“Door County is about family, about outdoor activities, about entertainment and bringing people together,” believes On Deck Clothing owner Mitch Larson. The Larson family has been part of Door County’s extended family and traditions for generations, dating back to the late 1800s. Hazel Elquist Larson, Mitch’s grandmother, was born and raised in the Town of Liberty Grove on land that’s now part of Newport State Park. Her father, Emil Elquist – Mitch’s great-grandfather – was the carpenter who helped build Ephraim’s Edgewater Hotel and many homes in Ellison Bay.
Mitch’s great-grandmother, Mrs. Wenzel Bunda, owned Bunda’s in Sister Bay. The store featured cloth, groceries, shoes, watches and other necessities of the day. Son William Bunda took over the store in 1912 and made it a fixture of Door County life. Bunda ran other retail stores throughout the area, including Sturgeon Bay and Oshkosh. In a quirk of fate, Bunda also leased the Lundberg General Store on Main Street in Fish Creek for a year during the 1930s. No one could have known that, 70 years later, grandson Mitch Larson would own that same Fish Creek building. Today, the corner of Main Street and Spruce is home to On Deck Clothing Company’s main location, the Fish Creek Market and The Lower Deck sales store, as well as On Deck–The Women’s Store.
Mitch’s father, Wink Larson, was a pioneer thinker, an early entrepreneur in Door County. “He had been a skier most of his life and was part of the Army ski patrol in Garmisch, Germany, in the 1950s,” Larson relates. “He loved Door County and wanted to bring skiing here.” Although residents had always made use of the local hills for downhill skiing, Wink set about grooming the hills, adding rope tows and building a lodge – all part of Nor-Ski Ridge, which officially opened in 1959. “There were several runs, beginner to expert,” Mitch recalls, “and it was really something special. The restaurant was run by my mom and grandmother. There was music playing outside, and the lodge had a roaring fireplace. It was the spot where all the locals came together.”
An appreciation of family, of tradition and the history of Door County all influenced Mitch Larson in his own life. “I must have inherited some business savvy from my grandfather Bunda and what he did with retail, and also the passion and fun side of my father,” he says. Although Mitch always had an interest in clothing, longtime friend John Ostrand triggered his interest in retail. “John was a cook at Al Johnson’s practically from the beginning,” Mitch says, “and then he opened a men’s clothing store, Telemark Boutique, behind Al’s.” Ostrand talked Larson into accompanying him to a clothing trade show in Dallas about 20 years ago “and I got the bug,” says Larson. “I went to another couple of shows and really enjoyed it. When the Top of the Hill shops came on the market in 1986, John and I said, ‘Let’s open a store.’”
