for sure. Western. Western wear, for sure. And you were there for a lot of that, for sure.

[17:53] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: There was a big western swing in the country. I don't know. Steve and Scott and my dad all wore western clothing. I mean, they wore hats and the western boots and belts, jeans.

[18:06] MARK FJELDSTED: So the store ended up carrying, like, what types of name brands? I mean, it was wooden Levi's, of course.

[18:11] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Levi's. And Wrangler had Lee's. Wrangler and Lee.

[18:15] MARK FJELDSTED: Yep.

[18:16] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: And text him shirts, western shirts and panhandle slim shirts, Justin boots, Tony Lama boots. Then Uncle Steve got involved with Lucasey. He was a salesman for Lucchese, and he brought in handmade Lucasey boots out of Texas. And, yeah.

[18:42] MARK FJELDSTED: Another brand, Stetson.

[18:45] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Stetson and resist all, which. Yep, we sold a lot of hats. And so, yeah, big western, it was huge. And then all of a sudden, it was dead.

[18:56] MARK FJELDSTED: The western was dead. Yeah.

[18:57] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Well, a big western store opened out north.

[18:59] MARK FJELDSTED: Oh.

[19:00] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: And I can't remember the name of that store, but a guy that was actually a cowboy had horses. We didn't have horses or anything, but.

[19:07] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah, they had tackle and all the other.

[19:09] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: All that stuff. Stuff. And so they could do a little bit better business that way. And then we lost a lot of the market on that in the western ware. And then. And then when the malls came in and Levi and Lee and Wrangler could sell to one huge, like all the stores, chain stores, they stopped selling to us. We lost Nike shoes. We'd sold Nike forever. We'd sold Levi and Lee jeans and Wranglers. And they all said, if you don't buy $10,000 per month of our clothing, you're done. And they closed. They shut us all out. Yeah, the little retailer closed us, which was. So we had to kind of remake ourselves, reinvent ourselves, reinvent ourselves. And then we started getting smaller lines, probably me and Pendleton, for years. We sold Filson for years before that. That didn't really kick us out of the industry. And then the Patagonias, the North face, those huge entity companies, started loving little retailers.

[20:20] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah. In fact, speaking of the north face, that's a name brand that everybody will recognize. We got involved with the North Face, unfortunately, about the same time. Well, as kind of a. As kind of an outerwear brand and equipment brand in the late sixties. And I remember our sales rep, Al Gunter, who you remember, came, told me once that we were the first dealer for the north face east of the Sierra Nevada, because they were a company out of the Bay Area, San Francisco. And the sportsman in Logan, Utah, was the first north face dealer that was east of the Sierra Nevadas in 1969. We kind of, luckily, the business owners, dad and uncles, kind of started outdoor stuff along with the western in the seventies. And of course, vasque boots were a huge outdoor brand in the seventies, which made it available, made it an easier transition for us. Once all those challenges of the mall and national chains kind of came in, we were kind of well positioned to be different. It's always been our goal and our motto to be different from everybody else and the outdoor industry. Ski bike, hike, kind of.

[21:52] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: And more specialized.

[21:54] MARK FJELDSTED: And more specialized with technical.

[21:55] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yeah, they weren't. They weren't huge enough companies to go in malls. I don't think they had to start small.

[22:00] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah.

[22:01] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: And so they. That's why they like the little retailer.

[22:04] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah. So in the late eighties, early nineties, we really started to phase out for sure. I mean, we didn't really have a choice, but we were really phasing out western for sure. Although it's interesting. Here we are in 2023, but in probably 2022 or 2021, I still have older guys that still come in and.

[22:23] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Ask for western blazing. Yeah, we're gonna have it.

[22:27] MARK FJELDSTED: Some kind of a western blazer or a western.

[22:30] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: It's hard to find any of that stuff anymore.

[22:32] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah, super. Yeah. So they still come in sometimes asking for it. But in the, what, early, late eighties, early nineties, then we started really finding more of an niche in the outdoor industry with kind of the ski bike, hike mentality. But also, we've always, always, always kept the finer names, brand names, and men's and women's clothing.

[23:00] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yep.

[23:01] MARK FJELDSTED: And usually that if we want to be different like that, that also means more expensive product, higher end stuff. So we've kind of been known as the higher end store, which we haven't.

