When Jay Lehman first opened his Kidron, Ohio, store, he chose inventory catering to Amish needs: wood and gas stoves, pre-electric lights and homesteading tools. When he introduced a catalog in 1976, Lehman’s wares caught the attention of non-Amish. Catalog production went from 1,000 to 5,000 in two years; now the company ships 200,000 a year. Then it discovered the Internet. “Everyone said, ‘If you want to be successful you have to have an e-mail address’,” says VP of operations Galen Lehman. “So we put it on the cover of the catalog and lo and behold, the e-mail started coming!” The Lehmans got a Web page in 1996, and, thanks to the millennium, Y2K survivalists like Suihkonen now outnumber Amish customers nine to one.
Demand for water pumps, filters and grain mills has backed up orders for three weeks, prompting the store to hire additional staffers. But its Amish vendors aren’t so quick to comply with requests to step up production. “We tried to offer one of them more money, but he said, ‘No. The farm is paid for and I want to be farming, not in the shop making wood-fired cook stoves’,” says Galen.
Meanwhile, phones ring off the hook, and operators field calls not just for orders but from unenlightened customers. “Most people don’t have a clue about what they’re doing,” says Galen. “A bunch of people bought oil lamps. We asked, ‘Do you want a wick?’ and they said, ‘What’s a wick?’ "
