J and G On-Line Variety Store….
By Rebekah Davis
The News-Courier
Big changes are in store for the long time family owned Athens, Alabama business.
With the change of it’s name to J and G Variety, J & G Sales is launching a new web site that soon will offer online shoppers an opportunity to fill their virtual shopping carts with everything from flowers to tools.
In it’s big blue building west of Athens, J and G Variety is adding a new 
line of tools, an expanded showroom and a computerized system for keeping up with inventory.
Changes ought to be no surprise, though, for loyal customers who have spent the past 35 years watching the business grow from a 900 square foot convenience store to a 26,000 square foot one stop shop for silk flowers, tools, home decor, house wares and a little bit of everything. “Everything from flowers to tools, that is a pretty doggone broad range” says Danny Vaughn, who with his mother Gayle Vaughn owns the store.
In the early 1970’s, when James and Gayle Vaughn opened their business on U.S. Highway 72 west of Athens, they offered just the basic. “They started by selling what was already in the convenience store, but then they started putting more stuff on the shelves,” Danny Vaughn says.
“The more their variety items sold, the more they offered and then they had the idea to sell silk flowers and arrangements. That was a pretty good hit,” Vaughn says. They started focusing on that and variety items then.
“Women would come in to shop and stay inside so long, browsing through the extensive selection of silk flowers, that their husbands left in the care outside the store would start honking at them to hurry and finish their shipping.” That’s when the Vaughns started offering something that brought the men inside as well: Tools and lots of them.
“Now our tools are as big as our flower business,” Vaughn says. He says the tables have turned now, too, as he sees women who have completed their shopping heading to the tool department to tell their husbands to “Hurry up” and “Let’s go.”
Business was big enough to warranty a new building about 15 years ago, right next to the original convenience store and stayed big enough that the Vaughns have added onto the building five times since then. More room meant offering more merchandise and now housewares and home decor items fill the spaces between the thousands of flowers and the extensive tool collection.
“We offer a lot of closeouts,” Vaughn says. “You see it in here one time and you might not see it again. We get new customers every day, people who say they have been driving by for years and didn’t know we had all this stuff.”
Vaughn, who was 16 when his parents opened J & G Sales, was always involved in the store at a distance until September 2007, when he took the position as company vice president. For 20 years before then, he had worked for Airgas, a welding supply company, while his wife LaDonna spent much of that period working with his parents at J & G Sales. Vaughn’s career plans changed, however, when his father was diagnosed with brain cancer last year. James Vaughn lost his battle with the disease in January of 2008.
“It was always in my plans to come out here when Mom and Dad retired, but that sped things up a bit,” Vaughn says.
In coming to the store full-time Vaughn brings with him a modern way of doing business while keeping the small business service.
“At Airgas, everything was completely computerized, but now I’m on my feet all day, on the floor and unloading trucks,” Vaughn said. Now it’s the whole deal.
Vaughn, who was used to having all inventory tracked on a computer at Airgas has learned to work at a slightly slower pace at J and G Variety.
“We put a sticky price label on everything that comes through here,” he said. “One of my next projects is to put it all on the computer, with barcodes.”
That change will also make it easier to offer much of their merchandise online, including the new line of tools they are beginning to offer in their 2,00 square foot showroom expansion. Vauchn says he’s excited to offer Rockwell brand tools with the brand’s warranty that includes free batteries for life on all cordless tools. With his experience in welding tool supply, Vaughn also will soon offer welding tools in the store.
J and G Variety is also adding a line of LED signs for sale, right about the time they put one on their store and another out on the highway. That technology will give them an opportunity to display photos even videos of merchandise inside the store for highway travelers to see.
As Vaughn contemplates the changes, he admits that one of the best things he could have done to foster a healthy business – family relationship was to work elsewhere for 20 years before returning to help run the family business.
“When I was younger I knew everything,” he says. “In later years, I realized that my parents knew a lot.”
In the meantime, he learned about business practices while working for Airgas. As he brings new ideas to the table, he also respects everyone’s position in the company. As he say, “Mom is the owner, I’m the hands-on-runner.”
He and his wife LaDonna are equal partners in the business, too, he says. They respect each other’s different responsibilities and talents, tools are his area of expertise, while he says she truly enjoys customer service.
That personal attention to each customer is what Vaughn says makes a small business successful and why he includes on every ad an American Flag with the phrase, Please support your local small businesses.
April and May, with cemetery decorations throughout the area, are J and G Variety’s busiest months because customers can choose from hundreds of flower arrangements or design their own with employees help. Throughout the year, customers take advantage of free floral arrangement delivery to area funeral homes and hospitals.
“There’s not hardly a shop anywhere around that does what we do with silk flowers,” Vaughn says. Running a small business means a lot of hard work, seven days a week, but Vaughn, who says he’s a workaholic like his mother, says he relishes the work. It pays off when he sees a new customer become on of the many loyal customers who have come to know and love J and G Variety through the years and all the changes.
“I like offering new stuff that we’ve never had before,” Vaughn says. “That’s why people come out here.”
J and G Variety is open 9 am to 5 pm Monday through Saturday, and noon to 5 pm on Sunday.
14535 Hwy 72 W
Athens, Alabama 35611
Phone: 256-232-6695
