GOOD OLD DAYS:A business model that survives time

Driving by the worn, wood-paneled Old West-style facade of the Grant Boys gun, outdoor supply and clothing shop on Newport Boulevard, it’s hard to imagine that the family-owned business — which has become a Costa Mesa icon — has not gone away by now.

When Edward “Buddy” Grant came down from Los Angeles to start the business 60 years ago, Costa Mesa was a one-horse town with less than 4,000 people — far from the upper-middle class suburb of more than 100,000 that it is today. The business started as Grant’s War Surplus in 1949, selling a motley assortment of goods that the military would get rid of at rock-bottom prices (World War II had just ended and there was a lot of excess stuff).

“The original store has very little in common with what the store sells today,” recalls Mike Grant, Buddy’s oldest son, in a short retrospective he recently started to write. “People would buy surplus parachutes to cover their cars. We would cut the lines off them and sell them as nylon rope. We sold a lot of paint, garden hose, work boots, but no Levi’s.”

It’s precisely the store’s ability to change with the times, while staying solidly grounded in its identity, that has allowed the business to survive and prosper in a market filled with chain camping and outdoor sports stores. Over the years, the Grant family has capitalized on countless opportunities.

Buddy didn’t care for guns or hunting at all, according to Randy Garell, who took over the store in the ’70s with his wife, Alexa, Buddy’s daughter. Before opening the Grant Boys, Buddy had a ladies dress shop in Los Angeles in the 1930s.

Since then, the store has gone through countless phases. In the early 1950s, men working on the construction of the 5 Freeway and Disneyland all wore jeans and Georgia steel-toed boots, so Grant’s started carrying them and business boomed. At one point the shop was among the top 10 Levi’s dealers in the country, according to Mike.

Then in the early ’60s, when surf culture blew up in the area, Grant’s started carrying Hang Ten T-shirts, which, in the height of their popularity, were often plucked straight off the delivery truck before they ever made it into the store.

“We carved out a niche business for ourselves, and we can turn on a dime,” Randy said.

Even in the last decade, Alexa saw the Ugg boots craze coming. The store stocked up in 2000 and this past December, the shop sold one pair of the fur-lined, leather shoes every 12 minutes. Exceedingly popular in ladies fashion, the boots are not exactly what you would expect to find in a store specializing in guns and hunting equipment, yet they have become a staple of the company’s business.

“The average Newport Beach housewife is not ordinarily going to walk into what she thinks is a gun store,” Randy said, but now they are part of Grants’ demographic.

Randy says gun sales have also increased because of fears brought about by the Y2K scare, the crashing economy and the election of President Obama, who some gun enthusiasts fear will crack down on the industry.

“Business is better than ever,” Alexa said.

Even as the store morphs to meet the demands of an ever-changing population, it retains its homely character. Randy and Alexa have worked there since they were teenagers, and they’re not the only ones who have stuck with the store for decades.

Jack Carver, who joined the staff in his teens emptying garbage cans more than 40 years ago, is now in charge of buying the store’s guns and hunting and fishing equipment.

So while the Grant Boys might look odd among square-framed strip malls and impeccably clean mega chains of Costa Mesa, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine the store still being around 60 years from now, with its hokey Western-themed building that will be just as out of place as it was the day it went up.

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Kate Middleton: man-pleaser

We all know it is wrong — however tempting — to speculate on whether Kate Middleton is the right woman for Prince William. How can any of us guess how they are as a couple when all we have to go on is photographs? Clearly it’s unfair to have misgivings about the heir to the throne’s girlfriend when she is the very model of appropriateness — and the fact that we do makes us feel a bit guilty. Which is why Kate’s comments, at a recent polo match, have come as a huge relief. What Kate said, to the writer Kathy Lette, is: “I have to pay attention to every second. I’ll be discussing the game in minute detail later on.” And there you have it. The throwaway line that sums up the problem we knew existed, but couldn’t quite put our finger on: KM is a professional man-pleaser.

It’s obvious now the cat is out of the bag — the carefully chosen outfits (a little flattering, a little demure, never an Ugg boots or man-scaring bit of fashion in sight). The diligent study of the prince’s hobbies (remember the shooting lessons), including careful observation of the nuances of polo, although she is allergic to horses. The girlie part-time job that evaporated altogether because Kate needs to be ready to leap into an Issa dress at a moment’s notice and scurry to HRH’s side.

All this would be fine, were it not for the fact that Prince William is surely a bloke looking for a woman to live up to (Laura Linney in John Adams, only younger and good at skiing). And it’s no good for any of us subjects to have a wannabe royal clone in the royal family whose idea of ringing the changes is wearing Spanish riding boots instead of Hunters. We want bright and feisty, a fresh perspective, a sense of humour. Instead, in KM, we have the girl that Country Casuals might hire for its pastel cashmere campaign. A young woman on a mission, who takes her responsibilities too seriously and who has undoubtedly contributed to making William seem ever so slightly short on surprises.

This explains why some of us have been mysteriously despondent since Chelsy and Harry’s break-up. Honestly, I am going to miss Chelsy. That cheeky gap-toothed laugh. Those incongruous blonde locks and bling striding out in the driving Leeds rain. I don’t care if she’s orange. At least she has a personality and sex appeal and her own life and — most important — she was never in any doubt about who was pleasing who in that relationship. Harry had to stay on his toes, and when he fell short of her standards (when he failed to meet her off a flight and left her beating off paparazzi, for example), she let him have it. You wouldn’t catch Chelsy getting shooting lessons to impress her man on the range — she didn’t need to.

Harry may be sad now, but at least he knows he had a girlfriend who cared about him, not playing the good princess. Can William really say the same?

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