Lincoln Heights store to close after seven decades in business in Wichita

Wichita is losing another longtime business.

Ted McMullen is closing the 70-year-old McMullen Jewelry in Lincoln Heights this summer.

“My folks opened the store,” McMullen said.

Lorraine and E.A. “Mac” McMullen started the business in Boulevard Plaza at Lincoln and George Washington Boulevard in 1952, the same year their son was born.

“That’s a part of it,” McMullen said. “I turn 70 this month.”

There’s more to the story than that, though.

McMullen had helped at his parents at the store but didn’t plan on it for a career. He was living in California and doing photography and carpentry “and just whatever else came along.”

McMullen said he was “having a good time, but kind of living hand to mouth.”

“I had just finished college when my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and he went real quick.”

He returned to help his mother with the store and found he enjoyed the work. He then decided to get a gemologist’s degree.

“I enjoyed it. It’s a good business.”

It’s no longer the same business, though.

“The jewelry industry across the nation has been shrinking drastically.”

The price of gold and silver has affected sales.

“The jewelry industry has been revolutionized because of the metal markets.”

As manufacturing moved overseas, McMullen said the quality of jewelry has diminished.

McMullen “used to say I’m a decent goldsmith, then I would say I’m a decent silversmith. Now, I’m a decent epoxysmith.”

Meaning he has to spend a lot of time gluing people’s jewelry back together for them.

It’s not only the jewelry market that has changed.

“Small business, I don’t care what industry you’re in, isn’t the same as it used to be.”

McMullen said business used to be done with a handshake, and now so much of it is online.

“Times have changed.”

Security is another consideration. People have thrown rocks through his windows twice in the last couple of years.

“This is not the peaceful world I grew up in.”

The area around Boulevard Plaza changed years ago, which is why McMullen moved his store to Lincoln Heights in 1991.

People asked if he was concerned moving so close to the popular Barrier’s, which used to be kitty-corner to Lincoln Heights, but he told them he’d rather be across from a quality competitor than from a bunch of pawn shops.

“I was thrilled to get up there.”

He actually had a connection to Barrier’s. The founder of that store, Carl Barrier, married McMullen’s great aunt.

His father also worked for Barrier’s before starting his own business.

When McMullen moved his store to Lincoln Heights, he quit selling gift lines that included silver plate and crystal stemware in part “because Barrier’s just had tons and tons and tons of that.”

Through the years, McMullen said he was never one to hold gimmicky sales.

“We kind of believe you mark everything as fair as you can when you get it.”

Now, though, he is figuring out the details of an inventory reduction sale for some point. He wants to close the store no later than the fall, but it likely will be sooner than that.

Due to changes in the jewelry business and business in general, and because he wants his customers taken care of only as he and his wife have cared for them through the years, McMullen isn’t trying to sell his store.

“I’m just going to close,” he said. “Everything has it’s time, and it’s just time for us to go on.”