Stamford mom-and-pop shop Wagner's, 'oldest luggage store in the country,' to close - The Advocate

STAMFORD — After 60 years in the business, Ed Greenberg is ready to pack up his bag.

Greenberg and his family decided to shut down Wagner’s Fine Luggage and Gifts, the store he’s helped run since 1961. And while more than half a century of business warrants celebration enough, the shop’s long history dates back to the 1850s. A German immigrant named Herman A. Wagner started selling buggy whips and ox collars in Rye, N.Y.

“We think it’s the oldest luggage store in the country,” Greenberg said.

Though Wagner’s first found a home for his store south of the Connecticut border, Wagner’s Fine Luggage posted up on Greenwich Avenue thanks to the Wolfe family. Greenberg married into the clan, and he’s been in on the family business ever since.

Since its provincial origins a few miles south, Wagner’s has changed with the times. The shop sold leather saddles at the turn of the century, then moved to fine ashtrays and pipes in the 1950s. In more recent years, they pivoted to cell phone cases and other phone accessories.

But no matter the product, Greenberg put service at the heart of his business strategy. It’s what he thinks has kept customers coming back for so long.

“You just got to do that little extra mile. You go the mile, and your customers appreciate it,” Greenberg said. “Our customers go the mile for us too.”

If anything, working in retail for so long has only strengthened his faith in humanity, he said. A truck driver once drove an hour back to the store to return a tiny box of merchandise tucked inside a suitcase he purchased. Another woman forgot to hand Greenberg a check for more than 500 dollars worth of luggage but returned a few hours later to make sure he got paid.

It doesn’t hurt that Greenberg is a natural-born salesman. He knows the merchandise at Wagner’s like the back of his hand and could sell even the most skeptical customer on the merits of a well-designed bag. In his hands, a sturdy, green piece of luggage tucked in the back of the store can become the latest, hottest luxury good. The old suitcases tucked away in your closet that get rolled out annually for family vacation seem like relics from the past after one of his sales pitches.

Greenberg believes in the products his store carries, too. He knows quality when he sees it, and so does his son, Robert, who took over the store several years ago.

“He’s probably one of the most knowledgeable people in this industry, and customers love him,” Greenberg said.

But that expert touch is becoming rarer and rarer, he said. First, big-box retailers started crowding out mom-and-pop shops. Once upon a time, Wagner’s ran another location on Bedford Street, but it couldn’t compete with the massive Bloomingdale’s. Years later, even that department store would go out of business. The University of Connecticut Stamford campus now sits on its former location.

Online retailers only worsened the picture. And for many small businesses, the pandemic served a final blow. Opportunity Insights — a research and policy center run by Harvard University that focuses on economic mobility — found that 37 percent of small businesses in Connecticut closed during 2020.

There’s a certain level of expertise that comes along with running a small business, according to Greenberg, and it’s something that online reviews and internet shopping cannot replicate. When someone comes into the shop, staff can walk them through all the options, can show off the mechanics of the products, can let customers feel a product’s quality in their own hands.

“Amazon can’t do that,” he said.

Greenberg maintains that the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t drive them out of Stamford. While it didn’t make business easier, he thinks it was just time to go.

“It’s our choice,” he said, “And we just felt the time was right now.”

Marsha Greenberg, Ed’s wife, said she feels strange leaving behind the business she’s spent so long managing. Their children have worked at the store on and off for decades. Even their grandson, Max, was helping out at the store as old customers came in to take advantage of the final sale offers.

But Ed and Marsha Greenberg are ready to keep busy after formally retiring, which they expect to do sometime in June. In fact, they have decades’ worth of memories with customers and family to keep them company.

“The best part was really the customers,” Greenberg said. “I’m not saying this just to say, but I learned so much from our customers. The most important thing that I can say about the customers is that there are more good people out there than bad people.”

veronica.delvalle@hearstmediact.com

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Stamford mom-and-pop shop Wagner's, 'oldest luggage store in the country,' to close - The Advocate
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