By Jodi Hersey
Special to The Weekly
Whether you are traveling north for a hike in the county, east to enjoy the Maine coast, west to ski the slopes or to southern Maine for a sporting event, chances are you’ll drive by at least one of the state’s well known tourist attractions — Marden’s Surplus & Salvage. The family-owned company, started by Harold “Mickey” Marden back in 1964, has been helping customers save pennies for years by offering discount prices on everything from clothes to food, furniture to flooring, and just about anything in between.
This year, the business is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
“With locations from Madawaska to Sanford and Rumford to Ellsworth, we’ve pretty much got the state covered,” said Jake Marden, director of marketing.
Years ago Mickey Marden wasn’t so much focused on creating a successful family business as much as he was hoping to unload some of his collectibles his wife no longer wanted around.
“My grandfather was a mailman in the Albion area in late ‘50s, early ‘60s. He got to know people and was really a people person [who] loved the auction circuit. He actually got his auctioneer license and in the process of doing so he acquired a large amount of goods. My grandmother told him he needed to find a way to get rid of all the goods he was acquiring,” explained Jake Marden.
So being the ever-obedient and loving husband that he was, Marden rented a space with a dirt floor in Fairfield for his wares and held a daily auction.
“People could come in and point to or look at items they wanted, and my grandfather would name prices for them as they went along,” said Marden. “It was actually several years of that before products on the floor had prices. Everything was shoot from the hip pricing before that. That’s how the company started.”
Although the Fairfield location is no longer home to Marden’s, there is a store in the neighboring city of Waterville. It’s one of 14 Marden’s Surplus & Salvage stores currently in operation.
“The company was originally based on insurance loss and the salvage market. Basically if there is a retailer or warehouse that has a sprinkler go off in one corner of it, or something of that nature, we work with the insurance company to acquire the goods. It’s a bidding process where we’ll go, physically view the product and put in a bid with the insurance company to acquire the goods. That’s the salvage part of it, and we don’t see that as much as we used to because the insurance industry is changing and building codes have changed,” explained Marden.
The business also is able to stock its shelves with the excess inventory that manufacturers have on hand from the previous season or from overestimating their needs.
“Perhaps a manufacturer forecasted wrong how many widgets they’d have to make and made too many. They then sell the excess goods at a closeout price to us which we then pass on to our customers,” said Marden. “We also work directly with a lot of manufacturers to buy first quality goods that may be last year’s color or model. There is nothing wrong with the vast majority of what we sell.”
But as large as the inventory at Marden’s has become over the years, there are a few things shoppers will never find inside the company’s doors.
“My grandfather always had the saying, ‘We’ll buy and sell anything we don’t have to feed,’” laughed Marden. “As a family owned business here in Maine we [also] try not to buy anything that might be construed as edgy. We try and keep the products on our store shelves as family friendly as we possibly can.”
Doug Staples has worked at Marden’s since 1983. He is in charge of footwear and although his last name isn’t Marden, he said he still feels every bit a part of the family-run business.
“Every day is an adventure and every deal is different. After 30 years, I can honestly say I still enjoy going to work. You don’t know what you’ll see or have to sell,” explained Staples. It’s that variety which keeps Staples excited about his job. “We have a lot of long-time employees. I’m not the only one who has been with the company this many years.”
Jake Marden has been punching the time clock at the store since graduating from college in 2003 with a degree in business administration.
“I’m very proud of what my grandfather and family have done,” he said. Marden is just one of a handful of Marden men employed at the company.
“There’s myself, two or three cousins, my brother-in-law, my dad and uncle,” he said.