Past & Present closes doors after 28 years

The main question posed lately to Sandi Prange, 67, owner of Past & Present Antiques & Gifts in Waseca is, “What are you looking forward to after retiring?” 

 

“I want to go,” is Prange’s response. 

 

After 28 years of running the store located on State Street in Waseca, Prange is saying goodbye to the historical building and the business she built. 

 

“I just felt like I wanted to try a new avenue, visiting family down south. You really can’t get away to do that when you’re running full time, five days a week and then some,” Prange said. With a son in Nashville, a son in Florida, and also three siblings in Florida, Prange is excited at the chance to finally go visit. 

 

Prange plans to close Past & Present in November and said there is a possible buyer for the building who is willing to be flexible about how long it takes her to finish emptying the space. Her three part-time employees will also be retiring. Nancy Tollefson, who worked with Prange for 25 years from the beginning, brought joy to the store. Julie Praxle, who has been there almost 23 years and is still working with Prange, has boundless energy and does all of the staging and decorating, Prange said. 

 

But for now, Prange is marking all her merchandise down by 20 percent, encouraging customers to keep an eye on Facebook, where she will post if the percentage gets higher. She is also taking time to reflect on the life of the store.

 

“My husband, he forced me into it,” Prange laughed. “He wanted us to buy this and make it a guy’s antique shop with car parts and stuff like that because it’s an old auto repair shop. And I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ I said, that is not in my heart. I have to do things that I like if I’m going to have a store.”

 

But it really started with Prange’s love of doing craft shows when she and her husband Randy owned the glass shop. Prange said she would bring her craft show displays in and set it up in the shop. 

 

“We had a loft up there, so I called that the Gift Loft,” Prange said. “I would have gals come down there and they’d go up to the gift loft and shop.” 

 

The Gift Loft eventually moved into the Past & Present store, which opened April 15 of 1997. 

 

Prange remembers the second day she was open, she got the first shipment of Beanie Babies, which were all the rage at the time. She said they changed the way she did retail because of all the people who came in, buying out her whole stock until she had to limit purchases to one per person and even to only selling the toys on Saturdays. 

 

“One time I was leaving late at night and there was a fish house tent set up right outside the door. Someone was waiting. It was midnight, and someone was waiting there. Another day, I came in on a Saturday and the line was all the way to the south of the building from the front door,” Prange said. 

 

She chuckled and said that Casey’s would get upset with her because she didn’t warn them she was doing it and everybody was over there getting coffee waiting for her to open. An article written during that earlier time mentioned the long lines prominently, and told how, when the UPS delivery man would tell people at Brown Printing about her shipment, they would “high-tail it over” to the store after work and get the Beanie Babies. 

 

“I wish I would’ve had a picture because it’s hard to believe,” Prange said.

 

Another thing she said was memorable were the open houses, especially the Christmas house walk. People opened their homes and let visitors walk through. Customers would then buy similar supplies and imitate a style of decoration they had liked.  Prange said she feels blessed that in all of the open houses she had, which were always fun but exhausting for her, she was always healthy and they never had bad weather.

 

Even 9/11 had an impact on the store.  

 

“After 9/11, I came in that day and the next few days we were so busy. One of my employees turned on the radio. She wanted to hear it and I said, ‘Turn it off. Put on music, I think people are trying to get away.’ If they don’t want to be in front of their TV, they want to just get out of that,” Prange said. 

 

There were slow times too. Prange mentions 2008 to 2010 as having been slow at the store. She remembers the downturn in the economy even led to an increased number of returns as the downturn in the economy led to buyers’ remorse. 

 

“It was hard. But because this place was in my heart, I couldn’t give it up then.” 

 

Prange said there were lots of times when things became overwhelming, making the idea of throwing in the towel seem inviting. In the beginning, store hours were 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week and on Sundays. They are now 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. With these hours and being open most days of the week, Prange found it hard to get away and never wanted to close shop for a day and disappoint her clients. 

 

She mentions how she placed a “Back at 11” sign on the door for the first time ever only a couple of months ago.

 

Because it wasn’t always easy, Prange said she once asked God for help. A long time ago, she said she was leaving for work on a Sunday morning when her youngest was around 5 or 6 years old. She recalls asking herself why she was going to work on a Sunday, leaving her family behind and losing the chance to spend time with them. 

 

“I pretty much said, ‘God, you need to tell me why I should, if I should keep this place or not. You need to give me a loud signal because I’m so tired, I don’t know if I could listen to a quiet sign.’”

 

And God gave her a sign. 

 

That day, Prange said a woman from Owatonna came into the store. Her husband had died the week before; she had specifically selected Past & Present for her first outing. That same afternoon, a woman came in with her mother and daughter. She was going through a divorce and had said they needed to get out and get away from the house and have a good time, so they came to the store. 

 

“That made me think, ‘Okay God, now I know. I need to be here,’” Prange said, and added, laughing, “I should have just asked him a few more times after that.” 

 

The decision to close still wasn’t an easy one, with Prange saying there were a lot of tears and sleepless nights involved with the decision. Prange said she hopes the community appreciated the way she did business. With no training, she just did what she loved with some wonderful employees. Having had amazing experiences with all her friends who volunteer, antique dealers who  rented space and the employees who worked for her for years, Prange is grateful for the time with the store. 

 

Now that she has decided to finally close the doors, Prange said she’s received a lot of comments from the community expressing their good wishes and saying they will miss her, miss the shop.

 

“They’ll say, ‘Where are we going to shop?’ I’m like, ‘Do you know how many shops are in town?” Prange said. “But this one’s different. I just wanted them to feel comfortable.” 

 

So what does Prange want to do now that she will be retired? She said she will likely volunteer and would like to join an athletic or workout club to take the time to do things for herself, time she has never had before.

 

“My entire family, in one way or another, has helped me out,” Prange said. “They’ve been wanting me to retire for a long time.”