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The Upper Mississippi Valley Mercantile Company was started 20 years ago by Jack Radloff and Bob Tuftee. Both of us had been active in muzzle loading and reenacting before starting the retail shop. We were active in the Mountain Men and Buckskinning events. We held officers jobs and chairing events with local clubs.
We both were very interested and enjoyed building our own equipment such as rifles, knives and clothing for our hobby. We noticed that some of the supplies were needed were hard to come by or had to be handmade. We went to events and sold our goods which was all well received by our friends at the shows. The business of buying and selling started. After a few of years of doing sales at events we decided to open a retail shop for a more permanent central location to showcase our goods. Our wives were doubtful about this new business but very supportive in our desires and enthusiasm to help others in there reenactment hobby. We found a building and to save cost we remodeled the place ourselves. It was painstaking to accomplish around our careers but when we finished our excitement grew.
We opened our retail establishment on 12/18/1980. The first year our main stock of supplies was for muzzle loaders and buckskinners. Soon we had special requests for other hard to come by items and our expansion began. We started doing research on what types of goods everyone sought out and began manufacturing new products for our customers. We researched each new product thoroughly to bring everyone the best replica possible.
The civil war interest grew along with our customers. We also started going to civil war reenactments throughout the area. Not being able to travel as much as we liked to events we decided to increase our manufactured product line. Our expansion grew very quickly and with the diversity of products now incorporated we created a catalog for our customers. We out grew our original location after we started the catalog and purchased a large building which allowed us to increase our manufacturing area and retail space to keep up with the demand.
Now in the twenty first century to further help our customers we have expanded to the World Wide Web. This allows us to show specials immediately and update our ever changing product list continuously to better serve our customers all over the world.
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