Upcycled

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

There were mergers to keep on the down-low and genetically modified organisms to defend. Then the monarch butterflies started dying.
“You’d have Greenpeace protesting somewhere overseas and they’d lock themselves to the gates,” Kathy Loew recalled, reminiscing how she spent years trying to control the message for DuPont Pioneer as part of its corporate communications team.

And now she’s happy just to be selling secondhand clothes in Churdan.

If you’re wondering how a person who doesn’t have the last name Minnehan or Geisler can end up in Churdan (pop. 386) from one of the biggest companies in the world — Pioneer’s parent, DuPont, is bigger than Philip Morris, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton and even McDonald’s — go back and read that first paragraph again.

“When you’re in that field, you have to be kind of an adrenaline junkie,” Loew confessed.

“I’m past that,” she added.

Loew and husband Pete — both natives of the Des Moines metro area — wanted out of the rat race so badly they ended up on two and a half acres south of Churdan nearly four years ago.

In December, the couple bought the building that formerly housed Churdan’s grocery store. After months of renovation — “All the coolers were here,” Kathy Loew said — they recently opened Closet to Closet, a secondhand clothing boutique.

If it’s an indication of Churdan’s commercial real estate market, the “For Sale” sign in the window of what was once Churdan Foods was so faded they couldn’t make out the phone number.

Closet to Closet joins a business district that, like so many other rural Iowa downtowns, has lost most of its business.

There’s now just a bank, an insurance office, the public library and a beauty salon.

“And the taxidermy guy,” Loew said, a statement that reveals more about her journey from urban to rural than perhaps anything else.

Pat Geisler, who ran Churdan Foods until it closed nearly a decade ago, was beginning to wonder if the building would ever sell.

“We don’t have that many businesses in town,” Geisler said. “Whatever opens up is that much better.”

Churdan Foods was the last locally owned grocery store in the county when it finally closed, he said.

By the end, it no longer was worth the effort to find suppliers to keep the shelves stocked.

“The old people died off and the young people go somewhere else,” Geisler said. “That’s what happened to them all.”

The Loews hope to reverse that by making Closet to Closet a destination.

“There’s a generation that still thinks a secondhand store is Goodwill and for poor people,” Kathy Loew said.

Walk in the door, though, and it quickly becomes apparent that Closet to Closet is something entirely different.

“I don’t want it to feel like a Goodwill store,” she said.

These aren’t mere hand-me-downs. This is “upcycled” fashion.

“We try to be picky what we put out,” Loew said.

Most of it is brand name, she said, only priced affordably.

With the right selection, Loew predicted, “People will travel.”

As if on cue, Jefferson resident Bonnie Silbaugh last Thursday thought nothing of driving up to Closet to Closet on her lunch break from work to shop. She’d heard about the new store from a friend.

“It offers a lot,” Silbaugh said as she checked out. “You feel better shopping local.”

Closet to Closet will be able to show off its wares Saturday at the Jefferson Elks Lodge when the store participates in the Girls Night Out style show hosted by Jefferson Does No. 196. The event begins at 6 p.m. Tickets, priced at $10, are available at the door.

“The used clothing store is going to have Coach purses. Touche,” Loew said. “We’re going to show them what we’re all about.”

What they’re actually all about is helping the community.

As a nonprofit, money spent at Closet to Closet will assist area kids with registration fees and gear for extracurricular activities, Loew said.

The store also is working with the schools to provide clothes to students in need.

Residents of Churdan have been amazed at the transformation from a grocery store to a boutique.

The building dates to at least 1915, when it was the Dudley Mercantile Co. Locals fondly recall a later incarnation as Hanson’s grocery store.

“It’s a great building. It has a ton of history,” Loew said. “Everyone remembers the floor.”

The floor, in all its dark-stained wood glory, has survived the transition.

Needless to say, Churdan was abuzz wondering what the Loews were doing to the old grocery store.

“My husband told the ladies at the library we were opening a brothel,” Loew joked.

The Loews kept one of the grocery store’s old coolers with plans to turn it into a shoe rack.

There are future plans as well to open up a historic balcony for antiques.

“It makes people feel good that we can have something nice in a small town,” Kathy Loew said.

Before Closet to Closet, Loew’s only experience in retail was as a customer during her 17 years in the corporate world.

“I was a huge shopaholic,” she said. “You had to dress a certain way.”

An Urbandale native who at one time used to baby-sit the kids of Wild Rose Casinos & Resorts chairman Gary Kirke — yeah, it’s a small world — Loew started to become disillusioned with her work in corporate America after the events of 9/11.

She just happened to be in downtown New York City for work on that fateful day.

“You start to look at things different,” she said.

“You could smell it,” she added. “You could see the smoke.”

She and partner Pete, a Dowling High grad who now works in the seafood department at the Jefferson Hy-Vee, eventually ended up finding the foreclosure of their dreams just outside Churdan on the Fannie Mae website.

“You don’t realize how much you like the little things in life, like the sunset,” Kathy Loew said. “People in the city don’t ever pay attention to that.”

They wanted a “simpler, quieter life,” and they found it in Churdan.

They opted not to have cable TV or home Internet.

Pete Loew wanted to have a small farming operation, which they now have. The couple has three Irish Dexter cows and two Hereford pigs. They sell hormone-free and antibiotic-free beef and pork, along with eggs.

The cows, however, weren’t part of the original plan.

Marrying last September, the Loews requested no gifts — but they nevertheless ended up being given two cows.

“Welcome to Greene County, I guess,” Kathy Loew said.