For 100 years, Johnston’s has been dressing Wichita

Kevin Edmundson knelt on the floor, marking alternations on the back of a young man’s trouser leg with tailor’s chalk.

The customer was a college student getting his first business suit from Johnston’s, but he was no stranger to Edmundson.

“I’m dressing the third generation of his family,” said Edmundson, who has worked at Johnston’s for 46 years, or since he was 15.

Experienced employees and repeat customers are what have helped Johnston’s reach its 100th year in business, a milestone the store will celebrate with an open house Oct. 23-25.

“It’s my dad establishing customer service,” majority owner J.V. Johnston said of the reason for the store’s longevity. “Everything is focused on the customer, not the bottom line.”

The store opened in downtown Wichita in 1914 as McVicar, Howard & Millhaubt.

J.V.’s father, Jerry, bought the store in 1965 when it was in Boulevard Plaza at Lincoln and George Washington Blvd. Jerry had been managing Duckwall retail stores when he heard that the clothing store, then known as McVicar’s, was about to close. He borrowed heavily to make the deal.

“I still have his first P and L,” J.V. Johnston said of the profit-and-loss statement. “He made $15 the first year.”

In 1976, Jerry moved the store across the street, doubled its size and added his last name to the title. So it was then Johnston McVicar’s.

In 1985, it moved again, to a larger spot on South Hillside, and J.V., his wife, Veronica, and Edmundson began buying the business. The name was changed to Johnston’s for Men – and later to just Johnston’s.

The couple completed the purchase in 1996, and soon after that, they started planning their next move.

“We had an aging clientele” and realized the store need to relocate to east Wichita to reach the customers it was seeking, J.V. said.

In 2005, the store moved to its current location at 12111 E. 21st St., in a 15-acre multi-use called The Collective that J.V. and Edmundson developed.

Now occupying 13,000 square feet, Johnston’s has added several lines through the years, including shoes, women’s clothing, a big-and-tall department and Section 37, a sort of in-house boutique selling contemporary apparel for both sexes.

Counting its tailor shop, just down the hall from the showroom, the store employs a dozen people.

In all its inventory, J.V. said, “We want to have good quality clothes and be fashionable but not crazy – except for Section 37, that’s kind of crazy.”

Veronica Johnston said there was another reason for the store’s move: With about a third of its sales coming from customers who live outside the Wichita area, it needed to be located near a major road – in this case, K-96.

“We’re a regional draw,” she said.

Veronica has been working at the store since she was a student at Newman University.

“First guy through the door, she sold him a suit, coat, tie, shoes,” J.V. said.

She started the store’s women’s department, but was happy to hand that over to another family member – her daughter-in-law, Betty Johnston. “I love selling men’s clothes,” she said.

The biggest change she’s seen in that area came when “business casual” became the business norm. Johnston’s has expanded its lines to meet that demand but still considers suits its specialty.

Its best-known customer these days is known for sharp suits – Wichita State University basketball coach Gregg Marshall. “He looks good in his clothes, and he keeps it buttoned all the time, unless he’s really angry,” J.V. said.

Another big change at Johnston’s happened earlier this year when J.V. left the day-to-day operations of the store to take a job as vice president of institutional advancement at Newman, also his alma mater.

After giving her husband a quick kiss in the store Tuesday, Veronica admitted that change was difficult. “It was a pleasure to work with my husband all those years,” she said.

But both express complete confidence in Edmundson, who was named president in March, and Dewight Lillard, another longtime employee who’s now vice president.

“Kevin is the dean of clothing people here in town,” J.V. said.

Edmundson admits he didn’t set out to run a clothing store all those years ago. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from WSU, working all the while at Johnston’s. And then he decided he didn’t want to become a physician after all.

Minutes before helping the college student, Edmundson had been looking at family photos on a cellphone with another customer, a businessman who had driven from Manhattan to pick up some shirts and ties. Edmundson had laid out some options for him, and the two spent a good half-hour chatting nearly as much about mutual acquaintances as clothes.

“We still approach customers the same way I learned when I was 15,” he said.

This story was originally published September 24, 2014 at 2:20 PM with the headline "For 100 years, Johnston’s has been dressing Wichita."