After nearly 100 years in business, Abrams Department Store in Conway closing

CONWAY Last Thursday, the day Sam Abrams hung the “Going Out of Business” sign in the window of his department store, the wake began.

The mourners, shoppers whose grandmothers had bought their Sunday dresses there and whose fathers Abrams had measured for suits, streamed through the Laurel Street doors. Longtime customers sobbed so much that the owners placed a box of tissues beside the cash register.

The Conway faithful hugged Abrams and his wife Eileen, the third generation — and the last — to run the store.

“This is tough,” Sam Abrams said this week as he prepared for his final Black Friday. “It’s real tough. It’s been in my blood since I was 10 years old.”

Abrams Department Store survived the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression, two fires, the rise of mega chain stores and industry changes wrought by e-commerce.

What’s ending the store’s run isn’t a shortage of business, but the lack of an heir. Sam Abrams turns 74 on Friday. When his grandfather needed help, his father took over. When his father was ready to step down, he turned to Sam Abrams. But the owner’s sons became a surgeon and a systems analyst. There’s no one interested in managing the family business, and the septuagenarian can’t maintain the pace he’s kept for so many decades.

“It doesn’t go without him,” Eileen Abrams said. “He’s the heart and soul of the store. He’s here every day before it opens. He’s here after it closes. … There’s no way Sam could do this part time.”

The family isn’t sure how long the store will stay open. Its lifespan depends on the time it takes for customers to clear the shelves.

“We’ve never done this before,” Eileen Abrams said. “We have no idea.”

They made the decision on the Sunday before Sam Abrams hung the sign. But they had stocked up for the holiday season, so they chose to give their customers a final gift: an-after Christmas sale before Christmas.

They put up “50 percent off” markers until they ran out of signs and Scotch tape.

“It’s not your typical going out of business sale,” Eileen Abrams said. “This is ready for the season — all pretty, new, good things.”

The store sells a host of items, from accessories, apparel and shoes to collectible Barbies, Disney figurines and Department 56 Christmas villages.

“We don’t have cars and refrigerators,” Eileen Abrams said. “It’s easier to tell you what we don’t have.”

The Abramses and their staff take pride in doting on customers. In an era of retail giants and self-checkout lines, they’re a throwback. If they don’t have what a customer wants, they start calling around. They absorb any shipping costs. And there’s no charge for hemming.

“If that man right there don’t have it, he’ll be more than happy to get it for you,” said Fred Floyd, a 68-year-old Conway retiree who has bought clothes from Sam Abrams for more than three decades. “He gets stuff that nobody else can get. There was a certain kind of blue jeans that I wanted and he found them, I think in Atlanta. ... Three or four days later, he had them.”

No one knows exactly how old the business is.

The family estimates Sam Abrams’ grandfather started the company in the late 1910s or early 1920s. He owned a chain of small shops throughout the Carolinas.

After the stock market crash, Sam Abrams’ father moved back home to help run the business. The family closed all the stores except for the one in Conway.

A fire destroyed that store in 1940 and the family built a new one at the current location.

Sam Abrams grew up there, stocking shelves and cleaning floors as a boy, then learning to take jacket and shirt measurements and fold suits. After a stint in management at J.C. Penney, he returned to the family business in 1969.

When the company expanded and acquired the building next door, Sam Abrams knocked the holes in the wall to connect the two spaces. He put down the matching beige tiles. He rewired the light fixtures.

Nearly every project in the store reflects his handiwork.

Over the years, Sam and Eileen Abrams developed their own management system. She handled all advertising and marketing. He kept the books. Purchases were a joint effort.

When the store is finally cleared and the building sold, the couple, who have been married for 51 years, hope to do some things for themselves.

An art major, Eileen Abrams has always dreamed of visiting Italy, but she could never be away from the store for a two-week vacation.

Sam Abrams just received a new tackle box for his birthday. He hopes to finally have some free hours on the water.

And there are other wants, simple luxuries, like traveling to see family on Christmas Eve without worrying about opening on Dec. 26.

Those days are coming, but they aren’t here just yet.

Until then, Sam and Eileen Abrams will continue shaking hands, shedding tears and ringing up customers on their 1908 model cash register.

On Wednesday afternoon, Cynthia Hopkins of Conway was walking down Laurel Street when she saw the sign in the Abrams window. Her 14-year-old daughter Desaray represents the fourth generation of her family to shop at the store.

“I just can’t believe y’all are going out of business,” Hopkins told Eileen Abrams. “My grandmother is 89 years old and she remembers this store.”

Eileen Abrams looked up knowingly.

“I’m having trouble believing it, too.”

Then, steeling herself against crying, she encouraged Hopkins to take her grandmother to the final Abrams sale.

“You bring her by,” she said. “We want to see her.”

This story was originally published November 26, 2015 at 3:47 PM with the headline "After nearly 100 years in business, Abrams Department Store in Conway closing."