Gale Hammond had only $32 in his pocket when he started his business and needed $75 just to cover the cost of the state licensing fee.
But the young businessman was pleasantly surprised when a state official, upon seeing how discouraged Hammond was, let him have the license for $25.That was 44 years ago, and Hammond Toy & Hobby stores are still going strong with $1.5 million in gross sales last year. Hammond has weathered the influx of national chain stores, hefty taxes, some financial reversals and changes in the industry.
Now 75, Hammond still works full time, gets to each of his seven stores regularly and has no plans to retire. "It's a fun business," he says as he gestures at the colorful rows of toys and hobby items that fill his Cottonwood Mall store.
Hammond always knew he'd be a business owner, just like his father, West, who operated a Salt Lake cafe. However, World War II put some of Gale Hammond's plans on hold.
"Everyone was getting drafted in those days. All my friends joined the Air Force, but I couldn't get in because I had bad eyes," Hammond said.
He wanted to stay out of the infantry and to get as much education as possible in the three months between high school graduation and his 18th birthday -- which would bring "greetings" message from the draft board.
To achieve these goals, Hammond signed up as an accounting student and began an intensive program at LDS Business College.
He would attend school from 8-11 a.m., then rush to his father's cafe to help with the lunch crowd. Then it was back to LDS Business College from 1:30-5 p.m. Then back to the cafe to tend to evening diners. Back to the college for night classes. Back to the cafe to finish up and lock the doors. Bedtime was after midnight.
He finished a one-year accounting program in three months and graduated in 1942.
Hammond was drafted anyhow, but was told he couldn't serve because of poor eyesight. "They told me they would draft women and children before they would draft me."
He enrolled at the University of Utah, but a year later "they ran out of women and children and drafted me." It was off to war in Europe. Hammond then served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and afterward got a job in San Francisco.
Although he longed to be a business owner, he didn't want anything to do with food service. At his father's cafe, "we always worked late nights, holidays and Sundays, and I didn't want that," Hammond said. "I thought a toy store looked like fun."
Hammond got a job in the toy department at Macy's in San Francisco and started reading toy magazines as a primer to starting his own business.
Back in Utah, he got his his business license, checked the newspapers for birth announcements and began approaching parents to buy educational toys. He built the business over time and opened Utah's first discount toy store. Later, he owned eight stores and was known as Utah's "toy king."
It wasn't always easy, though. Once, when Utah's economy sagged, Hammond's business was near bankruptcy, and it took severe austerity measures keep it afloat.
Then came the national chains, lured, he said, by tax breaks worth much more than the discount he got on his business license.
Hammond adjusted to keep things going.
"We decided we didn't want to have a store farther than one hour from our warehouse," to keep control of quality and stock, he said. "When merchandise comes in, we can have it on the floor in two days -- sometimes the same day. The Wal-Mart stores can take two weeks."
Hammond also reduced the size of his stores and focused on hobby items.
Hobbies have always been consistently popular in Utah, and the classic items seem to appeal to shoppers year after year: trains, rockets and models of sorts.
But Hammond hasn't forsaken toys by any means. For example, his store in Cottonwood Mall has a healthy stock of Pokemon toys on hand with more coming in, as well as Pokemon cards. There also are Star Wars figurines and card games, Stomp Rockets, dolls of all sorts, classics like Legos and much more.
Hammond prides himself on keeping abreast of industry trends, but he laughingly remembers one memorable misstep. "In 1959 when the salesmen presented Barbie, I said, 'No, it's too sexy a doll. Utah is too conservative for that.' The next year I bought it and I've bought it ever since.