I bought a many a pair of jeans and boots at The Fair. That was one booming business. Lamar Lamberts wife (from Asa) worked there and I would always give her my business because they worked on commission. She would always give me a 50% cut off her commission because we were friends and I had hired two of her boys to run combines for me during the summer.LIB,MR BEARS said:
did you get your jeans and boots at The Fair?
http://www.tdtnews.com/archive/article_622ad047-cac4-5114-803d-7928eeb0ee7e.html
She introduced me to the owner and I spoke with him several times over the years and now I cannot for the life of me remember his name. A Jewish man. One the top 5 riches men in Falls county. As soon as he died his daughters took over and started lowering the inventory and raising the prices. Within a few years they closed claiming there was no money to be made anymore in Western wear. The old man had such a business if you recall there was another western store across the street that just fed off of him. During Holidays and weekends there was so much business there it was a fight to get through those crowded aisles and some people would get disgusted and just walk across the street and buy a few higher priced items and head home.
My brother in law had a carpet store in Bloomington, Indiana. Boots and western wear were very rare up there. But when John Travolta made the movie Urban Cowboy, boots took off everywhere. He put in a small store on one end of his carpet store and called it "Boot Hill". Business took off. Had to hire 2 full time employs. He came to see us one December and wanted to go to The Fair as he had heard so much about their stock of boots. He was taken back at the prices. He said they were selling the exact boots from Tony Lama and Justin for considerably less than he had to pay for them wholesale. His territorial rep had told him he was getting the best price they had to offer. He was on the phone chewing him out as soon as we got home. The rep kept swearing up and down that nobody got a lower price. They finally hung up and the rep called back in about 30 minutes and said he had went to the top and got the scoop which he had not previously known, and had found out that were 2 stores in America that got lower prices on boots than he did in Bloomington. One store was in California and the other was The Fair in Lott. The big boss had told him to tell my Broher in law that if he could order the volume that Lott did he would get that price. He asked what they ordered per month and when they told him he said "I would have to sell over 20 times that many to be on his level". QUITE A STORE THAT WAS.
