Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 5, 1992 TAG: 9203050021
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Andy Williams, a pioneer businessman on the Roanoke City Market, has sold his Gallery 3 fine art, quality crafts and framing business to an Illinois couple - and is staying on as a consultant.
Williams, 48, said he is shifting positions because he wants a flexible schedule that will allow him more time with his wife, Maronda, and their children, Stephen, 3, and Effie, 1.
New owners Ted and Sandy Beindorf, formerly of Quincy, Ill., said they wanted to buy a gallery whose owner would remain involved while they learned the business. Williams will handle corporate and individual customers for fine art works, as well as provide information and advice, under a four-year contract.
"Management is not one of my strengths," Williams said Tuesday. Discovering new artists, selling their works and pleasing customers mean more to him, he said, and that's where his new emphasis will be.
In Ted Beindorf the gallery gains a 30-year veteran of accounting and finance. Beindorf, 52, most recently was chief financial officer of Titan Wheel International, manufacturer of wheels for agriculture and industry, in Quincy.
The Beindorfs began their quest for a gallery about 18 months ago and visited several that were for sale in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Texas and Florida, they said.
While on a trip to Florida last October they asked their son and daughter-in-law, who live in Charlotte, to check out Gallery 3. They had read about its availability in a magazine ad.
"They came with their camera and called us in Florida and said, `Stop looking. This is the one for you,' " Sandra Beindorf said.
From Williams they have bought a 23-year-old business that had its second-best gross sales in the year ended Feb. 29. The total was only .5 percent less than the gallery's all-time best of $624,000 in 1989, Williams said.
He and his wife opened on the city market in 1977, when it was a much less vital area than today. With Jim Lindsey and the late David Webb, they were the earliest of the New Wave of businessmen and entrepreneurs to raise the sagging commercial district to its current, busy state.
Mike Waldvogel, a real estate man, suggested they establish a downtown outlet for their framing business at Tanglewood Mall, Williams recalled. "We went through the market one summer day and saw this building. The glass was taped up. It was empty inside. It wasn't at all attractive."
Then, it was the former Hi Lo meat market. Now it is a showplace of colorful artworks and gleaming crafts displayed on two floors - polished hardwood floors beneath exposed brick walls.
In those days, the seedy old market had defenders who feared that Williams and others would turn it into a sort of open-air shopping mall. Williams, though, always said there would be no market without the farmers who use it to sell their fruits, vegetables, seasonal wreaths and the like. He still feels that they are what makes the market unique.
Williams has always been quick to credit his staff and his wife for Gallery 3's success. It was Maronda, he said, who convinced him to give up the Tanglewood store and put his all into the downtown location, Maronda who sparked their profitable expansion onto the second floor and into museum-quality crafts, Maronda whose design talents created the gallery's eye-catching layout.
The opening of Center in the Square in 1983 and the conversion of the Market Building helped to double the gallery's gross - to $500,000 - in the mid-1980s, Williams said.
Maronda left the business in 1988 to rear their infant son, and now their daughter.
The Beindorfs have bought the gallery's stock and inventory. They moved to a home in southwest Roanoke County last weekend. Williams continues to share ownership of the gallery building with Ezera Wertz, owner of Wertz's Country Store, which is next door.
Williams said he listed the business for sale several times in the past 10 years and had some serious inquiries. In 1987, a Connecticut businessman who was living in Tokyo visited and promised to bring back his wife in anticipation of buying it. A few weeks later, the stock market crashed, taking his assets.
Later, Williams came close to selling it to a local buyer, but changed his mind because he wasn't comfortable with the deal.
He said he and his wife, both active at First Baptist Church, prayed over every move they've made with the gallery.
"We've run this business by the seat of our pants, and it's been trial and error over these 23 years," he said.
Now, spending less time with the business side of the gallery, and more with his children, feels like the right thing to do.
by CNB