Saying Goodbye

Some Final Thoughts from John ~~ March 2011

After a wild and crazy 5 years, I decided to close OSLO's A Men's Store. Here is my final email to our customers...

I closed the store on Sunday, February 27^th, after five years and two months. It was a gut wrenching decision and one where every possible alternative was considered. We've all been a bit emotional the last few weeks. In the end, bottom-line, we tried, but we couldn't outrun the recession.

Recently, a friend asked me casually what I would miss the most about owning a men's store. It has lingered in my head for the past two weeks, so here it goes:

• I will miss watching Oslo run down the block with his leash in his mouth excited to arrive to work everyday. It reminded me how lucky I was to have a place to go and touch lives each and everyday.
• I will miss the children who came in for their first haircut and the parents with their camera and often an accompanying grandparent and I will miss Chad's conversations with the teenagers who came in to get a haircut.  How easily he would touch the electric razor with his hand to show how it didn't hurt to some scared young boy or find some common ground with a young man finding himself in his teens, talking quietly with his barber.
• I will miss the men who never could make a decision without bringing their wives or girlfriends back for a final say. I hope one day they'll have confidence to buy a shirt on their own... and that their wives and girlfriends will be proud of them and happy too when they choose to wear it. After all it is just a shirt.
• I will miss Nick, who sat on the sidewalk bench outside our front door, crazier than a loon, yelling profanities at whoever walked by, but who felt that OSLO's from time to time was safe enough to come inside and to ask for a towel to wipe the rain off the bench, and who he must have been somewhere deep inside to always return it and say thank you.
• I will miss trying to remember your name or what you bought three years ago...and laughing from time to time if I screwed up. If I could remember something, I could move around to the point of sale system and work through some filters to confirm my guess. A few times I got it wrong, when I got it right it drove Cindy nuts.
• I will miss the people who came by regularly with treats for Oslo. They sat down and talked to us about their day and shared stories about their lives and we listened and became friends.

I never thought much about the community OSLO's A Men's Store would become, until one day I realized it had. And they might be some of my happiest years in my life. And in some way each of you contributed to that. It became your neighborhood men's store.

Thank you for your support, patronage and friendship these last five years. Shop local. And whatever you do, wherever you go, hopefully in some small way, we helped you build your own style. 

With the fondest of memories buried deep in my heart...  

John & Oslo McDowell