[23:15] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Seen customers that come in our store. A lot of people will not walk in our store because I think it's too expensive and they can't afford it. But then again, we have customers that come in and we'll say, I've been wearing this coat, or I brought this coat back out and I've had it for over ten years and it still looks great. And they bought it at your store, and I love it. And you can't even tell that it's ten years old or 20 years old even on some of this stuff because it just. So we are fortunate that the niche market for us has stayed the same and our cache belly mall has gone downhill. It's pretty much gone. And all of the box stores, and in fact, we should bring up the box store lament because Pops wrote a song about the box stores and how they were ruining the land and that the Walmarts, all the arts were going to take over and they were going to build these big, ugly buildings and they were going to become empty. And he is exactly right, because in as much I tell people, I go, they go, your guys are still in business. They go, yeah, we thought we'd be out of business when the malls came in and we thought we'd be out of business. Worse, when Walmart and the box stores came in and the Sam's clubs and the Costco's or whatever. We thought we would be gone. And now it's just Amazon, which we can. But people are actually, and generationally young kids, they've never been in a store like ours. They have, they're sick of the malls or they're sick of all of that. You see them everywhere. I'll see the same store everywhere. So our store is unique and different, and people come in because they like it. We give them great customer service, and we have, we have service like Amazon. Can't fix your bike or mount your skis or rent your skis. And that's keeping us alive when we continue.

[25:13] MARK FJELDSTED: It's interesting how the, as you mentioned all that, how the family, I remember you when we had an employee named Jim Kofud, who worked at the store for 15 years, and in 1990 or 1991, he had decided that he was going to quit and go do something else. And I remember us thinking, let's rent our space to the gap.

[25:34] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yeah.

[25:34] MARK FJELDSTED: Let's remember that.

[25:35] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they'll come in. Maybe they'll come in.

[25:37] MARK FJELDSTED: And so we always were fearful of all of our surroundings. And I think what we've learned is, is that with all those big events that have taken place in our valley and in the US as a whole, in the US as a whole, in our industry, those things have almost made us stronger. Yeah, I mean, I think we're still here.

[26:02] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: We've outlived all of that riffraff.

[26:04] MARK FJELDSTED: And nowadays, with the pandemic winding down or being completely over, we've had so many people who, who wondered how local business and small business would survive through the pandemic. And actually, in our case, the pandemic made us stronger. Made us a lot stronger.

[26:22] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yeah. First time ever, we've been like, wow.

[26:25] MARK FJELDSTED: Yeah, it's been really interesting.

[26:26] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: When the governor said, I remember, Mark, we heard the governor say, only essential businesses can stay open. And I remember you did question me. You said, what do you think? I go, we are totally essential. People will have to go outside. Everything's going to be shut down, and we have to let people go outside. And our business sends people outside, like, for hiking and skiing and everything. And it did. It pushed our business. If we had shut our business, I hate to think that what would have happened? Yeah. We probably couldn't have made it, but we stayed right where we were and stayed open. We didn't close 1 minute or one day. We actually were the first people that had little black cotton masks, some of the first people in town that had a mask before they were mandatory and people from our industry, from the clothing.

[27:14] MARK FJELDSTED: Industry and, yeah, we realized, well, the whole industry, especially the bike industry, realized that cycling was essential because people would have to, they couldn't want to go.

[27:23] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: On a bus or train transit, so.

[27:25] MARK FJELDSTED: They had to go by themselves. So the whole entire bike industry became essential.

[27:28] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yeah, huge. And so we have been. We actually came out smelling really good on that think heavens. And we're very grateful for that. And, and we're grateful for the week. Mark and I do get to work. When we get to work and have great employees and put a ton of kids through Utah state, our employees typically come and stay with us for four or five years, sometimes longer. And so we have a really great workforce in Logan, Utah, and we've hired our own children and been able to keep them busy. And we are really richly blessed. I, in so many ways, in the family business that actually, in the corporate America, there's probably more family businesses than corporate America, but nobody seems to realize that. And we love seeing that after the COVID After Covid's ending, that China is now the place not to do business. And a lot of our work, which back when I started, everything was made in the USA, or pretty much. And now it's kind of coming. We're trying to find manufacturers that stay in the US or anywhere but China to build product.

[28:36] MARK FJELDSTED: It's unfortunate. It's unfortunate that our dad, who spent so much time at the store, he was also the. We could talk about him forever, but he was also the mayor of Logan in the early nineties and so on. He just passed away about 30 days ago, about a month ago, on April 5 of this year. And he. It's tragic that he passed away because he would have loved to have Satan here told about this and his experience with the business and his experience with witnessing nuclear blasts in the Nevada desert when he was in the military and his experiences as the mayor of Logan from 90 till 1990 till 1994 and how he built the golf course and all these things. And it's too bad that he, he just missed it by just a few weeks.

[29:31] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yeah, it's true. It's true. Which also says something about our loyal customers all these years that have kept us in business and love to come in our store and have seen their kids come in and kids, after kids come in. I hear people walking down in the basement saying, when I was a kid, my dad brought me in here to rent skis, and now I'm bringing you in here to rent skis. I mean, it's kind of funny so.

[29:55] MARK FJELDSTED: We offer an experience for sure, which is so different from everything else in the retail world right now. And we're very blessed to be able to do that.

[30:09] KRISTEN FJELDSTED: Yep, I agree.