(Sheldon)– The Ben Franklin Store in Sheldon will soon be the last one to still be open in Iowa.
At the beginning of the year, the store in Sheldon was among three still left. Since then, the Ben Franklin in Winterset sold out in May, and the store in Eagle Grove is about to close due to retirement.
Phil Warnke owns the Ben Franklin store in Sheldon. He tells Community First Broadcasting station KIWA the Ben Franklin company, which at one time had its own corporate distribution center, hasn’t been in existence for a number of years now…
“The Ben Franklin company went out of business in 1996, so all of us have been functioning as independents so we’ve been running our own stores at the local level making the decisions that fit in with our community and our customers. The affiliation we had with Ben Franklin has been long gone and it’s just been more of a relationship between the remaining stores that were left that continued with the Ben Franklin name. At the time Ben Franklin went out there was between 80 and 100 stores in Iowa and we kind of still kept meeting together and staying in contact and shared vendors and shared places to purchase merchandise, so even though we haven’t been really as a member of Ben Franklin we’ve all still kind of stayed affiliated and stayed in contact.”
Warnke says they plan to keep the store in Sheldon open another several years.
There at one time was a Ben Franklin store in Spirit Lake.
(Courtesy Community First Broadcasting station KIWA in Sheldon)
