But through it all, the Krumbeins owned a men’s clothing store.
The family business, which started in 1922 in Middletown, is about to end. Worthmore, one of the oldest, continually operating men’s clothing stores in Ohio, will close at the Towne Mall Galleria in about two to three weeks, said Mark Krumbein, Milton Krumbein’s son and a Cincinnati criminal attorney.
After 90-year-old Milton Krumbein died on Aug. 10, 2013, running the struggling business, while operating his successful law practice in Cincinnati, was too exhaustive, Krumbein said. He made the “difficult decision” to hold a final liquidation sale — where everything is 50 percent off and all sales are final — then close the store, thus ending the family’s association with the city.
“I didn’t want to close,” he said “It’s sad. I get nostalgic just talking about it.”
Mark Krumbein, 56, said sales at the Towne Mall have dropped off significantly, especially after other stores closed. He said foot traffic at the mall can’t support some of the businesses. George Ragheb, one of the owners of SA Mary Ohio, which purchased the mall in October 2012, said the mall’s occupancy rate is less than 50 percent and it needs to be closer to 95 percent to be successful.
Krumbein said business was “decent” until CB&L announced years ago it was going to convert the Towne Mall into an open-air shopping center. Many businesses didn’t renew their leases, and once the mall was sold again and the plan was scraped, those businesses never returned, he said.
Now the mall owners will have to find another business, and it will be difficult to locate a family more dedicated to the city than the Krumbeins, Mark Krumbein said. Worthmore opened in the city 92 years ago, then moved out of the City Centre Mall when the city removed the roof.
The store has been a staple inside the Towne Mall ever since.
Even as Milton Krumbein neared 90 years old, he drove from his home in Cincinnati to Middletown several days a week. Eventually, after his health deteriorated, he was driven up Interstate 75 by his son, Mark, or grandson, Scot.
There was a special connection between the family and the Middletown community, he said.
“He loved the people,” Mark Krumbein said about his father. “That was his life. He said it was a privilege that he never worked a day in his life.”
Mark Krumbein said it was important to keep Worthmore open as long as his father was living. His mother, Chris, 91, still lives in the Cincinnati area.
Gail West, who has worked at Worthmore for 20 years, called the closing “bittersweet” because of all the “wonderful people” she met over the years.
“I find it challenging, I find it interesting,” she said of the clothing business. “There never is a dull moment.”
Recently, she said, there just wasn’t enough businesses for the store to survive, despite sales and pushing the merchandise racks into the mall.
“It’s down,” she said. “People are expecting something to happen and nothing is happening. It’s hard to run a business with no foot traffic.”
She said Milton Krumbein frequently talked about relocating the store out of Middletown and into a busier retail marketplace, but he believed Worthmore was synonymous with the city.
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