NEWS

NE Backpacker folding its tent

Founders of storied Worcester outfitter ready to hit the trail

Bill Doyle
william.doyle@telegram.com
New England Backpacker owners Bill White, left, and Wayne Ridley are closing the store in Worcester after 43 years.

WORCESTER — After 43 years of outfitting outdoors people, New England Backpacker is packing its bags and closing its doors forever.

Owners Wayne Ridley, 73, of Leicester, and Bill White, 76, of Rutland, said the decision to end their business had nothing to do with the pandemic.

“I’m tired,” Ridley said. “It’s time to retire.”

“I’d work for many more years,” White said, “but it reaches a time when it’s time.”

Located at 6 East Mountain St., New England Backpacker sells and rents kayaks, canoes, paddleboards, cross-country skis and snowshoes, and sells outdoor clothing, footwear and camping equipment. Ridley said he’s too old to lift kayaks and canoes anymore.

“This is a hands-on operation and it’s just too much,” Ridley said.

White estimated that competition from online businesses slashed New England Backpacker sales in half over the past decade.

“We were making less than the people who work for us,” White said.

However, Ridley said the store was busy this past summer because more people wanted to get outside during the pandemic. Ridley said the store could have been even busier if manufacturers hadn’t run out kayaks and canoes. The demand was so high during the pandemic, the manufacturers couldn’t keep up.

Nevertheless, Ridley said he and White had decided in January, just before the pandemic hit, they would close the store after the summer ended. Ridley said they tried to sell their business to someone who would continue it, but they ended up signing a purchase and sale agreement with a Worcester dentist who plans to remodel the store into a dental office.

“This is a busy intersection,” Ridley said. “The visibility is incredible.”

Ridley and White both worked on the police force in Holden and they also hiked and skied together. In 1977, they opened New England Backpacker on East Mountain Street. They never expected their business to last for 43 years.

“When we first started out, I didn’t know if it was going to last for 43 weeks,” White said.

Ridley left the police force about a year after New England Backpacker opened, but White remained on the police force until he retired in 2001 and he didn’t draw a salary from the business until then.

“I wanted the business to make it,” he said, “and I figured someday we’d be OK.”

Ridley said when New England Backpacker first opened, the local department stores didn’t sell hiking clothes so they had no competition.

“Then they all woke up and starting carrying it and that changed things a lot,” Ridley said.

New England Backpacker moved across the street in 1981. Fritz’s Bicycle Shop conducted business on the lower level for a handful of years before both businesses grew so much that Fritz’s moved to 328 West Boylston St.

“We just tried to treat people right,” Ridley said, “and tried to give good advice.”

New England Backpacker began its going-out-of-business sale on Thursday with everything marked down 20 to 50%, and Ridley estimated on Tuesday morning that 40% of the store’s merchandise had been sold already. He expects the going-out-of-business sale to continue until at least the end of the month.

Ridley said he’ll miss the customers the most.

“We have a lot of really friendly customers going to really interesting places,” he said.

Ridley said New England Backpacker has outfitted people going to Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Everest on the Nepal-China border, to South America and the South Pole.

“They tell us wonderful stories and they send us pictures over the years,” Ridley said.

“It’s the kind of business where your customers become your friends,” White said.

One customer wrote on Facebook that she went to the store in 1985 to buy a chamois shirt and left with a husband. That customer is Ridley’s wife, Peggy. They have two children. White and his wife, Claudette, have two children and five grandchildren.

When he’s retired, Ridley would like to travel to some of the places that his customers have. The Vietnam combat veteran wants to visit all the U.S. national parks, especially Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

White said he plans to keep busy hiking and biking and he might teach criminal justice at a local college. He’s been to the Grand Canyon, but he believes some of the best hiking in the world can be done right here in New England, such as on the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

White believes it’s important for people young and old to get out of the house and do something, pandemic or not.

“You sit down for too many days watching TV,” White said, “and you get used to that, just think about what it does to you. I’m a proponent to get out and move, and don’t quit anything.”

New England Backpacker is a Boy Scouts of America dealer. When people came in to buy Scout uniforms for their children, they often left with sleeping bags, backpacks, tents and cooking stoves as well.

“It’s not one of these places where you came to work and hated being here,” Ridley said. “This was a lot of fun.”

Customers have told Ridley and White that they’re sorry to see the business closing.

Matt Loftus, 34, of Shrewsbury bought a Patagonia micro-down jacket at the store on Tuesday morning. When he was young, his family shopped at the store often, purchasing everything from hiking shoes to snowshoes to ski gloves to backpacks for him and his two sisters.

“This was the place to go if you lived around here,” he said. “It’s an institution.”

Loftus said he was shocked to hear that New England Backpacker was closing.

“It’s sort of sad,” he said. “It’s like O’Connor’s. It’s just been in Worcester forever. It’s something that all the locals know about. So it’s sad that it’s closing.”

Contact Bill Doyle at william.doyle@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter@BillDoyle15

New England Backpacker has a selection of boots, books, and topographical maps in its going-out-of-business sale. The outfitter has been on East Mountain Street in Worcester for 43 years.