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Celebrating growth, customers and top-store status

It may be serendipitous that Lee and Marjorie Nelson had no idea their small store on Commercial Street would blossom into one of the most successful, and largest, businesses in the trade area.

“If I’d thought it would be this big to start with, I’d probably have run the other direction,” Lee Nelson remarked, beaming at what the little company has become since it opened 50 years ago. “... We just grew with demand.”

This month the Nelsons and their daughter, Ann Bruner, who manages the store, are marking the company’s golden anniversary with a variety of ongoing promotions and prize give-aways as a thank-you to customers.

The store’s placing in the Topeka Capital-Journal’s Best of Kansas competition last month was icing on the family’s celebratory cake. Bluestem Farm & Ranch was voted No. 3 in the statewide vote, beating franchises and other similar stores in larger trade areas.

Marjorie Nelson said they had not been told the store had been nominated for the honor, which made the top-five placing an even-better surprise.

“We’re very grateful to the community, ... to our customers, our employees,” Bruner said of the store’s longevity, as well as the customers whose votes produced statewide results.

Small beginnings

It took only about six months for the Nelsons to move their first store from Commercial Street to the 400 block of Merchant Street, between the former NAPA store and Midwest Locksmith. The next growth spurt, beginning with a construction start in 1969, sent the store into a new building on West Highway 50 the following year. They quickly filled just under 18,000 square feet of space with merchandise that farmers, stockmen and townspeople needed.

“And farmers with their horse trailers moved us,” Lee Nelson said.

Now, with additions and three warehouses, Bluestem encompasses approximately 62,000 square feet, all filled with a wide assortment of merchandise, either on display or waiting to be brought in for restocking from the warehouses.

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