March 28, 2024

Creston Farm & Home Supply Inc. announces sale of business

Creston Farm & Home Supply Inc. announced this morning it has sold to Bomgaars Inc. of Sioux City.

Bomgaars will take over business on Feb. 1, 2018.

Torrey Wingert, vice president and chief financial officer of Bomgaars, said the company has known and done business with the Mostek family for many years, as the two companies are in the same buying co-op.

“They contacted us. We’ve been adding stores over the past five, six years. Geographically, I think it was a good fit for us,” Wingert said. “I think it was a natural fit for them to contact us.

“Obviously, the Mosteks are going to sell the business and go do other things. We’ll bring in a new manager, but all the store associates have been offered go-forward positions. Our goal is to add probably double the size of the staff over the first year of the operation. Our plan is to come in and make the Mosteks proud of what we’re doing and be an advocate in the community with events and sponsorships and grow that location. We’re excited.”

Bomgaars is not purchasing the Mount Ayr Farm & Home Supply store because of size limitations.

Wingert said the Bomgaars average store size is 40,000 square feet. He feels the Creston facility has a large enough building to allow Bomgaars to expand product lines.

“We’re similar [to Farm & Home] but we’re different,” Wingert said. “The three or four main things that people are going to see different – we’re a very seasonal store. Inside the store, one of the biggest changes is we sell probably 5-10 times the amount of pet food and feed across 20-30 brands of horse feed, dog food, cat food. Another big change is we’re one of the largest DeWalt power tool chains in the country. We’ll do big clothing just like Farm & Home does. We have 12-13 major departments we do in our stores.”

Wingert said in the springtime, customers will notice the Bomgaars selection of lawn and garden products. The store will have a full greenhouse.

The store will continue to do business as Farm & Home while Bomgaars transitions the inventory.

“The products we don’t carry currently will need to be sold and clearanced out while we bring our new product in,” Wingert said. “We think probably two to three months to transition the inventory. Sometime late spring we’re hoping to have everything up and running as a full-fledged Bomgaars store.”

Wingert said Bomgaars is promotion-driven, meaning the company will have advertising in the Creston News Advertiser and on radio, with sales, events and promotions.