Renys: The Ultimate Maine Treasure Hunt

By Virginia M. Wright | Sponsored by Renys

Forget the Caribbean. Never mind a cruise. In 2018, Phil and Dolly Curtis spent their honeymoon doing the Maine shopping equivalent of peak bagging: They visited all the Renys locations — which then totaled 17 stores — on a zigzagging jaunt of several hundred miles. Dolly, 71, proposed the journey after seeing her 80-year-old fiancé’s disappointment upon learning that their wedding would conflict with Renys’ November Early-Bird Sale, when shoppers flood the stores in the wee hours for rock-bottom deals. “He’s silly enough to say yes,” Dolly told CBS Sunday Morning’s Nancy Giles, who interviewed the Old Orchard Beach couple about their offbeat wedding trip. “So off we went.”

The occasion that prompted the Curtises’ feat was exceptional, but their mission was not. Every year brings a new batch of “Renys baggers,” some of whom tick off each milestone with a dash of hoopla, like the four friends who arrived at the Topsham store wearing bright orange tees reading “Tour de Renys,” and the woman who chronicled her travels on a “Renys Run” Facebook page.

Renys touring is but one way Mainers shower love on their favorite store. In 2003, Newcastle resident Art Mayers penned Renys: The Musical; it’s now a community theater staple. Renys’ marketing team, meanwhile, fields a steady stream of homemade videos featuring people singing the store jingle — “Renys! A Maine adventure!” — for television spots. One family even synchronized their Christmas lights to the tune.

How to explain such enthusiasm for, of all things, a discount department store?

“We’re homegrown,” says Renys president John Reny, who’s been working at the business founded in 1949 by his father, Robert H. Reny, since he was 5. “We live here, and we know what Maine people need.”

He’s talking about things like Carhartt overalls and Pendleton flannel shirts, Keens hiking shoes and Yukon Charlie trekking poles, and an assortment of Renys-branded goods, like lobster picks, portable lawn chairs, and canvas tote bags embroidered with Renys’ “Maine Adventure” logo, showing a road curving into a spruce forest. He means the largest variety of Bob’s Red Mill grains, flours, and cereals of any store in Maine and — especially coveted by Renys shoppers — Sweetzels Ginger Snaps and Stretch-Tite plastic wrap. Plus, Renys’ shelves brim with Maine-made edibles: Raye’s Mustard from Eastport, Waldo-Stone Farm Bloody Oyster Cocktail Mix from Bristol, and Maya’s Apiary Blueberry Honey from Sidney, to name a few.

Then there are the prices. “The big stores mark up their merchandise and then take 40 percent off and call it a sale,” Reny says. “Even then, we’re selling it cheaper. When we get a good deal on a product, we pass it on to our customers. People love us because they know we don’t fool around.”

That’s the philosophy established 75 years ago when a young Robert Reny quit his job as store clerk for a Damariscotta department store because his boss, who also happened to be his landlord, granted him a raise—then jacked up his rent by the same amount. R.H., as everyone knew him, opened a dry-goods store in the vacant A&P across the street and committed to treating his customers, employees, and vendors fairly. That first year, his store enjoyed a robust fall trade. When sales flagged after Christmas, R.H. loaded merchandise into his Hudson motorcar and drove down the Bristol peninsula, calling on fishing families rendered homebound by snow-rutted roads. When spring arrived, those families returned their amiable and gregarious visitor’s favor by shopping at his store.

R.H.’s tireless search for good deals extended to real estate as he grew a chain of stores. He never built new, but instead favored vacant buildings — a practice that breathed life into faded downtowns and deserted strip malls and endeared Renys to revitalization organizations like the Maine Development Foundation, which awarded the business its Main Street Hero award in 2009. By then, R.H. had opened 14 stores, and he was well known and beloved statewide. When he died that year at age 83, the Maine Merchants Association eulogized him as “the heart and soul” of Maine retailing.

Ranging in size from roughly 2,000 square feet all the way up to 35,000 square feet (that would be Bridgton), each Renys location is unique. Madison’s Renys was built as an opera house, Bath’s was a hotel, Bridgton’s was a post office. Gardiner’s Renys occupies three late-19th-century Romanesque Revival storefronts, one of which has an intact Rebekah Lodge on its third floor. The Farmington Renys’ stage and balcony recall its past as a silent-movie theater. And Damariscotta has two Renys: the original and, across the street, Renys Underground, a former bowling alley (it even has a soda fountain!).

John Reny, who took the helm in 2007, and his younger brother, Bob, now retired, have followed R.H’s example, adroitly negotiating off-price deals without scorching relationships with their vendors. They’ve further distinguished Renys among discount department stores by upgrading its clothing mix with brands such as Carhartt and Columbia. They’ve also stepped up the pursuit of closeouts and overruns, which account for the ever-changing, one-time-only offerings that delight Renys shoppers (recent examples include Martha Stewart mango-wood charcuterie boards and cartons of borlotti beans from Italy).

Meanwhile, they’ve mentored the next generation to manage the family enterprise. John’s daughter, Faustine, and Bob’s son, Adam, are part of an executive team overseeing a Maine institution with 500-plus employees. “We’re not just a retail store,” Adam remarked on Renys’ 70th anniversary in 2019. “As my grandfather said, we’re a customer-service company that happens to sell great stuff. We continue to practice the values that he had on day one.”

In Renys: The Musical, a character modeled after R.H. is lionized for his perseverance in the era of generic big-box stores. After he’s mobbed by adoring shoppers, the entire cast assembles for the first big number. “There are vitamins and cookies and cans of lobster stew, telephones and toasters and pillow cases too!” they sing. “You can get a chair there, try a dress there, see a friend there — all at Renys!”