Princeton Army & Navy Store: Challenges of a Small Business

Long before high-end shops opened in Princeton, Joseph Caplan opened the doors to the Princeton Army & Navy Store on Witherspoon Street.

The store, which opened in the late 1940s, sold surplus gear from WWII, said Caplan’s grandson, Michael Bonin, the third generation of the family owned-business now located next to Small World Coffee.

“It was good quality stuff at reasonable prices because people really didn’t have a lot of money back then and he did quite well,” Bonin said, who inherited the store from his father Alvin Bonin, Caplan’s son-in-law.

The store has been good to the Bonin family over the years. The family lived off its earnings and Michael and Ellen Bonin sent their three daughters to college.

But there have also been challenges.

The two-story building was recently appraised for about $1.5 million and annual taxes exceed the approximately $20,000 price tag Caplan once paid for the former Borough fire station.

Facing rising property taxes and competition from malls, catalogs and the internet, Bonin said he isn’t sure what the future holds for the store. He and his wife are its only employees. He works six days a week and his wife works on Sunday- she also has a part-time job as a library assistant at Princeton University.

“I don’t regret being here all this time and doing what we did, but at some point, I would probably like to move on,” Bonin said. “I guess maybe I’m disappointed that as time goes on, most businesses you would hope would steadily go up and I think the way times are and the competition, we’re going downward, but I don’t think it’s exclusively here.”

Over time, the store’s product line changed from military surplus and into practical, utilitarian products at discounted prices. Today the store sells everything from a wide assortment of Princeton University apparel and Levis to field jackets and Swiss Army knives.

“We try to make an honest living selling good quality stuff for reasonable prices and we appreciate all the business we get,” said Bonin, who started working at the store full-time after graduating from college in 1979.

Bonin, a Princeton native, now lives in Lawrence Township. He remembers the advice he was once given about the store.

“I was told ‘pay attention to what you’re doing, it’s a good area, a good town, you’ll never have to worry about anything,’” said Bonin, now 55. “Over time things have changed, there’s way more competition, you have malls and internet and everything. I say this for my business, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same for any business in town. It’s not like it once was 10 years ago or 20 years ago.”

The store relies on its loyal customers, but also gets a a lot of walk-ins, Bonin said. And while Princeton has gotten more crowded, it has also brought in more competition and that doesn’t always translate into increased profits. Add to that the recession and business is down, Bonin said.

“I can’t speak for other people, but I would have to guestimate that the bulk of the town is headed that way,” he said. “I think traffic in general, purchasing traffic, is way down and as the town changes with all of these high-end, fancy-schmancy places, it’s bringing in a different customer. And I don’t know if they’re going to make it. When you start seeing Banana Republic move out and Tablots go to one store and there’s all of a sudden there's empties on Palmer Square, it’s not just us.

“It’s obviously the price of doing business with the rents is too high compared with the amount of traffic you’re getting,” he said.

At an age where most people begin to think about retiring, Bonin isn’t sure if the Princeton Army & Navy Store will continue to be family-run business. So far his daughters haven’t expressed an interest in continuing the business, he said.

“It’s available to them,” Bonin said. “I have three daughters, they range now from 26 to 20 and so far they have zero interest…But they are starting to get out into the business world on their own and they’re starting to say now, ‘maybe working for Dad isn’t quite as bad as we thought.’ There’s not a lot out there at this point in time, it’s a hard time out there getting jobs.

"The quality of the living being made is probably not as good (in this business as it once was) and for that reason I would probably encourage them if they can do something else, it might be to their benefit and definitely that they might enjoy having weekends off, not having to be here 24/7 or thereabouts," Bonin said.