An Osage Nation Maintenance worker changes the locks on the Osage Nation Gift Shop doors Monday. Photo by Shannon Shaw/Osage News
By Shannon Shaw
Osage News
The Osage Nation LLC got rid of two Osage businesses Monday. Two businesses some Osages felt were meant to serve the community and just weren’t for profit.
The Osage Nation Gift Shop closed for good and the Palace of the Osage grocery store in Fairfax has been sold to Rick Parker, a Barnsdall grocer.
“I always felt the Palace and the gift shop were more of a service to the people, more like a program,” said Anthony Webb, married to Osage artist Wendy Ponca and who also ran for Osage Congress in June. Webb and Ponca were at the gift shop Monday as the locks were being changed to pick up the consignment items Ponca had in the store. “I didn’t want the gift shop to go to the LLC, I knew the gift shop was in trouble when it went to the LLC.”
Both the Palace and gift shop were acquired by the LLC in 2008 when the LLC was formed.
The gift shop was closed at 1 p.m. Monday, “with no notice” said the shop’s manager, Trini Haddon. Along with being a Pendleton distributor, the store was a place for Osages from all over the country to buy blankets, beads, ribbons and other Osage items to make dance regalia. It also sold books by Osage authors, CDs from Osage singers and artwork by Osage artists, local or out-of-state.
After working all weekend at the Ponca Powwow selling gift shop items at a booth, Haddon said she had taken Monday off because she didn’t get home until 4 a.m. that morning. At 1 p.m. she was given a call to go to the store and there they told her the store would be closing and all three employees were without a job.
Haddon had managed the store for more than three years along with co-workers Jo Brooks, who has worked there for six years, and Marla Woodard, who has worked there for seven.
According to a prepared release, the LLC is looking for a buyer of the gift shop’s inventory.
“From the tribe’s point of view and the community’s point of view we feel like it’s the best move,” said Charles Maker, Osage LLC Board Chairman in a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s strictly a business move and nothing more.”
Ponca, along with other Osage artists in and out of state, sell their wares through the gift shop, something that Ponca cherished and depended on for her business, she said. According to Haddon, more than $35,000 worth of consignment items were in the store.
“This is really going to hurt my artistic endeavors,” Ponca said, who is a former professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M. “This is my only source to buy ribbons for my work . . . I’m really disappointed. I was just on the phone asking my relatives where I can get ribbons.”
Ponca said that every year she and her husband know Osages from California who need to buy Osage materials for clothing and they always send them to the gift shop.
“I know that if I was an out-of-state Osage, I’d be upset.”
Dollars and sense
The Osage Limited Liability Company was formed by the nation to allocate capital to acquire or launch profitable businesses which would ultimately build wealth for the tribe, according to a prepared release. If the businesses cannot be made profitable, it’s the LLC’s duty to find buyers more suited to do so. Which was the case with the Palace and gift shop.
According to a Bigheart Times article that ran Sept. 1, Maker said the Palace and gift shop were losing too much money and it was mostly due in part to the way they were being managed. In 2003, the Palace was bought by the 31st Osage Tribal Council for $285,000 and on Monday the LLC sold it to Parker for a reported $600,000.
“It’s absolutely essential that the management of the [LLC] enterprise have a stake in the game because, if they don’t, it’s tougher to treat the business as their own,” said Maker in the release. “These were smaller operations and in order to be successful, the management must be hands-on and have a vested interest [in] their success.”
According to the LLC’s annual report, the Palace lost $91,000 in the last three months of 2009 and the gift shop lost $7,945 in the last six months of 2009. Maker said in the Times article that the LLC had been looking for a buyer for the gift shop without luck. They decided to cut its losses and close it down.
According to Haddon, the gift shop had seen a 76 percent increase in June and a 126 increase in July over last year’s sales. She said the Wah-Zha-Zhi Cultural Center had just bought 42 spools of shirt ribbon, 20 colors of shawl material and she couldn’t remember how much fringe they had bought, all for their classes held at the center.
“I’m just a little drop in the bucket to the LLC, they didn’t come and help, they kept my books and I never saw at the end of the month whether I was in the red or black,” she said. “If somebody bought the merchandise I would sell it.”
Haddon will be working at the gift shop for a couple of days a week for a couple of hours to get rid of all consignment items and handle the layaway purchases for the next two weeks.
Palace to ‘remain the same’
The Palace of the Osage grocery store will be offering the same services as it was before, said new owner Rick Parker. All employees will remain, Osage Drumkeepers who keep accounts at the store during the Grayhorse In-Lon-Schka dances need not worry, he said.
“I hate to see a little store like that struggle – Walmart’s eating everybody up and we went over and identified a few things that weren’t working . . . switched the store’s meat case around and put some new stuff in,” Parker said. “We just started talking about purchasing the store [with the LLC] and that’s how the discussion happened. I tried to help them and they definitely helped me.”
Manager of the Palace for the past four years, Robert Taylor, agreed that the sale was a good move for the store.
“I think [Parker is] going to have more of a ‘hands on’ approach with it and he has done some changing here anyway and as far as the set up of the store it will remain the same,” Taylor said. “It will be a good thing for it and we’re not going to keep dealing with this as a tribal program.”
Parker said a “suggestions list” will be kept at the front of the store and any patron who wishes for the store to receive a new item, or they wish for the store to sell a certain brand, to put it on the suggestions list and they will do their best to get it in the store.
“I’m excited,” Parker said. “I think there are some things we can do differently that are going to benefit the community.”
The Osage Nation Gift Shop front window. Photo by Chalene Toehay/Osage News
