Still Here: Plesser's Has Sold Appliances on Babylon's Main Street Since 1949 |
Sam Plesser opened a hardware store in New Hyde Park in 1919, and his son Morton brought the business to Babylon Village 30 years later. A longtime employee bought it at 25, and it is still independent, still on East Main Street. |
FEATURED BUSINESS · BABYLON VILLAGE
Plenty of stores open on Main Street. Very few are still there when the grandchildren come in to buy their own refrigerator.
Plesser’s Appliances began as a hardware store that Sam Plesser opened in New Hyde Park in 1919, according to the company’s own timeline. In 1949 a second store opened on Main Street in Babylon, run by Sam’s son Morton. Another son, Dave, ran a Patchogue store that opened in 1965. In 1975, Morton took over the whole business and kept only the Babylon showroom.
The next chapter is a small-business story of its own. In 1990, a longtime employee, Marc Howard, bought Plesser’s at the age of 25. His younger brother Alan Howard joined him in 1992, when, the company says, the team grew to its third employee. In 2000 the store moved across the street in the village to a larger, renovated showroom. An online store followed in 2008, and a second showroom, in Southampton, in 2014.
When Plesser’s turned 100 in 2019, it celebrated with a red carpet into a remodeled Babylon showroom with working appliances and a live demonstration kitchen, Greater Long Island reported. “We began noticing a lot of three generations buying our products,” Alan Howard told the site. The brothers also run the Plesser’s Charity Foundation, which the company’s timeline says was established in 2017 with its first charity golf outing.
How does a single independent store keep up with the big boxes? Part of the answer is buying power. Plesser’s says it belongs to the Intercounty appliance co-op, a group of more than 500 member stores nationwide.
You will find the Babylon showroom at 6 E. Main St., near the corner of Deer Park Avenue and a few blocks from Argyle Park. It is open seven days a week, and there is free parking in the lot behind the store. The showroom’s number is (631) 661-2750.
This is Small Business Season™. If you are shopping for the holidays, or just for a new dishwasher, the 77-year-old store on Main Street is still open.
Do you know a Town of Babylon business that has outlasted everyone around it? Tell us, and we will feature it here.
Sources: Plesser’s Appliances, “About Plesser’s Appliances” · Plesser’s Appliances, “Babylon Showroom” · Greater Long Island, “Plesser’s Appliances celebrates 100 years in Babylon Village,” Nov. 15, 2019
Plesser's Appliances' Babylon showroom. Plesser's Appliances. |
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