Gaze into the windows of the Toy Chest across the street from the famous Bath House Row in Hot Springs, Arkansas and you'll feel like a kid again.
"It's a fun business," says owner Imy Marcus, Jr. "We're a specialty toy store. We sell items that big box stores don't, like wooden Thomas Railway sets, Tinker Toys and Fiddle Sticks. These are hands-on, high quality products."
Imy and Harriett, his wife of 53 years, run the store together, along with help from two employees.
They first started in the retail furniture business in Shreveport, La. "My father, began our first furniture store and expanded to two stores by the 1980s," explains Imy. "Unfortunately, the store was in the pathway of a new interstate system." The land was bought out from under them.
In Shreveport Imy sat on the local Temple's board where his two, now grown daughters, Anne and Sallye, attended Sunday school.
The couple now belongs to Congregation House of Israel in Hot Springs where they moved in 1989. "We didn't know anyone, but we'd been there on vacation several times," says Imy. "Harriett and I had actually planned to move and retire, but that wasn't the case. We had friends in the specialty toy business and we didn't want to do furniture again. Specialty toys are a whole different phase of the toy world.
"People from all walks of life and all economic stratus come into our store," says Imy. "We get a lot of tourists being on Central Avenue. We have 2,000 items and not one of them will you find at a big box store. Some customers will ask, 'what does this toy do?' And I say 'nothing, it doesn't spin, it doesn't light up, it doesn't need batteries.' Non- specialty toys are designed to sell to adults. Our toys are made for children. It's how good you can make the toy, not how cheap.
"We don't compete with Wal-Mart or Toys R Us because we have a whole a different product," explains Imy. "None of our toys were part of that recall from China."
These days, the Toy Chest has a brand new look, thanks to the forces of nature. "In April, a huge storm flooded the store and washed out everything. We saved only about half of the merchandise," explains Imy. "It was terrible, just tragic." So the Marcus's decided it was good time to remodel.
After being closed for four weeks, the Toy Chest reopened, completely refurbished with new fixtures and a nicer and brighter storefront. "That was actually the second time we got flooded," explains Imy. "In 1990 we were under 14 inches of water."
As for the future of the Toy Chest and Imy's role, "I'll never retire. As long as I'm alive I'll work here, as long as my health holds up," says Imy, an avid fisher. "What would we do if we retired? I don't want to fish seven days a week. Harriett and I are both in good health, we work out and we're active. And our customers really are pleasant."
Shoshana Cenker was born and raised in Memphis, graduated from White Station High School in 1998 and from Indiana University in Bloomington in 2002 with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in Hebrew and Jewish Studies. She studied abroad at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. She is a news writer/producer for WSB TV and freelance writer for CNN International. She and her husband Dovid, live in Atlanta, GA.
