Saxton Employee Keeps 80-Year-Old Business Open with New Venture
While eastern Michigan’s Saxton’s Garden Center ended an 80-year run earlier this month, a former employee decided to keep the Saxton name alive by setting up a power equipment shop in part of the former garden center’s building.
Tom Vanmoorleghem, a Saxton’s employee for about five years, is now in business as Saxton’s Power Equipment, reports Matt Jachman of the Observer.
“The new business combines Vanmoorleghem’s generator sales and service firm with the equipment sales and service side of Saxton’s: lawn mowers, tractors, trimmers, leaf blowers, snow blowers and other outdoor household power equipment,” writes Jachman.
“I felt kind of sad seeing that kind of icon disappear,” said Vanmoorleghem. “I’m pretty committed to keeping the Saxton’s name alive in this town.”
With Saxton’s Power Equipment, Vanmoorleghem is employing four other Saxton’s employees and will rent his retail space from the Saxton family. Vanmoorleghem told Jachman the equipment side of Saxton’s business remained profitable while “the garden center as a whole declined.”
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