Mini Mart, an institution for Oberlin's thrifty and hip alike is closing in March after 15 years of being the town's primary source of used clothing, housewares and a variety of miscellaneous used merchandise.
The shop began 15 years ago as an 8-foot long table in the basement in the building that now houses Campus Video. Its owner, Billy Jean Teehan, quickly outgrew not only her table, but the entire basement and in 1984 moved into the shop's current location, a soggy smelling basement of the building that houses the Apollo Theater.
Teehan said she's giving up her business because of her worsening arthritis. "I need to rest," she said.
Teehan turned down the volume of the small television that sits behind her cash register to talk about the time she's spent as a supplier of the eternal retro-hipness that is Oberlin. Not bad for a 62-year old known to the world as B.J.
Teehan will be missed most by students, who make up about 90 percent of her customers. Some of the most faithful constituents at the one-person shop are costume and set designers for student theater productions. Her rental rates are low, just 35 percent of the price of the good - for as long as the renters need them..
"They have unbelievable fake flowers," junior Lisa Kemper said. Kemper has done costumes for many theater productions including A Winter's Tale, Merrily We Roll Along and Renovation X. "I can't name a show I've worked on that hasn't used Mini Mart," she said.
Teehan, a round-faced woman with her gray hair in a perm, has a unique bond with some of her regular customers, such as Kemper. "I don't know the names, but I know the people," she said.
Mini Mart's selection is remarkable. There are U.S. flags for $35, yellowing black and white photographs of nuclear 1950s families for 25 cents, a 1961 Chevrolet Corvair owners manual for $7, hats - floppy straw hats and Chicago Bulls three-peat ski hats, among hundreds of others, mugs bearing the logos of Miller Lite beer and the Bay High School Class of '79, rings with stones big and colorful, prom dresses and paperback novels for 35 cents.
The selection isn't what it's always been. Teehan decided that she would close shop late in the summer, when her traditional buying season begins.
Teehan has acquires her wares at sales mostly - auctions and flea markets. Buying used goods and selling them again has been a part of Teehan's life for a long time. Her husband has been an antique dealer since 1967 and before she opened shop on Main Street, she'd done flea markets on weekends for years before then.
A decade ago, she gave up her job at a Lorain discount store - a job she'd held for 28 years - and dedicated all her time to running the Mini Mart, which she said consumes seven days a week.
The store is open only for days a week, but Teehan usually is at the shop by 7 a.m. on days she's open. And on the off-days, she frequently goes on buying trips to find more things for the store.
Teehan is the clerk, the accountant, the stocker and the maintenance person for her store. "I do all the buying, all the fixing up. If I need to build a display, I build it," she said. "It takes two hours a day to hang up clothes from the dressing room." All that work, she said, is too much to handle with her arthritis.
Teehan's shop is out of the way. To get there, you have to descend a narrow and dank staircase located off a parking lot. As a result of her location, she said, most of her business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations.
"Say I had the spot where Planet Earth [a Main Street vintage clothing store] is, I could triple my business, but there's a heck of a lot more rent down there," she said.
In the her location, Teehan usually serves between 20 and 45 customers a day and more during peak times, like the day's preceding Oberlin's Drag Ball.
Teehan grew up in West Virginia and has lived in Kipton for most of her adult life - places without vibrant lesbian, gay and bisexual scenes. Now, she sells many dresses to Oberlin men of all sexual orientations each spring. "When I first came to Oberlin, I saw a couple kiss. It shocked me at first, but it was just temporary," she said. "The gay people's temperament is beautiful," she said.
Apart from Drag Ball season, the start of the school year is a time of bustling business at Mini Mart. Then, she tends to sell housewares - and break out of the annual sales slump when few students in town means little business.
The fashions sold at the store are always, well, fashionably behind the times. "Everything goes in phases," Teehan said. "Just three or four years ago I couldn't sell a vest." And now, she said, vests are hot sellers.
The Drag-wear-seeking, the house-setter-uppers and the trendy are just three of her customer groups. Others are closer to her. "All my husbands shirts come from here. It took me about two years for me to get him to use a shirt from here. He went to the mall to get a new shirt and he changed his mind quick," she said.
In Teehan's closing months, she plans to empty her inventory through sales and possibly giveaways. The slow-moving Teehan said she'll miss the students who parade through her store.
"I've always had a good thing with the students," she said.
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