| 8/12/2007 3:04:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Sun soon to set on Frontier
By JOYELL COLLINS
Assistant Editor
Tippecanoe Frontier Company, one of the longest standing shops in downtown Tipp City, started with humble beginnings almost twenty years ago.
While her kids were growing up, Mara Back was a stay-at-home mom. When her boys went to high school, Back's husband Ernie asked her, 'well, what do you feel like doing?'
"I said, I want to own my own business," Back recalls.
Ernie suggested both a bookstore and a pipe store, but both were vetoed by Mara.
"Now I find that ironic," she said, "I'm now sandwiched between a book store and a pipe store."
What she did open was a leather goods and filigree shop - giving a profession her husband already did on the side a storefront. When Back was walking downtown looking for a place to open her business, she ran into Mary Butler, the then-owner of the Opera House.
Not knowing whom she was talking to, Back asked if Mary knew of any places she could rent. Butler let her rent a space behind the barber shop for only $45 a month.
"That was stealing it," Back said.
Ernie took $1100 from savings to give Back to invest in the business, and the "Hyde Shoppe" was born.
Back was very diligent about her records - using a little brown case, she recorded each customer's contact information, what they bought, what color it was, and what they would use it for (now she just laughs at all that superfluous information).
Although at first, Back would be excited if she had two customers in one day, within two years the business got so big they outgrew their little space.
Through two moves, they ended up in their present location at 114 E. Main Street.
Along with the change of space, there was a change of name. Hyde Shoppe referred to the animal hide, just using the old 1800's spelling. The problem was, people kept calling Back Mrs. Hyde.
"I kept thinking, what, like Jekyll and Hyde," she said.
So she chose the Tippecanoe Frontier Trading Company, specifying the time period the store would deal in - early American, but not colonial.
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