Fenton Glass holds what might be final tent sale

Rare Fenton turquoise blue urn in Hanging Vine motif, with cobalt blue base. The 10 1/2 inch vase was made by a group of European workers who were employed by Fenton in 1925-26. Sold in Randy Clark & Associates’ Nov. 9, 2008 auction for $7,564. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com archive and Randy Clark & Associates Auctioneers.

WILLIAMSTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Those who had gathered in this town along the Ohio River found their recent trip to be bittersweet.

Local residents and visitors gave what might be a final goodbye to Fenton Glass after the company announced earlier this month it was shutting down its main furnace, bringing an end to over a century’s worth of glass making that has been a staple on collectors’ shelves across the country.

While the company may retool and focus more on industrial glass and specialized glass beads used in jewelry, the milk glass lamps, colored glass roosters and specialty molded hand bells will soon be a thing of the past.

On July 8, the company began what looks to be its final summer tent sale — an annual draw for Fenton collectors from far and wide that will run for the next few weeks.

Husband and wife David and Mickey Fisher make the trek each year from their home in Butler, Pa.

David, 80, joked that his wife’s collection of milk glass exceeded the hundreds of items found under the Fenton tent.

Mickey was shocked when she learned that the only thing the company will have left to sell off now is the inventory left inside the factory.

“I don’t know what it is, I just like it,” she said.

Suzy Evans, 24, and her husband Justin, 27, of Marietta, Ohio, were looking forward to building their collection of Fenton Glass over the years. Their goal might be harder now.

“We were bummed,” Suzy Evans said. “It’s sad to see it go.”

Suzy said as she was growing up in Ohio, her family would make regular trips to the factory to shop.

“For us, it was more than just a collectible, it’s something my family’s always had,” Evans said. “I’ve seen it all my life and I’ve grown up around it.

“It started with my great-grandpa, he always collected a piece, and it just went down the line. We’d keep adding and we pick up different pieces each year, now it’s going to be really hard to keep collecting.”

Fourteen-year Fenton employee Susan Wilson, one of the tent managers, said customers had been reacting with shock and surprise all morning.

“I had a customer from Youngstown this morning and she just broke down bawling this morning, it was terrible,” Wilson said.

While she faces losing her job once the inventory is sold off, Wilson said what’s going to be hard is having to say goodbye to all the loyal customers she’s met over the years.

“Fenton is more than just the glass you sell, but the people you meet,” Wilson said. “We’ve made friends from all across the country. They come from all over, toward the end of July we have our collectors conventions and then you’ll really see people from all over.”

Ellen Mead, 57, came all the way from Grand Junction, Colo.

Mead’s great-grandfather used to work at Fenton as a glass blower in the factory’s early days. When she and her 81-year-old father Hal Sheppard come back to the area each year for their family reunion, they like to drop by the factory and pick up another small collectible.

With the factory closing, Mead feels like she’s not just losing a part of her family’s history, but a piece of that social fabric that’s made America so great over the years.

“It feels like we have so many losses in America anyways, this feels like another loss,” she said. “We just don’t get to keep what we have anymore.”

Fenton Glass has been family owned since it started up 106 years ago. President George Fenton said a confluence of factors led to the decision to shut the main furnace down.

He cited the high cost of running the gas-powered furnace, compared to sales that have been hit hard by the recent recession and a generational shift in consumer behavior.

Fenton said people’s buying habits have changed very dramatically over the past decade. He said collectibles companies nationwide – not just Fenton – are suffering because consumers are less interested in giving collectibles as gifts in favor of buying more fashionable items like electronics.

The new gadgets not only are more expensive gifts, but also take bigger chunks out of consumers’ future discretionary spending.

“If you buy an iPhone or something like that, you’ve got a bill every month — it’s the gift that keeps on taking,” he said.

On top of that, Fenton said they’ve steadily lost the host of small, mom-and-pop gift shops across the country that sold Fenton glass.

“The small, independent retailer is significantly decreasing in the number of places where this product is sold,” he said. “That’s been the bread and butter of our sales for many years.

“Just the number of these stores have dropped around 30 percent in the past five years.”

Taking their place are the larger big box and national retail chains across the country — chains that are more interested in selling items made cheaper by overseas manufacturers.

And that’s a fact that’s led to some bitterness among the Williamstown community.

“I think if people weren’t more willing to buy cheap stuff from China, then we’d still be in business,” said Martha Reynolds, a former director of marketing for the company who left in 2001. She was catching up with some of her old friends during the tent sale.

“A lot of people have just been shocked,” Reynolds said. “It’s just a sad day — there’s a lot of good people here.”

Kerri Griffith was one.

She’s the current marketing manager in the gift shop and a 35-year veteran of the company, who began there when she was 16 and since then has taken just four years off to go to college.

She’s an employee wondering what’s going to happen once the gift shop closes down and there’s nothing left to sell. She doesn’t know what’ she’s going to do once that happens, but she says she’s staying positive.

“You know, when one door closes, another one opens,” she said.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Rare Fenton turquoise blue urn in Hanging Vine motif, with cobalt blue base. The 10 1/2 inch vase was made by a group of European workers who were employed by Fenton in 1925-26. Sold in Randy Clark & Associates’ Nov. 9, 2008 auction for $7,564. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com archive and Randy Clark & Associates Auctioneers.