Happy New Year everyone! What an eventful year we just wrapped up here at Ozzies!

Our new medical equipment department expansion added 50% more sales space to the store. It allowed us to spread out our gift, toy, and cosmetic and puzzle sections so they are easier to navigate and shop. Our new sliding front doors have been a big hit, allowing easier access for everybody from moms with strollers to people with walkers and wheelchairs.

The medical equipment business has been growing steadily the last five months and we are building up a head of steam to start the New Year. It’s kind of funny how the store has come full circle with its medical equipment. When I was a kid, the store sold or rented all sorts of items – wheelchairs, hospital beds, humidifiers and vaporizers, baby scales, commodes, crutches and walkers.

I remember the hospital beds being stored on the second floor of the pharmacy in downtown where my grandfather later opened up Paperback Paradise, the predecessor of Anderson’s Bookshop. They were huge cast iron beds with hand cranks. I’m sure my grandfather was happy to rent them, but it was a real workout for the stock boys to haul them down the stairs and out to the patients home!

The hospital beds we rent and sell today are a far cry from those beds of old. They break down into four pieces, are much lighter and have two motors to raise and lower the bed. What a difference 50 or 60 years makes!

Happy New Year!

Bill