Center Stories: Michael LeTourneau & Owatonna Family Thrift
- Sean E. Williams
- Apr 2
- 7 min read
Every other month on our website we’ll be highlighting a different client of the Owatonna Area Business Development Center in a new series called “Center Stories,” interviewed by Executive Director Sean E. Williams.
What made you decide to go into business for yourself?
Desiree and I had a game store that closed in 2019 and if COVID hadn't happened, we would have turned the business into an online venture and done road shows. So it was always our intention to have that independence. We like being entrepreneurs, but for the last several years, we haven't been able to pursue that because of the setbacks from COVID.
Last spring, I went back to South Central to start pursuing a business degree, and I figured I would take four years to get my two-year degree, and then we would start looking at what the community needed. I thought that antique shop or thrift shop would be a good way to find something local that could make a difference, and that the Amazons - the big businesses - weren't going to be able to compete online. There's so many unique aspects to reused goods, like furniture and artwork, it really would be hard to do a thrift shop online. So that was what my intention was originally, and then when the Salvation Army closed, I realized that we needed to accelerate our plan, that I wasn't going to have four years to do my two-year course to then start looking for a traditional loan. The town needed a non-profit thrift shop that could provide the same services as the Salvation Army, and they needed it as fast as I could get it. So I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to step into this need faster, which has meant that I'm taking courses in the mornings and running the thrift shop on the weekends. And it's been a lot, but we're going to get there – we’ve got a great batch of volunteers, and they're doing a really good job.
That's a great approach - identifying a problem that needs to be solved and then coming up with a solution, versus just throwing an idea out there and seeing if anyone is interested.
Yeah. I mean, everybody should follow their passions, but if there's a particular thing that you are passionate about but the customer isn't going to be there for you, you're going to struggle as an entrepreneur. You've really got to find the right match between your interests and the needs of the people in your community. And I really feel that OFT [Owatonna Family Thrift] has done that very well.
What resources did you find and take advantage of here in Owatonna?
So first off, we got great assistance from Community Pathways, talking to leadership there, telling them what I was intending and making sure that we weren't duplicating services. We don't have any clothes at our thrift store - Unique Finds has clothes at their thrift store.
When we started our first business venture in 2014 we went to the Owatonna Business Incubator [the old name for the Owatonna Area Business Development Center], and so I knew to reach out and to get resources there. Tremendous help with weekly consultations, and eventually renting the storage space there. Really, the Owatonna Area Business Development Center was a huge resource. And the Owatonna Chamber of Commerce - talking to Brad and Brad and letting them know what I was doing. It was two weeks of me just driving around with a newspaper article trying to get business cards.
You all really helped to get me the resources I needed faster, and to keep me and Desiree and our third board member, Phil, on the track we needed to be on to be able to do things we hadn't done before, to get this place up and running. The retail side of it was something that we were all fairly familiar with. The non-profit side of things was new. There was a lot of regulation, a lot of questions that needed to be answered, and a lot of paperwork that needed to be filed in order to incorporate at the end of September and then to open the doors in January – it is tremendous. Three months to go from “I have a plan” to “I have a storefront” - that was tremendous.
Of course, when looking for locations, there were lots of places to choose and this location was really ideal. A huge amount of help came from Gene Michaelson, the one who owns the property here. He was also very understanding of what we were trying to do, and his expertise really made this possible.
I think those are the resources that we relied the most on. It's just all that expertise and all that energy was just absolutely tremendous. I think anyone who's trying to do anything enterprising in this town is going to have a huge advantage because of the systems and the organizations that are in place to help - it's just great resources all around.
How is running a non-profit different than running a for-profit in your experience, having run both?
The very first top line is that we don't have any employees right now, which means my salary since starting this venture is zero. Nobody's taking money out - and it's the biggest communication hurdle for me, trying to explain to people that when you when you create a non-profit, it doesn't have owners. The Board oversees the decisions that the non-profit makes, but it's its own entity, and nothing leaves it without having a purpose towards our mission, which is to help the local economy, to help people who need it, and to keep usable goods out of landfills. It's about community support. It's about recycling. And if it's not something that helps those mission statements, then you've got to make sure that that money is reinvested into additional programs. We're paying back those startup costs, and we're making progress. Hopefully we're going to have employees who can draw wages from the operation of OFT, but that has not happened yet. This is all 100% volunteer-driven. I'm just so grateful to every volunteer who's here, day in, day out, going through things, getting stuff staged. It took a community to get it going, to help the bigger community.
What’s next? What are you looking forward to and excited about?
We are rolling out a new program. One program that we started with was every kid who visits gets to leave with a free book. In two months, we have given away over 200 kids’ books to support community literacy, to encourage that interest in learning from an early age. The new program that we're rolling out, which will be starting on April 1, is for any family receiving services at Community Pathways. If they show us their Community Pathways card, we're going to give them 50% off everything in the store except new furniture (which will be marked as a new arrival) and the collectibles up in the display cases near the register. With those two exceptions, the whole store is 50% off to anyone in the community who's receiving services at Pathways. That's 12,000 people living in Steele County who are getting services at Community Pathways. We think we can make a huge difference for those people and to help them have a better experience. We've got a lot of great stuff, a lot of good prices, and we're hoping that discount makes a big difference.
What do you wish you had known before you started? What would you have done differently?
Something that I probably would have put more time aside for was the paperwork, the filing. There's a lot more that goes into getting a 501(c)(3) from the IRS. You need to demonstrate that you have bylaws in place to prevent conflicts of interest, to make sure that you are not profiting off of a non-profit. You put all of these things together. It took weeks and multiple, multiple consultants to get onto the right page to make sure that the form was submitted, and to make sure it came back approved, which it did. But that process could take up to six months. They got it in two or three months. I think the turnaround was good for us, but that's not guaranteed. So if you're looking to become a non-profit, start your paperwork on day one, when you're looking for a place, when you're trying to figure out your marketing, when you're doing all of the other things. Prioritize that paperwork because it has a long hangtime on it, and I wish I would have started that sooner, because of how long it took to get everything lined up.
What's your favorite part of running your own business?
Oh, my favorite part of the operations for OFT is definitely seeing the customers and the donors and the way that they don't know that they're connecting. I'll bring in a table and chairs set in the back, and the person dropping it off will usually have a story. “This used to be my mom's” or “this belonged to me for a long time,” and I just like the idea that it goes to somebody else. And so oftentimes the people donating goods are older. They might be downsizing or ready to move to a new place. That's a lot of the time.
The part that they don't see is when the young couple comes in with the baby on their arm and they say, “We just got our new house, and we need a dining room table,” and they find this table, and I've heard the other half of the story, and they say, “Well, this is going to be our table until this little guy is all grown.” And they go and they take it, and it's just the journey of these items as they pass through from one member of the community to another. I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to see that. The way that the kids light up when they get the free books, the way that people are delighted when they find what they need, and just the happiness of everybody involved; the mood is always very, very upbeat.
I'm not very retail oriented. I've said for a long time - I might have wanted to build this ship, but without Desiree, my wife, behind the counter steering the ship, we wouldn't be able to get where we want to go. She's got the retail experience, but for me it's been a delight, seeing how much of a difference we're making in the day to day lives of other people in our community.
You can learn more and follow Owatonna Family Thrift on Facebook. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
