New location for Plains antique business

It was only 200 yards from door to door and it took only about three weeks for the 16 vendors of Wild Horse Mercantile to move the hundreds of thousands of items to their new location, but they are now ready for the horde of customers.

The Wild Horse Mercantile opened for business two weeks ago for a "soft opening," but they had their grand opening last Monday with goodies, punch and prizes. Forty-eight Easter eggs were placed throughout the store - three in each booth - containing candy or gift certificates inside ranging from $5 to $25. Carrie Snow, one of the vendors who worked at the front desk on Monday, said there were 11 eggs left at the end of the day, so they left them out for people to find.

"We got a lot of compliments on the new place," said Snow, whose booth contains mostly antique glassware. She said there were perhaps 125-150 people in the store at the grand opening. And Snow is confident that the new location will be more successful than the previous place, the former car dealership building that is owned by Amber Szafryk of Plains. The vendors had been at that building for just over five years and before that, under a different name, they were in the old Grainry building for 15 years.

The Wild Horse Mercantile is a co-op with each vendor manning the shop two days a month, although many of the vendors spend a lot more time at the store, said Michele McGuigan, one of the co-op managers, the bookkeeper and a vendor. Vendors also pay rent based on the number of square feet of their booth. The booths range from 90 square feet to 169 square feet.

The vendors were happy with their building down the road, but McGuigan said that Szafryk had decided to list it for sale and they wanted to find another site before it sold. All but one vendor decided to relocate to the new place, said McGuigan, whose booth carries an assortment of jewelry, photographs, purses, antique dinnerware, and crystal, among other items. "As a group, we decided that we needed to relocate to the old 406/Town Pump building while it was still available. We worried that if we waited, that we'd have no building to move to," said McGuigan.

The other booths also have a myriad of items and each vendor shows his or her specialties, like fancy linens, collectibles, clothing, toys, greeting cards, candles, and tools, such as the booth of Lisa Elliott of Hot Springs, who has countless antique tools, including an 83-pound anvil from the 1870s to 1880s for the price of $750.

"Everybody has different tastes and varieties here," said Sandy Newman, who shares booths with her daughter, Michele McGuigan. "Our stuff is eclectic. We have a little bit of everything," said McGuigan. She said they specifically wanted to find a place for the business on the main road. "We get quite a few tourists. We get a lot of people that go antiquing and this is on their route," said McGuigan. The Wild Horse Mercantile's vendors are from Plains, Thompson Falls, Hot Springs, St. Regis, Ronan, and Missoula.

The former building is 5,432 square and the new place is 2,944 square feet, but McGuigan said they were able to get everyone that wanted to move from the old place to the new one. It took the vendors about three weeks to get their more than 500,000 items moved, but McGuigan said it's still a work in process. She said that Hap Borgmann and Jim Newman, her father, were instrumental in the success of the move by doing most of the construction. Even before they opened for business, as vendors were still moving items into the new place, people showed up to buy merchandise, said Newman. "I like it here. I think it's brighter inside here and it has a great layout," said McGuigan.

The store hours are Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. Beginning in May, the store will go to its summer hours and be open everyday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.