Making customers friends

There’s a cozy feeling inside Bear Mountain Mercantile.

Owners Debbie and Stew Adams offer a warm smile as they welcome customers into their shop filled with a variety of gifts and decorative items all with a Montana touch.

For the past 22 years, the Adams have been making friends with these customers and helping them find just the right piece to decorate their home, but now they’ve decided to retire.

“We’ve said thank you for shopping with us 438,000 times,” Stew says with a smile.

“It’s been a good ride,” Debbie adds. “We have wonderful customers and we’ve worked hard to get that. We’ve made lifelong friends that I hope can remain our friends after we close our doors.”

Bear Mountain Mercantile opened Thanksgiving weekend 1994 when the couple, who had been living in California, were looking for a lifestyle change. As with small business there has been the ups and downs, and they’ve grown and downsized with the economy, but have always kept the doors open.

“When we opened I never thought we’d do this for 22 years — this was supposed to be my hobby,” Debbie said.

But the couple has decided it’s time for a lifestyle change again and they would like to travel more. Stew has Parkinson’s disease and on a recent trip to Hawaii suffered a punctured colon that forced him to spend two months in the hospital.

So they’ve put their 40-acre ranch on the market and they’re holding a retirement sale that will run through the end of the year closing the doors for good on Dec. 31.

“We wanted to go out on a good note,” Debbie said. “We had our best September ever. We’re ready for the next adventure.”

The shop is known for the annual transformation it makes into a winter wonderland each fall. Each year, the store closes and they bring out the lights and garland and decorate all the trees. Every November in a typical year, the store holds a weekend-long holiday open house to kick off the season.

With their planned retirement, however, the Adams hung the lights and garland a little early this year. They’ve also moved up the annual open house and tagged on a retirement celebration set for Friday.

Debbie says the store sparkles around Christmastime and it’s her favorite time of the year. Come next year she’s uncertain what it will feel like not to have the store to decorate, but she’s hoping her other business will allow her to help someone else decorate for the season.

Debbie, along with Denise Peters, will continue to operate Bear Mountain Design and Events, a business she started after helping her daughter with her wedding.

Over the last two decades, the couple has seen many changes along Central Avenue. They themselves started with a small shop in the front of the Whitefish Grill. At one point the shop was roughly double the size it is today. When they began the shoulder season was a quiet time in Whitefish and the store was closed two days a week. Today, it’s open seven days per week and the shoulder season is small.

The Adams raised two children here and are happy they chose Whitefish to call home.

“Whitefish is a delightful place to do business,” Stew says.

Bear Mountain Mercantile is located at 237 Central Ave. The open house is Friday, Oct. 21 from 5 to 8 p.m. Call 862-8382 for more information.