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Sale of Owatonna Shoe is a perfect fit

Owatonna Shoe, sale, 2025, matt jessop, wade jessop, tom brick
Wade Jessop, left, and his brother Matt Jessop, center, bought Owatonna Shoe this month from Tom Brick, right, who has been with the store nearly 53 years and owned it for more than 40 years. The Jessops have worked for Brick for more than a decade, and Brick was happy to sell to “the boys.” Staff photo by Kay Fate
By
Kay Fate, Staff Writer

The holiday season is behind us, but Tom Brick is still talking about “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

The longtime owner of Owatonna Shoe is “sleeping all night, for the first time in a long time,” following the sale of the store to brothers Matt and Wade Jessop. They took ownership Jan. 1.

Cinema similarities

But back to that holiday favorite starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, who had to postpone his world tour to settle the family business when his father died from a stroke. George begrudgingly agrees to run the business.

The film premiered in 1946.

That also happens to be the year L.A. Schuster opened one of a string of shoe stores on Cedar Avenue in Owatonna. He hired Jim Brick, Tom’s father, to run it for him.

Jim Brick bought the business in 1967.

I’m Owatonna’s George Bailey,” Tom Brick said. “I graduated from college on March 22, 1972. I graduated on a Friday, Dad had open heart surgery on Monday,” and Brick begrudgingly agreed to run the business.

Honest to God, if you just look at ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ where Dad wanted me to stay here, and I wanted to see the world,” he said. “I had to call around and cancel three job interviews that week. One was at Federated – and I would’ve retired 25 years ago. But no regrets.”

In the film, George wants to end his life, prompting a visit from an angel named Clarence, who shows him the purpose of it all. George had saved his brother Harry from drowning in a frozen pond, and later prevented the town pharmacist from accidentally poisoning a customer.

While Brick’s life hasn’t had quite that amount of drama, he turned often to his father’s friend, Clarence Kennelly, “when I felt like I wanted to run away,” he said.

He told me, the joy of working with your dad is, you get to work with your dad,” Brick said. “But you never get to play with your dad. One of you will always have to stay with the store.”

What it taught him, he said, “was as much as I relied on Dad for the day-to-day business, I had the answers all along.”

Brick bought Owatonna Shoe from his father in 1982; when he had the opportunity to buy the building adjacent to the original store, it was Kennelly who walked him through the process.

Finding success

It took Brick nine months to remodel the interior of the adjoining building, “and when we reopened the new Owatonna Shoe, business doubled,” he said. “If I’d hired somebody else to get it done in two months, it would have been financially a brilliant move – but this worked out.”

That was about the time he bought the Owatonna Shoe truck, an idea he says he stole.

Other people had shoe trucks that called on industries to sell steel-toe (boots),” Brick said. “My fear was, I’d put a truck in the Viracon parking lot and the store would die. It was a good investment, though: We still did fabulous business at Viracon, and the Viracon business in the store doubled.”

The business continued to grow.

The boys’

The shoe truck brought the Jessops into the picture, specifically Wade.

He started 13 years ago, and was running the truck for me,” Brick said. “Matt started a couple years later, and they came to me shortly after that and said, ‘How do you feel about selling your store to a couple guys with no money?’

I said, ‘Well, oddly enough, that might be my perfect way out,’” and the die was cast.

Brick once thought his own children might step into the business, “but it was like with my dad: It was my thought, not theirs.”

About five years ago, he had the opportunity to sell to someone else.

I told him, ‘With all due respect, I really appreciate this, but my first dream was to have the boys buy me out. I don’t know how they’re going to get financing … but I’d really like to have this shoe store continue,’” Brick said.

Continue as a hometown business, he meant.

Only a lunatic would take the Owatonna Shoe name off,” he said. “After 78 years of impeccable service? It’s a guaranteed success; they’re both good at what they do … it’s just seamless.”

Making it work

And unexpected, Wade Jessop agreed.

He was a painting contractor and living with his family in Edina when his father told him about Brick’s shoe truck.

I wanted to try something new,” Jessop said, “so about a week later I called Tom.”

After another week, “he showed me the schedule, taught me how to fit people and sell shoes. He was a fantastic mentor.”

The truck is a one-man operation, with Jessop handling the scheduling, the operation and doing all the maintenance.

He travels through southern Minnesota and northern Iowa to set up shop for businesses who require their employees to wear a safety toe.

It’s really a mobile shoe store,” Jessop said. “There’s stairs on the back, a display of all the shoes we carry on one wall and three rows of shelving on the other wall.” The truck carries about 1,200 pairs of shoes.

Matt Jessop started at Owatonna Shoe about 11 years ago but has recently taken on another responsibility: He was elected mayor of the city in November and sworn in this month.

So how does that work?

That was my first question to him when he told me he was going to run,” Wade said, “because I knew this was looming. ‘Are you sure you can do both?’”

It led to what Matt calls “very good conversations about it. The time involved was always my number one concern,” he said. “In talking with (former mayor) Tom Kuntz, my concerns for the most part were allayed.”

The idea to buy the store really was “an ongoing thought and question for about 12 years,” Wade said, and they believed Brick would be willing.

Even though we’re not blood,” Wade said, “we are family, and I think that’s appealing for him, since we’ve been in this family for so long.”

Just 18 months apart in age, the two found different interests as teenagers, he said, “and sort of veered apart, but came back together.”

As business owners, “we each have our tasks, and there’s new ones we’re sharing,” Matt said. “It’ll be a process of figuring out what makes sense for each of us. Wade takes care of the truck – that industrial is his baby, but the day-to-day stuff inside the store, he’s on the truck, so that’s mine.”

There will be “no major wholesale changes,” he added, “just little things as we go along. Retail is just a constantly evolving business.”

As far as the business model goes,” Wade said, “why would you change anything that’s working? It was one of the draws of purchasing it, too. We’ve got a great business model that works, as long as we don’t screw it up.”

Tying the bow

After nearly 53 years at the store, Brick is pleased with the way things turned out for two guys with no money.

I’m a firm believer that things happen exactly like they’re supposed to,” he said. “It probably could’ve happened earlier, but it couldn’t have happened better.”

And one more comparison to that wonderful life:

Brick had a scrap of paper clipped to his office desk lamp for 45 years, after his friend, Jerry Wing, gave him some advice.

He told me, ‘If you’re not having fun when you’re working, you need to do something else. I’m having fun still, but my daily prayer is, when it’s not fun anymore, that I have the presence of mind to get the hell out.’”

So Brick wrote himself a note: Is this the day?

I’ve had several times when I looked at it and, almost tearful, said, ‘I wonder if this is the day,’ because I was just angry about something,” he said. “Then I’d calm down and be fine.”

Three weeks ago, he crossed out a couple of words, then rewrote them: This is the day.

Wing was a pharmacist.

They’re going to succeed,” Brick said of the Jessops. “They love this town like I do.”

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