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Davisons celebrates sixty years
“March 6, 1958, we opened a store down on the corner,” Marvin Davison said, as he lounged in a chair surrounded by displays featuring a plethora of shoes.
Davison and his wife Betty had just moved to Nevada from the Fort Leonard Wood area.
They were just 19 years old were they opened their first store on the southeast corner of Cedar and Walnut Street.
“I always wanted to have a shoe store,” Davison said. “I think I told my mom was I was about five years old that I was going to be a retailer, I was going to sell shoes.”
After graduating high school, Davison worked in the shoe repair shop at the post exchange on Fort Leonard Wood.
“Graduated one Friday, went to work on Monday,” Davison said.
It wasn’t long before he was moonlighting at a shoe shop in town, repairing shoes.
“Being the fort there with 30,000 soldiers at that time, I just started leaving the door unlocked and I started selling shoes,” he said, explaining he would sell more shoes during the evening than the daytime employees would.
It was not to last though. The store owner Davison worked for, Wes Bates, was killed when his single-engine Ercoupe airplane hit a power line while landing at the airport in Sullivan, Mo. — a crash Davison witnessed. Davison pulled Bate’s passenger, Hoffy, from the burning wreckage and returned to try to rescue Bates but was held back by other witnesses who told him it was too late.
“I closed out all his businesses, at 18 years old,” Davison said.
Davison married Betty on Sept. 22, 1957, and they moved to Nevada in November. A shoe salesman had told him about a store for sale on the Square.
“At the time, there were five regular shoe stores and 16 shoe outlets on the Square and one block off the Square,” Davison said.
They settled in quickly, joining the First Baptist Church on their first Sunday in Nevada.
“Our rent was $85 dollars a month, utilities were $15 or less,” Davison said. “If we didn’t sell 200 pair on a Saturday, we didn’t have a good day.”
Davison attributed their success on being different from his competitors.
“I’ve always had an eye for fashion,” he said, explaining he often visited other shops to compare and for inspiration. “We carried a lot of stuff that the other stores didn’t carry which looking back on it was a smart thing to do.”
March 9, 1961, the Davison’s opened their second store in the Love building — a former theater — on the Square. He was almost electrocuted while remodeling the building when a 200-volt line was not disconnected.
“We put in higher priced merchandise over here,” he said.
At one point, Davison had 13,000 pairs of shoes in the Love building.
“Our third store was in El Dorado Spring and our fourth store was in Butler,” he explained. “We had 96 stores in eight states at one time.”
Davison Enterprises reached its zenith in 1982 with more than 90 stores.
“I had a lot of fun,” Davison said. “I enjoyed it. I enjoyed helping people that had problems. I did a lot of consulting.”
A changing regulatory environment and financial hard times lead to Davison’s Enterprises beginning to downsize in 1983.
“That’s when interest rates went from six percent to 22 [percent],” he explained.
They have been in their current location in Nevada since 1971. For a time in the 1980s, their original store on the corner of Cedar and Walnut carried western wear before trends changed again.
“The self-service store we turned it into a rack store not too many years after Walmart opened because it was kind of in the same price range,” Davison said.
Unlike Davison’s current store, the shoes were all on racks accessible to customers, much like shoe stores commonly found in malls today.
“They’d come in, take the new shoes, put them on and put the old shoes in the box, leave them and walk out,” he said. “That happened quite a bit.”
Davison said service and uniqueness have driven their success.
“Last Saturday, we had a couple up from Joplin,” he said, explaining they are the only independent store in the region.
“Comfort,” Davison said. “That’s the number one thing people are looking for today, comfort … A lot of that comes from being properly fit. I would say almost nine out of 10 people are wearing the wrong size of shoes.”
Another change in the industry, Davison explained that in the past, people would only have one pair of shoes they wore for everything — work, leisure, church. Today, most people have a variety of shoes for specific activities.
“We’ve carried handbags ever since we went into businesses,” he said.
Though no longer the fashion, Davison said women used to buy a handbag to coordinate with each pair of their shoes. Davison’s Shoes still carries a wide variety of handbags and purses.
In 1974, the Davison’s ventured into sporting goods, buying up a small store on the south side of the Square. While that store is no longer there, Davison’s still carries a selection of sporting goods.
In another change to the industry, almost gone are the days of traveling salesmen. Today, Davison’s Shoes buys predominantly from trade shows and online.
The change has not been that recent either. He explained that about 25 years ago, shoe companies started reducing the number of salesmen and increasing the area they had to cover.
“That’s why if you didn’t go to market, you didn’t get to see the shoes,” he said.
In an anomaly to the status quo, a shoe salesman was visiting the store while Davison was talking about the change in the industry.
“We’re unusual in that we offer such a wide variety,” Davison said. “Most shoe stores wouldn’t even think about having all the product we have. But that is what keeps people coming back.”
He said selling three or four pairs of shoes at a time is not uncommon.
“One of the most amazing things is how far people come to shop with us,” he said.
Customers from Joplin and Kansas City are not uncommon and visitors from western Kansas are not unheard of.
“We had one our little gals that worked for us four or five years ago, she sat here and sold a lady 22 pair, all for herself,” Davison said.
Two weeks later, she sold another customer 21 pairs of shoes, although not all of them were for her.
Though he doesn’t work downstairs in the showroom much anymore, Davison explained he still enjoys it.
In celebrating their 60th anniversary, Davison said, “we just ask everybody to come in and celebrate with us … We’ve had a lot of fun.”