From pickles to paper

Inside his cluttered office at Mendelsons Liquidation Outlet at 340 E. First St. downtown, company president Sanford “Sandy” Mendelson shows a reporter one of his most recent acquisitions: A jar of spicy hot pickles.

Mendelson recently acquired truckloads of the pickles from a firm in Texas. They will join thousands of other surplus items -- everything from electric motors to lab equipment to commercial kitchen tables to sweatshirts -- available to anyone looking for a bargain. Its inventory is so varied and unusual that Mendelson proudly calls the outlet “the first place to look for every last thing.”

Some goods, like the pickles, have just arrived, while others have been stored in the 800,000-square-foot building and an adjacent building for years. It doesn’t matter to Mendelson. He’s confident he will sell it all one way or the other.

“We have people on the phone calling warehouses to see if they have stuff they want to sell to us,” Mendelson said. “And we get phone calls all the time from people who want to sell stuff to us. We’ll get it in here, classify it, sort it” and sell it for a good price.

“If we can sell a ream of paper for $1 to a guy who has been paying $8, I’m a hero,” Mendelson said.

Some deals involve huge quantities of items. Mendelsons, for example, has acquired and sold nearly 500,000 pounds of paper over the past two years. It also has sold nearly 10,000 surplus bookcases. Other deals involve smaller quantities, Mendelson said.

Customers include the merely curious, hobbyists, inventors, artists, movie set designers and entrepreneurs. They can come to Mendelsons and browse for an hour or an entire day with no “hard selling” from employees, Mendelson said.

Mendelson especially likes to help entrepreneurs such as young restaurateurs get started by selling them affordable used equipment. It’s good for his business, and it’s good for the local economy, he said.

“It’s fun. It’s exciting to see,” he said. “We want people to be successful. And when they are, they keep coming back to us.”

Mendelson, 72, clearly enjoys his work. Buying and selling surplus goods has been his family’s business for 55 years. But running a liquidation outlet wasn’t Mendelson’s first career choice.

As a teen, the Meadowdale High School graduate worked part time at a local hospital, volunteered at Box 21 emergency support service and thought perhaps of becoming a doctor.

But the death of Mendelson’s father, Harry, changed everything. Harry Mendelson founded Mendelson’s Electronics in 1960 on Linden Avenue in Dayton, where he sold surplus electronic parts. When Harry died in early 1963 at age 51, his wife, Ida, inherited the struggling business.

At the time, Ida Mendelson and her four children were so poor they had to borrow money from a relative to bury Harry, Mendelson said. Then a family friend made an offer that saved the family company and cemented Sandy Mendelson’s role in it.

The friend was Max Isaacson, founder of the former Globe Industries Inc. in Dayton. Isaacson had some auto pilot equipment for light aircraft that he wanted to sell, and Harry Mendelson wanted to buy it.

Mendelson said his father visited Isaacson’s warehouse and looked at the equipment before he died. Following Harry’s death, Isaacson visited the Mendelsons to offer his condolences and to see if Ida Mendelson still wanted to buy the equipment. She did, but she had no way to pay for it.

Isaacson offered to let the Mendelsons sell the equipment and split the proceeds.

“From that day forward, we’ve never looked back,” Mendelson said. “He dropped a golden dime on me. We’ve had some tough experiences along the way, but that made us what we are today. We’ve touched a lot of people because one man touched me.”

Mendelsons eventually moved its headquarters downtown. Mendelson bought the current warehouse in 1981. The company has enjoyed good times and tough times, much like Dayton itself, Mendelson said.

One of the toughest times occurred in 2007 after Mendelson announced he planned to retire and turn the company over to his son and daughter to run.

At the time, there were plans to build a mixed-use development called Baseball Village near Fifth Third Field downtown. The developer was interested in buying several buildings around the minor league baseball park,including some that Mendelson owned.

But the plans fell apart, leaving Mendelson and the others in the lurch. Meanwhile, many Mendelsons customers mistakenly thought the liquidation outlet would close. Sales plunged.

The announcement was a “very big mistake,” Mendelson said.

So, Mendelson shelved his retirement plans, remained head of the company and spent the next several years rebuilding sales. He has no current plans to retire.

Today, the liquidation business is doing well even as its inventory and customer base change with the times, Mendelson said. The company buys and sells more consumable items such as food than it did in the past, and customers as a whole are younger.

Mendelson also has branched out into event hosting. He owns the Top of the Market banquet and event center at 32 Webster St. The center hosts wedding receptions, office and holiday parties and other events year-round.

The businesses employ about 55 people. Mendelson declined to disclose sales figures for either business.

The changes at Mendelsons coincide with a new wave of economic development downtown. The work includes construction of new offices and townhouses, expansion and reconstruction of the main public library, and new amenities being built along the Great Miami River. Large employers such as CareSource and PNC Bank are moving or keeping more employees downtown as well.

Mendelson, a vocal advocate of downtown, has benefited from the redevelopment. He sold the 214,000-square-foot former Delco building at 329 E. First St. to Crawford Hoying Development Partners, which is transforming the building into 129 loft-style apartments. The renovated building also will offer office and retail space.

Mendelson acknowledges that having more people living and working downtown could boost sales at Mendelsons and Top of the Market. But Mendelson said he is more excited at the prospect of seeing Dayton and its downtown thrive again.

“I love Dayton,” Mendelson said. “If it weren’t for Dayton, I’d be nothing. Dayton is the greatest town.”

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