Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 1, 1995                   TAG: 9502010046
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

SLICK WAY TO CASH IN ON WEATHER

They say politics makes strange bedfellows. In Blacksburg, snowstorms produce peculiar business pairings.

Like selling Flexible Flyers, for decades the paragon of performance sledding, alongside camera equipment.

Such is the situation at Gentry Studio, where owner John Kline and employee Russ Rubin have parked some upstanding sleds in the piles of snow outside the downtown store. They're selling the wooden sleds with steel-runners along with the usual fare of new and used cameras, telescopes, developing services and portraits.

A side venture to make a little extra money during the long winter months? Well yes, but the real impetus to get the sleds is more basic.

"I tried to get one last year, and we tried again this year going the local routes and couldn't get them," Kline said. He even called his sister in New Hampshire looking for one, to no avail. So he went directly to the supplier and decided to buy in bulk - 50 to be exact.

"I was on the phone for three days," trying to make the deal in late November, Rubin recalled. The shipment arrived a week ago.

The two plan to make a modest profit on the deal, but Kline may have other intentions as well. "What's that quote?" he asked. "'He who dies with the most toys ...'''

The store has been advertising the sleds, which sell for $49.95-$69.95 - "exclusively in the New River Valley" -on local radio, and "people are buying them from all over the place," Kline said. One man traveled from West Virginia Tuesday to pick up four of them. By today, at least half of the shipment should be sold.

Kline said the company, a subsidiary of Roadmaster Corp., based in West Point, Miss., thought the idea to sell the sleds with cameras was a good one, pairing the nearly-a-century-old runners with the devices that best capture memories.

"It was a good combination," Kline said.

Of course, with the shipment's arrival timed perfectly with the season's first storm, Kline took the weekend to try out his stock.

"Have you ever been on a Flexible Flyer sled? So have I," said Kline, who has an 8-year-old son and recalled his days as a kid hurtling down slopes on a sled passed down from his grandfather to his mother to him. "They fly."