Clute family business stable for 62 years
By DAN FELDNER, Staff Writer dfeldner@minotdailynews.com
Family businesses don't get much more stable than Clute Office Equipment, which occupies the same location today that it did in the 1950s.
Founded by L.E. Clute and his wife, Lois, in 1948, Clute Office Equipment was started in the basement of a building on North Main Street, by the Soo Line railroad tracks. In 1951, it moved to 17 E. Central Ave. and has been there ever since.
L.E.'s son Jim started working there in 1956 or '57 after getting out of the Navy and didn't retire from the store until 1998, when his son Barry, who has owned the store ever since, took over.
With more than 40 years invested in the family business, Jim Clute still doesn't have anything on his mother, Lois, who worked part-time at the store until 1994 or '95.
"She'd come in and help up front and do payroll and things like that," Barry Clute said.
Clute Office Equipment started off as an office supply store with some furniture, then added machines later on, a formula that still works for the store to this day.
"We do the machines - copiers, computers, dictation, calculators, timekeeping systems - furniture of course," Clute said. "It has evolved into more than what it started out as. Back then there were no copiers, there were no fax machines."
Clute said his grandparents had a true partnership, with his grandfather hitting the road to get business and his grandmother taking care of customers once they walked into the store.
"My grandpa was out on the road selling and my grandma was in the store taking care of the store business," Clute said.
Like many children who get into the family business, Clute started working at the store part-time while in high school, which gave him a head start at learning the trade. After getting a business degree from Minot State, Clute got into the business full time and started learning the business from his father and grandmother, although he never got to work with his grandfather.
"When I was in, probably junior high, during the summers I'd work part-time cleaning typewriters or helping with deliveries, cleaning shelves, whatever they needed," Clute said. "Then, after graduating from Minot State, I started full-time in sales, out on the road and then in town."
Working with his family was pretty easy, according to Clute. Even while working at the store, he said it was always "dad" and "grandma." No matter if they were just clocking in for the day or just clocking out at night, they were family first, business partners second.
"There was a lot of training. My dad had a partner when I first came on full time. I have to say for the most part it was very easy working with family," he said. "I knew what was required of me and I did what I had to do. It was family, basically, all the time."
Clute's sister Ann also worked at the store off and on during high school before going to college to get a teaching degree.
Although he had a business degree, Clute said he still had much to learn when he started working full time, and his father and grandmother were more than willing to teach him what they knew.
"My grandma did all the bookkeeping and all the payroll for all of those years, so I learned that side of the business," he said. "I learned the sales side from my dad, and how to treat the customers from both of them."
"A lot of on-the-job training, I'll say it that way," he added with a laugh.
Clute said he still gets advice from his father whenever he has questions about the store, and Jim Clute also comes in to run the store whenever his son is away on vacation.
Clute has two grown daughters - one is married and living in Minneapolis, while the other is a graduate student in Colorado. Neither of them has shown any interest in the family business thus far, but that doesn't bother Clute all that much.
"They're pursuing their own areas of expertise. (I was) more concerned with them finding something that they wanted to do and liked to do," Clute said. "This is always something that I wanted to do and have enjoyed it, but their interests were elsewhere, which is perfectly fine."
The day-to-day challenges are what Clute enjoys most about running Clute Office Equipment. Keeping up with new technology is always an interesting experience and being able to show customers how it can help them is like the icing on the cake for Clute.
"The new technology, it's changed so much even since I started. I started cleaning manual typewriters when I was in high school, and now typewriters are basically a thing of the past," he said. "Digital copiers, color copiers came into being in the last five years and the technology is always changing, it's always interesting.
"And the people, dealing with the public, dealing with our customers has always interested me and I've always enjoyed that."
Having kept the store in the family all these years, Clute has a great amount of pride for what his family has accomplished. Although it's tough to say what the future might hold, it's a given that Clute Office Equipment will be in the same space it has occupied for the past half-century for many years to come.
"If you look around, there aren't that many three-generation family-run businesses around anymore," he said. "There may be some second generation, but getting into the third and fourth generations can be a little trying, I think, with the changes (and) kids going their separate ways and whatever else."
"It's had its moments. It's been tough, but we keep plugging along and doing what we do best, which is customer service of course, and the customers appreciate that," he added. "Without them we wouldn't be here."
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