Show Biz Family Custers’ Fall Events Kick Off Start Of Shopping, Selling Season For Region
Autumn comes to the Inland Northwest with the scent of wood smoke, the crunch of apples and the sound of feet thundering to the Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds.
Never mind the day after Thanksgiving. The real shopping season starts with Custer’s 22nd annual Fall Antique and Collectors Sale.
The show, beginning Friday, kicks off months of Custer shows that draw shoppers from Seattle, Montana and Canada and raises more than a few questions about the organizer:
Who is Jim Custer, and how come he owns the fairgrounds?
“We don’t own the fairgrounds,” wife Jenny Custer patiently tells one caller. Nor does he hold every show there, so he cannot, for instance, advise you on the Junior League Rummage Sale. As for Jim Custer, the man behind the show, well, “he” is more of a “they.”
Jim Custer, 57; wife, Jenny, 55; daughter Cheryl, 28; and her husband, Clint, 28, make up Jim Custer Enterprises, the promotions and marketing team that has held consumer shows in Spokane for 22 years.
If people mistakenly think Jim Custer sponsors every show at the fairgrounds it’s because radio, television and newspapers brim with Custer advertisements from now until March. If they believe Custer owns the fairgrounds it’s because the company paid nearly $93,000 to Spokane County to rent the fairgrounds last year.
That money is helping fund a new exhibit building that Custer has booked for the next five years. Previously, Custer shows sprawled into fair buildings so decrepit that condensation made it appear as though it was raining inside. But not rain, nor shows set up temporarily in the poultry barn, stopped exhibitors from wanting to take part.
“You could put me in the bathroom just as long as you put me in your show,” one antique dealer told Jim Custer.
The exhibit space is so sought after that the Custers were forced to move their office from East Sprague to an undisclosed location because of the number of wannabe exhibitors and artists “dropping in” to get in shows. Sixty antique dealers are on a waiting list for this week’s show and phone calls are hitting 100 calls a day.
“Their job is tremendously hard, but if every promoter handled their shows like Jim Custer the fairgrounds would have a much easier time,” said Francine Boxer, assistant Spokane County administrator who oversees the fairgrounds.
The family works all year for the five minutes before the doors open: when the parking lot fills, the crowd gathers at the door, and the anticipation surges.
“It’s show business,” says Jenny Custer.
“It’s a form of entertainment,” says her husband. “It’s fun to think of that many people yearning for something we gave birth to.”
Show days number 22 each year and the only thing they can’t schedule, design or plan for is nature.
Last November, two days before their biggest show of the year, the Christmas Arts and Crafts Sale, they heard the branches snapping - ice storm.
With the fairgrounds plunged into cold and dark, the Custers considered canceling. Assured that power would be restored, the 300 artists set up in a building without heat or lights or phones. They shone car lights through open doors, took flashlights to find the restroom, drilled a hole in the wall to connect to generators from the carnival.
Eventually, the lights - and the show - went on. Only four exhibitors pulled out and had to be replaced. Attendance was down by one-third to one-half. But Custer, ever sunny, said those that came had great shopping.
“They’re very good promoters,” says Andia Hollen, a longtime antique exhibitor. “And they’re hams. They love jokes and talking to people.”
The rise of their business is based on family ties and long friendships. Custers are three generations deep in the Spokane Valley and the couple’s 33-year marriage has been a professional blend as much as personal. They’ve worked together since they met skating in the Ice Capades.
As a young couple, they started organizing antique shows while Jim was organizing a consumer show for a radio station. After he left the station, he continued the shows and in 1978 plunged into the business full time. They threw antique, boat, RV shows and home improvement shows at shopping malls, including a show at the Moscow, Idaho, mall that was canceled because of the explosion of Mount St. Helens. Since then, they’ve carried cancellation insurance.
Gradually, the shows at the fairgrounds eclipsed all the others. The Christmas Arts and Crafts show Jenny proposed after attending a Christmas bazaar in the early 1970s is now their biggest - drawing 22,000 people in a single weekend.
Bob and Cris Henderson were among the first antique dealers to join the Custers, and every year they come to sell jewelry and collectibles and revisit old friends.
“This is the thing that keeps going,” Cris Henderson said. “Since Bob retired (from teaching) it’s been like therapy, he saves things all year to take to the Custer show.”
Cheryl and her twin brother began working in the business as youngsters, sweeping the floors at shows. After earning a degree in journalism, Cheryl became marketing director. Last year her husband, who she met as a seventh-grader at Bowdish Junior High, left his job managing restaurants to join the Custers.
The younger couple introduced computers and Nerf dart guns to the office. They are politely but firmly removing the image of General George Armstrong Custer that decorates the company business cards. Not politically correct.
“‘Interesting’ is how most people put it,” Clint laughs.
Working in close quarters, the families separate for recreation: the elder Custers getting away to Lake Coeur d’Alene and the younger escaping to music. Clint plays ragtime piano and Cheryl sings with Sweet Adelines and the quartet “This Is It.”
Sometimes they even shop.
Cheryl’s favorite find is a diary from 1902, written by a young man living in downtown Spokane who wrote entertainingly and eloquently about the city. She picked it up at the antique show. The price: $1.
, DataTimes