A familiar face in Antioch calling it quits after a lifetime in retail
Ask about the merchandise at BJ's Sports Center in Antioch and you might get a run down from Bill Patterson of his lifetime in the retail business and the way things once were along Main Street in Antioch.
With more than 40 years in town, Patterson has weathered the highs and lows of an independent businessman in a small community. But at 81, his time as a proprietor is almost over. The sports center is in its final days and its tandem business next door, BJ's Fashions for Men, closed several weeks ago.
As with many local ventures, Internet shopping and big box stores have made it much tougher for non-chains to survive, let alone thrive.
“It's too difficult today — too many hours,” Patterson said. “It's not profitable anymore unless you want to sleep here (and) work 24 hours a day,” he added.
In over an hour on a recent weekday afternoon, only one customers stops in, giving Patterson plenty of time to talk with a visitor.
“January is usually a terrible month to do business whether you're going out of business or not,” he said.
Patterson started as a stock boy in a men's store in his native Waukegan when he was 13, taking the streetcar to work. He worked there on and off for years, even during a 17-year stint at his regular job as a warehouse supervisor for Outboard Marine. His other venture at the time was at Fields Smartwear, a well-known store in Zion. Though offered a promotion, Patterson said he had grown tired of the warehouse job and decided to get back into retail full time.
By then, he had moved to the Antioch area and took on a co-worker as a partner. The pair bought a menswear store that was going out of business downtown, remodeled the building and renamed it BJ's Fashions for Men, using the initials of their first names. That was 1972 when there were five clothing stores downtown.
“We opened that store, the two of us, on $6,000, which today would be impossible to do,” Patterson said.
He recalled the annual summer sidewalk sales that were as much a community event as moneymaker for the merchants, and said the streets thick with customers.
“It was unheard of and unbelievable,” he said.
A few years later, Antioch High School student Lawrence Hanson came in with his mother to buy a shirt for some long forgotten occasion. Mrs. Hanson, Patterson recalled, was a discerning dresser and BJ's favored flashy over traditional when it came to fashion.
Patterson said he saw something in the young Hanson, who, through a high school work/study program, began an unlikely career as a salesman and later manager at BJ's.
“I was super shy. This would have never fit my personality,” Hanson said, reflecting on his 40-year association with Patterson.
Hanson not only learned the clothing business but became involved in the business community. He won a seat on the Antioch village board and has served as mayor since 2009.
A few years after opening the clothing store, Patterson accepted a handshake deal for the inventory of a defunct sporting goods store across the street and despite not being versed in the field, opened BJ's Sports Center in a former travel agency next door in 1978.
BJ's became apparel driven but in recent years local sports teams have found better deals elsewhere, Patteson said, and consumers are more concerned with price over service.
“It's the changing of Main Street, it really is,” said Hanson, who is helping Patterson with the transition. So what's next for the old businessman?
“Maybe I'll open a hot dog stand,” Patteson said.
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