Husband–Wife Team Jump-Starts Battery Store

You're a former long-time resident of Oak Forest, now living out your post-working days in some warm locale.  You haven't been back to town for 10 years or so, but you're here for a wedding, or other special occasion.

You wander down to your old watering hole the Ten Pin Lounge, a local institution since the Great Depression, and you find—a battery store?  You do a double-take, check the address—5119 W. 159th St.  Yes, that's it—and no, you're not mistaken. You're standing outside a battery store. 

Not just any battery store: Consider this the Superman of battery stores—every battery imaginable to come to your rescue. Car batteries, watch batteries, cell phone batteries, safety light batteries, cordless tool batteries, cordless phone batteries, batteries for your remote controls, batteries for your children's games and toys, batteries for your riding lawn mower, batteries for your camera: batteries everywhere.

Long-time Oak Forest residents Dave and Jean Beechy opened the doors to All Charged Up Battery Store in March 2009. With backgrounds in building trades, their original focus was rebuilding battery packs for cordless tools. It proved a smart move, but they soon identified another niche market they could capture.

"We specialize in hard to find batteries," said Jean.  "You can find a car battery at a superstore or AA batteries at the drug store, but they don't have all the batteries you need for your home or business. We do. We have any battery you may be looking for. We work hard to personalize our inventory to our customers' needs. We are also a recycling center for used batteries."

In 2010, Cricket Wireless sought out the business-minded twosome. Cricket was interested in the shop as a vendor, and the Beechy's decided it would be a good fit.

"We thought it could be a good complement to our store," said Jean.  "This is still a pretty tough economy," said Dave, "and we thought, why not diversify?"

A year later Cricket has offered to make them a premier dealer. 

"It's something we're thinking about," said Jean, "but we want to make sure it doesn't harm the balance of the store."

Though the store is newer, the building's roots are planted in the Beechy family. The Ten Pin Lounge had been in Dave's family since the end of Prohibition. 

"In the beginning, my grandmother, Madge Buckley, ran the bar," Dave said.  "Eventually, it was passed to my mother, Mame, in the 1960's. She retired in 2005, and we started considering our options for the property."

The family decided to build a combination building that would have commercial shops on the first floor, and residential condominiums above. Dave's company, By the Book Construction, oversaw the project.

The battery store was not in the original plans. 

"We were going to sell the condos and rent the commercial shops to local businesses," said Dave. 

And then fate intervened. Construction ended at the start of the recession, and they had a hard time finding buyers for the condos.  So they became landlords.

"We weren't looking to be residential landlords," Dave said, "but what are you going to do? We sold one of the units, and we rented out the other three."

The recession not only altered the plans for the property, it also had a negative impact on their construction business. Like any enterprising small business owners, they started looking in different directions. They already had the store space, and eventually they settled on batteries.

The biggest part of their business is still rebuilding battery packs for cordless tools, and both said demand has picked up lately.

"I can't get a break from it," said Dave. "I think it's a real good sign for the economy. The guys in the trades are coming in to get their battery packs reconditioned because they're going back to work."

For more info, visit their website at www.allchargedupbattery.com.

Down to Business is a new feature which zooms in on local businesss and the owners—highlighting what makes them special to Oak Forest. Do you have a suggestion for a business to feature? E-mail editor Lauren Traut at lauren.traut@patch.com.